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St George-in-the-East Clergy 1900-                                                                      see also Licensed Workers

RECTORS

Robert William Harris (1897-1903)
(pictured in 1903) was born in Stepney in 1863 (his father was a civil engineer), educated at the City of London School and was a Scholar of Hertford College Oxford. After a curacy in Poplar and a few months in Great Yarmouth assisting the former Rector of Limehouse in a new post, he returned to London as Secretary of the East London Church Fund, with the Bishop of Stepney as President; it raised about £20,000 a year to support the work of local churches. His first appearance in the parish was as officiant at a wedding at St Matthew Pell Street in 1889, where he signed himself as 'Mission Preacher to the Bishop of Bedford'. He had private means. But, as with his predecessor C.H. Turner, he found that his wife Eleanor Gertrude Ward (a parson's daughter from Clapham in north Yorkshire) and their children Monica and Robert could 'no longer live here' and he exchanged his living with F. St J. Corbett [see below], and became Rector of Long Marton in Carlisle diocese, three miles from Appleby-in-Westmorland and twelve from Penrith, where he served for 34 years. ('Exchange' was a not uncommon practice in the past: Bryan King and John Lockhart Ross had done the same in 1863, and Neville Jones and John Lyons in 1847 at St Mark Whitechapel.)  His previous experience of northern ministry was as an annual missioner at Addingham in west Yorkshire.

He was well-regarded in the village. For all these years he was ex officio chairman of the local Parish (now Village) Institute, providing a reading room and recreation room with a hall above, built by his predecessor in 1980. During the First World War he failed to introduce whist drives, as the deeds strictly forbade card games. It took until the 1920s to overturn this  - and the minute books show that this did not please everyone!

But after 17 years in the East End, as the Westmorland Gazette put it when he retired in 1938, Mr Harris found himself in surroundings which strangely differed from those in which hitherto his life as a clergyman had been spent. The last thing he expected was to become a country parson. In a very short time he began to find outlets for his abounding energy, for he was embued with a fervour of Churchmanship and an activity of mind and body that could not be cabined and confined to one country parish. From 1906-22 he was the organising secretary for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in the archdeaconry of Carlisle. For 25 years, from 1910, he was Rural Dean of Appleby & Kirkby Stephen. During the First World War he served as chaplain to the 2nd Western Mounted Brigade (which included the Westmorland and Cumberland Yeomanry), and after the war was elected a Proctor in Convocation, and so became one of the original members of the new Church Assembly (the precursor of General Synod), serving until 1931. Here he spoke in favour of Prayer Book Revision (see here for more detail), and as a critical supporter of the 1923 Dilapidations Measure which sought to reform the cumbersome procedures for financing repairs to parsonage houses. He also favoured reform of the glebe system, whereby part of the parson's stipend was made up from variable annual rents on land; he sold 600 acres of his own glebe, producing a guaranteed annual income of £300.

He was an Anglo-Catholic - a member of the Church Union, serving as chairman of the Penrith and Appleby branch. In his spare time he was an active member of the Cumberland and Westmorland Bee-Keepers' Association. He retired to Ilkley in 1938 [pictured right], where six years later he celebrated his golden wedding. One of his sons became the Vicar of Casterton, near Kirkby Lonsdale.

We are grateful to Keith Spence, of the Long Marton Local History Group, for images, press cuttings and minute book extracts.

Frederick St John Corbett FRSL FRHistS (1903-19)
was the son of John Corbett, an Irish senator and Principal of the Government Training College in Dublin. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, he served curacies in Leeds, where he was also Acting Chaplain to the Leeds Rifles - the Prince of Wales Own (West Yorkshire) Regiment - and then at St Michael Chester Square in the West End, where he began his publishing career with Sermon Outlines (1891), The Preacher's Year - 58 outline sermons (1894) and Life from a Parson's Point of View (1893, described by The Times as a lively and humourous little volume of clerical stories by a West-end curate and by the Dean of Llandaff (presumably without the implications it would have today) I can sincerely call it interesting, clever and suggestive. Echoes of the Sanctuary (1892) was a collection of none-too-distinguished hymns. See right for a Christmas hymn still sung in the USA.

