1933 - present
The Vicars of St Mary’s Church, 1933 - present
Neville Stuart Talbot, D.D, Bp.(1879 - 1943)
Chaplain of Balliol College Oxford 1909-1914, Assistant Chaplain-General to the Fifth Army 1914-1919, Bishop of Pretoria, South Africa 1920 - 1933
Vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Nottingham 1933 - 1943
Neville was born on August 21st, 1879, at Keble College, Oxford. He was the third child and second son of his parents. His father, Edward Stuary Talbot, a younger son of a younger son of the house of Shrewsbury was the first Warden of Keble, and later Vicar of Leeds, and thereafter successively Bishop of Rochester, Southwark and Winchester. His mother was the third daughter of Lord Lyttelton and a member therefore of the large family which laid its characteristic mark on various departments of English life.
Neville had two brothers, the elder of whom, Edward, was to join the Community of the Resurrection, and the younger, Gilbert, was to be killed in action in the Ypres Salient in 1915. Of his sisters, May married Lionel Ford, the Headmaster of Repton and Harrow and later Dean of York, while Lavinia was after his wife’s death to keep house for him and bring up his children.
When Neville was nine his father moved to Leeds. Neville attended the Grammar School, and then was at Haileybury from 1892 to 1899. He joined the Army in 1899, just in time for the Boer War. Military life had an attraction for certain sides of Neville’s character. It appealed to a certain simplicity in him and the need for courage. Neville was inclined to go straight at things, without weighing the risk. He blurted out untimely truths. The discipline of the Army did not affect him much. The Boer War was not a very good school for that. Much of it was like a shooting party, and the hazardous self-exposure in the clear air of the veldt remained his first taste of danger.
Neville went up to Christ Church in October 1903. In the winter of 1907 he went to Cuddesdon for his ordination training and was ordained Deacon at Ripon Cathedral on June 14th, 1908. He was priested in Lent 1909 and went to be Chaplain of Balliol in October. During the First World War he was Assistant Chaplain-General to the Fifth Army. In April 1918 he was married to Cecil Mary Eastwood by his father at West Stoke Church, near Chichester.
Pretoria
On April 12th, 1920 he was elected Bishop of Pretoria , in succession to Bishop Furse, and was consecrated in St. Paul’s Cathedral on St. John Baptist’s Day. Among the Bishops who took part in the consecration were his own father, then Bishop of Winchester, The Archbishop of Cape Town, and his predecessor in the Diocese of Pretoria, Bishop Michael Furse.
The life of a South African Bishop is not all romance. His letters are full of his financial troubles.
We start with a pretty good weight around our necks. I knew the job was going to be very stiff.
The creaking finance of the diocese has come pretty well to a crisis, in that there was not enough money come in during August (1922) to send out full cheques to the clergy, and only 65 per cent cheques were sent out all round, myself and the Archdeacon included. There is ever an enormous lot to do about getting English Church people (as contrasted, say, with Wesleyans) to realise that membership carries with it regular obligations of supporting the Church as a matter of duty. I have spoken much about it on my journeys.
I increased the number of my Clergy in faith that the Native contributions would partly maintain them, but they have simply dried up, and I am in, and getting steadily deeper into, impossible debt: I think I can hear Niagra roaring.
In all this first contact with the varied problems of a South African diocese, Cecil Mary was at every moment a joy and support to him. His delight was unbounded when on August 31st his son was born. For two days all seemed well, and Cecil herself was radiant with intense happiness and vitality. But ominous signs appeared on the evening of the third day. Anxiety and hope swayed to and fro, nor was it till the very last morning that hope perished. Cecil herself did not know till then that she was in danger, and was able to nurse her baby to within eight hours of her death.
Nottingham
Neville used to refer to St. Mary’s as “St. Pelican in the Wilderness”. This is explained by the comment of a priest in the diocese:
He arrived snuffing like a great war-horse, longing for the battle; determined to bring Nottingham to the feet of Christ. He was not a little handicapped by the fact that he came just when the migration from the city began, with the result that the old-fashioned kind of worshippers had largely moved into the country. This handicap was late accentuated during the war by the difficulties of transport. His congregation did not increase as he had hoped.
