Meet the Family
by
Raymond Gilbert
It is not easy writing about yourself, nevertheless, in response to a particular
request here goes.
Your next vicar comes to you via a circuitous route that found him for a while
on the staff of a large chemical works in the Midlands, a radiographer in the
army, a ’bus?conductor, and a pen-pusher in a Rural District Council office. The
call to holy orders came while I was taking x-rays in the RAMC, and it was with a
tinge of regret that I abandoned chemistry for theology. Three years at King’s
College, London, were followed by a fourth at a college in Wiltshire and
ordination at Derby Cathedral. I began as a curate of a large parish on the edge of
the Peak District, which had just about everything from a farm to a steel works
and only lacked an aristocrat to have a population covering every stratum of
society! ‘
’ C‘ Leaving Newbold was like leaving home, even though it was to join the high-
powered team at Southwark Cathedral. I went there at the time South Bank
religion was all the rage. Honest to God had just appeared and almost everything
we did was branded as trendy and off-beat. For a priest who was still green it was
all very stimulating, but for me Southwark will always be significant as the place
where our family got together. Rosemary and I had both been widowed with two
children each when we met in the Spring of 1968, fell in love and married in the
cathedral four months later. We left London soon after -the wedding, moving
from a tiny house on the banks of the Thames opposite St Paul’_s to a big house in
the shadow of Ely Cathedral. I was Precentor there for five years, at the same
time being priest-in-charge of a small parish on the outskirts of the city. The
move to Canterbury came in February, 1974.
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