In 1896 he became Rector of Long Marton, near Appleby. He continued to publish: The Problem of Life (1896), contributions to Funeral Sermons & Addresses - An Aid to Pastors (1899), A Thousand Things to Say in Sermons (1901), and editing The Service of Perfect Freedom (1902), a collection of sermons preached by his father-in-law Canon Edmund Askew, who was Vicar of Greystoke. He also produced a novel Two Men and a Girl (Gay & Bird 1902) on the ‘romantic entanglements of English aristocracy’.

As explained above, he exchanged livings with Harris and became Rector of St George-in-the-East in 1903 (seeking a more strenuous sphere of work as his obituary in The Guardian of 27 March 1919 put it). Here he produced his major scholarly work, A History of British Poetry from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century (Gay & Bird 1904), as well as The Communicants' Little Book (1904), a poetical tribute to George Herbert (1906), an illustrated poem Led by a Little Child (106) which sold several thousand copies, A Thousand Thoughts for Practical Preachers (1910) and material for the Church of England Guild of Sponsors [see here for this scheme, which he had devised], A Church of England Women's Society and sermons for harvest and flower festivals.

He was a good organiser, a pioneer of church finance reform, and in parish magazines of the time he brought the parish's history up to date. He faced many problems, detailed in this report to the Bishop of Stepney. Although he had his own London house, in Hanover Square, he did not have his predecessors' private incomes. He was Chaplain to the 3rd Volunteer Batallion of the Territorial Force (given the honorary rank of Lieutenant-colonel in 1917), governor of the East London Hospital for Children, chairman of managers of the St George's group of LCC schools and a member of the Diocesan Advisory Committee. He died in office of pneumonia, the after-effects of influenza.

Pictured left (in Cumbria) are his wife Elsie Lucy Victoire Askew, and children Elsie Mabel St John, Edmund St John and Mary Eleanor St George, and (at St George's) a family group. A younger son, Capt Hugh Askew Corbett DSO DSC RN, visited the parish in 1993 and kindly provided copies of material from his father's scrapbook about the Queen's visit in 1904, plus an extended and revealing press interview from the same period and material about the Guild of Sponsors, which can be seen here. In 1965 a set of altar cruets in his memory was given by the family.

John Christian Pringle (1919-25)
Many local clergy had engaged, as supporters or critics, with the Charity Organisation Society (COS) - see, for example, the comments about former curate Henry Iselin, a staunch advocate - but the next Rector, J.C. Pringle, had been its full-time Secretary from 1914-19, succeeding Charles Stewart Loch, who had held the post since 1875. Pringle was educated at Cargilfield (the first Scottish prep school) and Winchester, and read classics at Exeter College Oxford. He served as a judge in Sind with the Indian Civil Service, but resigned to train for ordination at Cuddesdon, serving curacies with Henry Luke Paget at Poplar in 1902, and then at St John-at-Hackney. In 1910 he went for three years to be head of the Higher Normal College in Hiroshima, a missionary college, where he taught English. He returned to England for his first stint with the COS, combining this with curacies at St Peter Eaton Square and then St Mary Lambeth. Having formerly been a second lietuenant with the Sindh Rifles Volunteers, he served temporarily in the same rank with the 1st/11th Batallion of the County of London Volunteer Regiment.