The parish was largely non-residential, and the church was surrounded by factories and offices which Neville used to visit carrying handbills announcing the special dinner-hour service. In the last years he was sometimes restless and longed for a sphere more suited to his gifts - he had just secured it when God called him away from his work on earth - but he won the strong affection s of his parish and city, as was shown by the large congregation of all classes of people who attended his Memorial Service, and from the tributes of affection which poured in from a great variety of people on his death.
Neville treated his curates as colleagues not as subordinates. As he himself said, he looked to them to make good his own deficiencies on the pastoral side, some of which came from the fact that he had much to cope with outside the parish. He often published his curate’s sermons in the parish magazine - perhaps not a common habit with vicars.
One of the marked features of his parochial ministry was his dealings with young couples about to be married. His own experience made him deeply concerned for the integrity of marriage: and he was revolted by books and pays that made light of it. He always interviewed couples both together and singly before marrying, and regarded the preparation thus given to them as one of the most important parts of his work, an estimated that was corroborated by the expressed gratitude of those he helped in this way.
Neville was in excellent relations with the non-Anglican religious bodies in Nottingham. In co-operation with Dr McNulty, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Nottingham, and Mr James, the Free Church leader, he helped to create the Nottinghamshire Christian Council, which owed much to the combination in Neville of an outspoken loyalty to his convictions with a warm spirit of fraternity.
In May 1941, Neville wrote from Nottingham :”We had a visitation - nothing compared with some places, but still a very real taste. Began about twelve. We had gone to bed, and tried to believe that the explosions were our guns, but soon one and then another were unmistakable - one was not far off down Friar’s Lane. Peering out of the top window, I soon realised that big fires had been started, so, there being a lull, I went down. I found a fire going in the South Transept of the Church. It took a long time really to put it out.”
Neville was often restless within the conditions of his restriction in his parish at Nottingham - restrictions greatly increased by the war. He likened himself to “an old hulk stranded on a lee-shore”. His fearless honesty made him accuse himself of ambition, but, if it was there, it did not lurk in any secret corner. In March 1939 he was offered the Bishopric of Croydon. He would have been Suffragan and Archdeacon as well as Vicar. His first feeling was that he must accept. He felt that nine years in Nottingham were enough, and that “the call came from the Church and not from Downing Street.” However, after inspecting conditions on the spot, he decided against. With the coming of the war, there seemed to open out at last the chance for work that suited his gifts. It arose out of his interest in the RAF. In January 1941, he took a four days’ Mission for them at Cranwell, and in 1942 he took a Mission in the RAF depot at Donnington. Such experiences convinced him that far more was needed on the spiritual side in the Chaplains’ department, and he began a long and unwearied bombardment of the authorities (military and ecclesiastical). In November 1942, the two Archbishops wrote to inform him that he had been appointed as one of the seven men that were to give the greater part of the time to visiting Air Force centres. On December 9th he wrote that he was to start on January 12th 1943. However, just when the direction of his life was moving in a direction that would more suitable employ his talents, came the tragic collapse. On December 12th he had a severe heart-attack, from which he never recovered. He retired to Sussex for convalescence, and died on April 3rd 1943. He was buried at All Hallows, Barking, the religious headquarters of Toc H.
In the Bidding Prayer, his brother said: “Let us thank God for the life of His servant, Neville Stuart Talbot, for his witness in thought, word and life to the reality of God and to the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, for the strength and tenderness of his ministry, and for his greatness of heart in leadership, love and friendship. Let us pray that God may give to him the Light of His Presence, the Peace of His Pardon and the Joy of His Service in the City of God.”
Adapted from A Memoir, Neville Stuart Talbot F.H. Brabant, SCM Press, London, March 1949
Robert Henry Hawkins, M.A.
Vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Nottingham 1943 - 1958
Canon of St. George’s, Windsor 1958
Canon Hawkins took particular pride in resurrecting the parish hall or institute and in improving the fabric. He left to become a canon of St. George’s Windsor.
Douglas Russell Feaver, M.A (1914 - 1998)
Curate, St. Alban’s Cathedral 1938 - 1958
Vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Nottingham 1958 - 1972
Bishop of Peterborough 1972 - 1984
The Right Reverend Douglas Feaver, who has died aged 83, was Bishop of Peterborough from 1972 to 1984.