His period as Rector here seems not to have been an entirely happy time for him. With no 'private means' he struggled financially, having to find over £800 for work on the Rectory (apart from papering and painting), paying off the accumulated dilapidations debt, and providing cover during his extended trip with the Mission of Help to India in 1922. Parish finances after the war were also desperate - see these documents on the sale of church plate in 1920. His wife was unwell - which eventually triggered his resignation. He resented the lack of a curate (the Bishop said the size of the congregation did not justify it), though the parish workers who were provided undertook much pastoral work while he was engaged in the committee activities on which he believed the future well-being of the church depended. His sermons and talks failed to connect with the congregation, perhaps not surprisingly since he chose topics such as 'periods of church history' - Sunday morning addresses for children, on which their autumn examination was based (and including the surprising claim that 1700 to the present day has been among the most active and encouraging periods of the Church); 'the influence of Roman, Greek and and Egyptian building on church architecture'; and in Lent 1924 'the tragic and truly Lenten story of the conquest, perversion and desolation of the fair lands of the Early Church by Islam'. He expressed sometimes startling political views in forthright terms. But he comes across as one who was more interesting and less 'churchy' than most parsons, committed to working ecumenically as well as with the Jewish community (particularly at Armistice-tide).  See this selection of his writings from the parish magazine, including his very sad farewell letter describing his time here as a failure. In fact in the coming years he was regularly welcomed back both as a preacher and, with his wife, as a guest at parish events, and was well-respected by many. For his first three years he was also an examining chaplain for the Bishop of Chester, and then chaplain of the Royal Foundation of St Katharine until 1932.

However, he returned to full-time COS work, from 1925 until he resigned on health grounds in 1936, continuing as Consulting Secretary until his death two years later. The COS, with its various local groups, had long argued for targeting relief on the basis of careful casework. Pringle's magnum opus had been the submission, with Cyril Jackson, to the 1910 Poor Law Commission on the effects of employment or assistance on dockworkers since 1886. He remained deeply suspicious of any form of intervention that might erode self-reliance. He served on the London County Council's Public Assistance Committee, attended international conferences, and wrote papers and reports on many subjects (one example is 'The Japanese Government and Sugar') and several books, including his last work Social Work of the London Churches (1937). In British Social Services: The Nation’s Appeal to the Housewife and her Response (Longmans, Green & Co, 1933) - which he discussed with his former parish worker at St George's, Phyllis Hatton - he claimed (on what basis?) that ordinary women believed that social need should be met by self help or charity, with the state provision as a last resort: Everything else, the housewife said, we either paid for by ourselves or got when we needed it, from some charitable institution. 

The COS approach had always attracted controversy, and was rejected outright by the more radical clergy of the area. (Although Canon Samuel Barnett at St Jude Whitechapel (1872-93) had been a strong supporter, he was later to lead a revolt against the 'old guard' and their resistance to state pensions). In later years, the emphasis on family casework came to be regarded as distinctly old-fashioned and patronising. (Fr John Groser in his time at Christ Church Watney Street, a few years after Pringle's time here, would have nothing to do with it.) More progressive attitudes were prevailing.

In the 1930s Pringle began to take an interest in the new, and as yet undiscredited, 'science' of eugenics, as did others - not all of them reactionaries, as the list here shows. He was a member of the Eugenics Society Council, writing a number of articles on the subject, and became a Fellow in 1937 the year before he and his wife died, at their home in Blackheath. B.E. Astbury, his successor as COS Secretary, wrote in in the 1938 Eugenics Review, His death deprvies social work in this country of one of its most brilliant exponents and philosophers ... A man of charming personality, Mr.  Pringle was the accepted authority on family  case-work and social legislation in this  country. His counsel and advice were sought  by social workers from every part of the  world. His essential kindliness, his humility,  and his great fund of knowledge, made him,among those who knew him, widely loved.   Another colleague wrote, in the Journal of Social Work (vol 74) In the world of social work I see no one to take his place. He brought such a vigorous and completely individual mind to every question free from all prepossessions as to the 'correct' or orthodox way of looking at it, and if his own strong view did not always meet with one's complete agreement, it was always stimulating, and sent one searching into the foundations of one's own position. And his industry in study and in keeping abreast of all that was being thought was really staggering.

The John Christian Pringle Memorial Fund, established in his memory and administered by the Family Welfare Association, supports students in family casework, particularly young social workers studying social problems and the philosophy of family casework. The Social Service Quarterly (37/38, 1963, p25) includes an article about his life by B.E. Astbury.

Charles John Beresford (1925-37)
 had been on the staff of the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) Training College for Lay Workers, the first institution of its kind nationally, which opened in 1889 at 384-392 Commercial Road in a converted boot factory with 7 students (later it provided accommodation for 40), in the belief that working men were best approached by members of their own class (see W.K. Lowther Clarke A History of the SPCK (SPCK 1959) p162). It was a few doors away from St John's Vicarage at 400, with a maternity hospital in between at 394-398. Beresford became Sub-warden in 1898 and Warden and Chaplain from 1904 until he came to St George-in-the-East, where he was already well-known as a regular preacher. He was unmarried, living with his sister [pictured right], and died suddenly in office.

Reader ministry
The SPCK college trained parish workers and Readers for licensed ministry in parishes. The preaching and teaching ministry of (Lay) Readers was revived in the Church of England in 1866, to meet the needs of both urban and rural parishes where clergy were hard-pressed. They conducted Morning and Evening Prayer, and preached - ridiculously, from the lectern rather than the pulpit, with a pause after the service - until the Second World War. Women were admitted as Readers during and after the First World War, though at first were known as 'Bishops' Messengers'. There are now over 10,000 Readers (also known as Licensed Lay Ministers, LLMs) in the Church of England.

Beresford was a convinced advocate of this ministry, and in his time as Rector here several of his former students came to preach and assist in the parish. At the 1908 Pan-Anglican Congress (in conjunction with the Lambeth Conference of that year) he had spoken at a session on Lay Ministry, held at the King's Hall, Holborn Restaurant, on 18 June (chaired by the Bishop of Stepney); the report says

The Rev. C. J. BERESFORD, Warden of the S.P.C.K. Training College, felt with the first speaker that the reader movement had come to stay, but he was quite sure that its development depended upon three conditions. The first was that the best man must be obtained: in days gone by, the fool of the family was generally sent into the Church. He believed that the lay reader needed much more force of character and spiritual power (and really exceptional gifts) than the ordained man, as he had nothing of the prestige of Holy Orders to carry him through his work. Lay readers had to make their own way, and therefore they must be the best men obtainable. The second condition was that after obtaining the best men, the Church needed to train them. A good deal of mischief had been done in the past, and the Church had yet to live it down, through the employment of untrained men as lay readers. Thirdly, when the best men had been obtained and trained, the Church wanted to keep and encourage them. He thought the clergymen ought to let the lay reader see that they recognized him as a responsible servant of Christ, that they felt that he had his place, his office and work, and the dignity belonging to that place, office and work. On the other hand, he thought sometimes the Church needed to discourage lay readers from attempting work which was not within their proper sphere.

(Earlier in the day a former curate of the parish, A.E. Joscelyne, who had become Bishop-Coadjutor of Jamaica, had spoken about the involvement of lay people in his diocese as members of parochial councils.)

Beresford would surely have been pleased that, from 2010, part of Reader/LLM training for the Stepney area is delivered in the crypt of St George-in-the-East, under the auspices of St Mellitus College.

Choral music
He was also a keen and accomplished musician (a cellist, and conductor), and founded the Stepney Orpheus Choir in 1908. They rehearsed here during his time as Rector, and he set up various other choirs in the parish. He was a friend of Sir Walford Davies, an early musical broadcaster, who worked with him on the annual choral festival at the People's Palace, Mile End Road, held in the Queen's Hall there (the Musical Times 'Competition Festival Supplement' of 1909 mentioned that that was a commodious arena containing a large organ). Walford Davies brought his choir from St George's Windsor here for the bicentenary of the parish - an unusual honour for a parish church. More details about the bicentenary, and the musical life of the parish, here.  Beresford served on various national music committees: in 1926 he was a speaker at the first annual conference of the National Association of Competitive Choirs, held in Halifax. He became chairman of the British Federation of Music Competition Festivals, and in 1933 chaired a major conference on ‘The Future of Amateur Music-Making’ held at Broadcasting House (with 'lunch at Pagani's'). Sir John Reith & Sir Adrian Boult represented the BBC, and a number of leading music educators spoke. 