Eric Abbott, a notably wise and generous Dean of Westminster described Feaver as “the rudest man in the Church of England”. There was ample evidence to support this verdict. “Women members of the General Synod,” Feaver once declared, “have seething bosoms but nothing above.” During a Confirmation service he asked some boy candidates, “Do you know the sort of girl you would like to marry?” Then, pointing his crozier in the direction of three elderly women candidates, he added: “Mind you, there’s not much of a choice here tonight.” After the wedding of one of his junior clergy he announced: “I prefer funerals.”
This caustic sense of humour disguised a shy man of complex personality. After a brilliant career at Oxford, Feaver never fully matured, and quite failed to realise how hurtful his flippant comments could be. One explanation is that as a young wartime RAF chaplain serving in Egypt he had become critically ill and heard his grave being dug outside the hospital ward in which he was lying.
Feaver belonged to an era in the life of the Church of England that was fading by the time he became a bishop. His spirituality was founded on the Authorised Version, which he described as “the one memorable version of the Bible”, and on the Book of Common Prayer. Those drawn to the Alternative Service Book should, he advised “Taste it and spit it out.” When celebrating Holy Communion in re-ordered sanctuaries, he would order the altar to be returned to its traditional place against the East wall. He was a fine preacher with a ringing alliterative style which produced many memorable sermons, often based on arresting texts. “Sermons are seldom seedless,” he told his clergy, and he stressed also the importance of careful preparation of Bible readings in church. He once ordered a curate struggling with a difficult Lesson at a crowded service to “come down and stop that rubbish”.
In spite of his foibles and irascibility, Feaver had many admirers in his diocese. When he retired, the vice-chairman of the Diocesan Synod said: “He has been his own man. How refreshing to have had a leader who never worried about being liked.”
Douglas Russell Feaver was born at Bristol on May 22 1914. He went to Bristol Grammar School, then became a scholar of Keble College, Oxford, where he carried all before him, taking Firsts in Modern History and Theology, and winning the coveted Liddon Studentship.
Scorning the suggestion of an academic career, he went to Wells Theological College to prepare for Holy Orders and in 1938 became a curate of St. Albans Abbey. The high standard of cathedral worship suited him, for he had been brought up at St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, and thereafter was a stickler for disciplined church services. Four happy years at St. Albans ended when he volunteered for the wartime RAF. He served on a number of stations at home and overseas. But on his demobilisation St. Albans reclaimed him and he returned to become, at the early age of 32, Canon and Sub-Dean. The Abbey, with its large, intelligent congregation, provided just the right sphere for his preaching, and those who could not cope with his personality had other members of the Chapter to whom they could turn for pastoral consolation.
During the next 12 years he became more widely known in the Church and had gained considerable influence as chief book reviewer for the Church Times. He was an editor’s dream contributor; his high intellectual capacity enabled him to get to the heart of a big book quickly; his lucid, elegant prose of exact length required no correction; and he never failed to meet a deadline. Feaver’s rudeness and lack of easy social graces - he was rarely willing to shake hands - stood in the way of his appointment to an expected Deanery and, for some years, seemed even more of a problem when bishoprics were discussed.
But when Feaver’s time at St. Albans was up in 1958, Bishop F R Barry of Southwell, who appreciated his intellect, appointed him Vicar of St. Mary’s, the ancient parish church of Nottingham. With this went an Honorary Canonry or Southwell Minster and the responsibilities of Rural Dean of Nottingham. This proved to be a success - up to a point. Nottingham soon became aware of its new Vicar, and the services at St. Mary’s attracted many who valued traditional Anglicanism at its best. Always an autocrat, Feaver never hesitated to rig Church Council meetings and it was a brave, or foolish parishioner who opposed him. A long sequence of courageous curates were given a first-class training, and Feaver was a good pastor to those who needed him. He served as governor of Nottingham Bluecoat School and was chairman of a boys’ probation hostel; but he was not the kind of priest to become involved in a wide range of community activity.
Relations with the liberal Bishop Barry eventually became strained and there was a never-to-be-forgotten Diocesan Conference at which Feaver stood to speak and the bishop, who was very deaf, inquired of a neighbour on the platform: “Is that Feaver speaking?” On being told it was, he ostentatiously switched off his antiquated hearing aid and said in a loud voice: “Tell me when he’s finished.” Feaver was no lover of conferences and synods. Of the General Synod, on which he served from 1970 to 1972, and when compulsorily during his 12 years as bishop, he said: “I wonder when I am sitting there why church people should be asked for money to pay to keep this cuckoo growing.” At the end of the 1978 Lambeth Conference he told his diocese: “Nothing much came of it, but then nothing much was put in.”