In that same year, he conducted a lengthy memorial service for the former assistant matron of St George's Hospital, Wapping. She had come as a staff nurse in 1894, retiring 32 years later, and was a keen churchgoer - one of many examples of committed service to East End nursing,


Robert Bruce Eadie (1937-42)
had served as a First World War chaplain (and remained an honorary chaplain to the forces), and had worked in various London parishes, in North Kensington, Shoreditch and Clapton. He left St George's in 1942 when emergency parish staffing measures were taken (glad, it was said, to get away from the war-torn East End), and became Vicar of St Margaret Uxbridge [right], remaining there until his death in 1953.

St John Beverley Groser
(Vicar of Christ Church Watney Street 1929-48 and Curate-in-Charge of St George-in-the-East w St John Golding Street 1941-47)

See here for a fuller account of Fr Groser's leadership of the parish during and after the Second World War, reconfigured after the Blitz. He brought a radically new and inspirational style at a time of crisis, and is rightly remembered as one of the great East End parish priests.

Kenneth John (Jack) Mackay Boggis (1947-55)
had been Fr Groser's curate at Christ Church (1932-6), and succeeded him as Rector at St George's, coming from Becontree where from 1943 he had been Vicar of St Peter's District Church. It was Groser who had inspired him to seek ordination - see this tribute - for which he struggled to train, at Knutsford (like Father Joe Williamson) and then (like Groser) at Mirfield. After his title here, he went to Hamstead in Essex (Dick Turpin's birthplace) and then as Sub-Dean [curate] of Bocking. There the former young commmunist became Secretary of Braintree Labour Party, as well as of its Anglo-Soviet Friendship Society, but resigned from the party to lead ex-communist Tom Driberg's campaign for election as an Independent MP for Maldon in 1942. Driberg in his 1977 autobigraphy Ruling Passions described him as my most active and useful supporter and  a personal friend. Like Groser, he was a member of Conrad Noel's Catholic Crusade until its demise in 1936, and of the Socialist Christian League, as well as of the Council of Clergy and Ministers for Common Ownership / Society of Socialist Clergy and Ministers. Click here for a an attempt to unravel the complex interplay between these and other Christian Socialist groupings, and see also the Socialist Christian Catechism which Boggis co-wrote in 1947 with the late Fr Gresham Kirkby, who had been his curate in Becontree and was vicar of St Paul Bow Common from 1951 to 1994.

After his ministry here, Fr Boggis spent a few years as vicar of All Saints Hillingdon - at that time a semi-rural parish on the fringes of the diocese of London - where among other things he served as secretary of Uxbridge CND. For the last five years of his life, until his death in 1968, he was incumbent of a group of three parishes in Essex, near his beloved Thaxted - Broxted, Tilty and  Easton - succeeding Hugh Cuthbertson, also a Thaxted devotee, who had come to be the Vicar of St Paul Dock Street.  His German wife Lotte is still alive and well, approaching her 100th birthday, and living in Newport Pagnell.

His daughter Cecilia, writing in The Oldie for January 1997, describes the visits to the Rectory of the flamboyant Maori 'Prince Monolulu' (real name Peter McKay), a well-known East End figure and horse racing enthusiast [click image for text]. The year after Fr Boggis went to Moscow with a group of clergy on a cultural peace mission, he went there to promote horse racing as the key to world peace!