He deplored most of the proposals for change in the life of the Church, ranging from the modification of patronage to the ordination of women, insisting that “newness consists in renewal, not in novelty, and experiment must go hand in hand with experience.”
Feaver’s appointment to the bishopric of Peterborough in 1972 came as a surprise, not least to himself. At his first Diocesan Synod he announced: “I have no intention of moving again; the undertakers can be my next removers and the Church Commissioners can pay.” The tall, stooping figure of Fever, crowned by a fine head of silver hear, suggested a distinguished bishop and scholar, and certainly he cared for the Church of England. He was sensible to lead their parishes without overmuch episcopal interference. Those who knew him best admired him most, and he was an entertaining raconteur with a gift for mimicry. His first wife Katherine, who was the daughter of the Rev. W.T. Stubbs, an Anglican clergyman, died in 1987. The next year he married Miss Clare Harvey, a family friend and recently retired head mistress of a girls’ school, who survives him. He is also survived by a son and two daughters of his first marriage.
Obituary from the Daily Telegraph.
Michael James Jackson, MA (1925 - 1995)
Ordained 1957, Chaplain to the Sheffield Industrial Mission 1957 -1969, Vicar of St. George’s Church, Doncaster 1969 - 1973
Vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Nottingham 1973 - 1991
Michael was baptised on Michaelmas Day, 1925, in St. Michael’s Church, Somerton, where his father was vicar. A chandelier there bears the dedication “To the Glory of God and the Honour of the Church of England.” Michael approved of this.
National Service took him to India from 1945 - 7, and a commission in the Indian Army. It was at this time he decided to seek ordination. At Trinity Hall, Cambridge, from 1947 - 50, he read Philosophy (then called Moral Sciences) and Medieval History.
A stay in France introduced him to new ideas on mission in industry, and the priest-worker movement. Before beginning theological training at Wells, he worked for a year as a labourer in a Sheffield steel works, in close contact with the Sheffield Industrial Mission. On completing training, he returned to Sheffield for a further three and a half years as a labourer, working out what Christianity meant in that context. His later deafness was probably attributable in part to these eight hour shifts, around the clock, in a great steel melting shop. In 1955 his shop steward visited the formidable Bishop of Sheffield to persuade him to ordain Michael deacon, to continue as a labourer but as a member of the Sheffield Industrial Mission.
In 1957 he was ordained priest, became a full-time chaplain with the Mission, and from 1959 - 69 was Senior Chaplain.
He returned to parochial ministry in 1969, serving for four years as Vicar of Doncaster before coming to St. Mary’s, Nottingham. The years in industry had convinced him of the enduring place of parish church and ministry; but also gave him a vision of the place of a great civic church in the life of town or city. The beauty of the building, and its music, were to serve to reach out to those who came to the church. The success of the restoration appeal, and the building up of the musical tradition, were part of this vision.
In Nottingham, Michael chaired the Council of Christians and Jews, the City Centre Council of Churches, and for some years, was Chairman of the Governors of the Bluecoat School. He spent 6 weeks visiting churches in the Caribbean, the better to understand and befriend the local ‘black-led’ churches. Further afield, he was a chairman of the Advisory Council for the Church’s Ministry selection conferences. He was one of eight members of a Joint Committee of the Churches who prepared a report on Hospital Chaplaincy. He served on the national Youth Employment Council.
He was awarded an M.Phil. from Nottingham University for a paper on Marcel Proust, and wrote articles on Jane Austen, Rastafarianism, English Theologians, sociology, and more.
Retirement gave him time to improve his water-colour painting, and drawing, and write the life of a relative who had served in the Colonial Service. Friends, family, and especially grandchildren, gave him great happiness. He faced the impairments of his final months with uncomplaining good humour. Those who nursed him during his last weeks in hospital sensed that in Michael there was something, as they put it, “special”.
Janet Jackson
Revd Canon Eddie Neale
Vicar of St Mary’s Church, Nottingham 1991-2004
The illustration shows The Vicar, Revd Canon Eddie Neale, holding the cope donated in memory of those who died on 15 April 1989 in the Hillsborough Football Stadium in Sheffield.
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