Harold Ernest Farington (1955-57)
It was ironic (and deliberate on someone's part?) that Jack Boggis' successor as Rector had been a Conservative member of Westminster City Council. appointed in a 1945 by-election for Victoria Ward, while a curate at All Saints Pimlico, and re-elected later that year by 3,250 votes, 47.7% of the 30.5% of the 20,082 electors who voted, a swing of 25.7% to the party. (Lady Winterton also stood in the same election.) Ten years later, Harold Ernest Farington came here as Rector. He left rather suddenly, during a jumble sale, and served a prison sentence for importuning under-age boys, but nevertheless later become a curate in Cranford, and then in Malvern Link. Such, regrettably, were the practices of the time, for which this parish becomes a footnote in the terrible contemporary saga of child sex abuse.

Alexander (Alex) Mackertich Solomon (1958-78)
 It fell to the next Rector to inspire and co-ordinate the remodelling of St George's, which he describes in detail here (with photographs), so ending the period of St George-in-the-Ruins with the consecration of the new church in 1964. Fr Solomon graduated from Serampore College in 1932, coming to England to train for ordination at St Augustine's College Canterbury. After a title in Camberwell, he returned to Calcutta diocese, first as chaplain at Anasol and then as chaplain of Victoria and Dow Hills Schools in Kurseong, near Darjeeling (1945-50 and after a brief return to England, as acting curate of St James the Less Westminster 1951-53). Here he had the privilege (afforded to few) of writing a school song [right].

Nora Facey, who had grown up in Newfoundland where her Canadian father was the principal of Queen's Theological College in St John's but had returned to England in the 1930s, met Alex when he was at Camberwell, and as soon as the war was over she made her way, alone, to Calcutta and was married to him immediately on her arrival. They returned to England in 1953, to curacies in Fletton and Perivale, before his appointment to St George-in-the-East.

'Solly' in his Austin 7 was, let us say, an uncertain driver who occasionally went the wrong way round roundabouts. (A local family, allegedly more in fun than for racist motives, once marked his car 'Caution: Indian Driver'.) In his time, St Paul Dock Street with St Mark Whitechapel was attached to the parish, and he became Curate-in-charge from 1968-71 before becoming Rector of the united parish in 1971. Since then it has been known as 'St George-in-the-East with St Paul'. This is not entirely fair to the other former churches in the parish: Christ Church, St Matthew, St John and St Mark, whose names have 'disappeared'. 

His vision of the remodelled church community meant that he and Nora lived in the church, with rooms on two floors at the south-west corner, rather than in the Rectory. As a result, the Rectory, like the flats created in the church, were tenanted over the years by 'his team' - a succession of people who worked at St George's or for the wider church, including religious journalists, authors and actors: see here for more details. And see here for an incident in 1976 when the crypt housed a bunch of Angola-bound mercenaries for the night. During a sabbatical, the Revd Richard Alexander (Dick) Yates looked after the parish.

Alex Solomon was an accomplished pianist, and acquired two grand pianos - a Broadwood for the church and a Blüthner for the crypt hall (now restored and also in the church); in his time, the crypt hall was extensively used for music-making. He was also a keen cricketer, playing in the diocesan team (remembered in this role by Canon Michael Saward, a current member of the congregation).

The Solomons retired to Worthing in April 1979 after celebrating the 250th anniversary of the church at St George's-tide. He continued to exercise a ministry in his local church; in 1986 he wrote this reflection on his ministry here, in protest at current plans for the parish. He died at the age of 73; his obituary in the Church Times (16 October 1987) was written by the deputy editor Alan Shadwick, one of the 'team' at St George-in-the-East. He describes him as an Indian ... who loved the best in England, and comments that many will remember the sound of music from his rooms when the day's work was done.

After his death, Nora lived on, with her niece, until her death in February 2010, aged 95. She is pictured here with Richard Chartres, then Bishop of Stepney (now Bishop of London) at the dedication of the memorial plaque to Fr Solomon in July 1992.

Ulrich Eduard Erich Julian Scharf (1979-86)
 When Alex Solomon left, there was uncertainty about the staffing of St George's. In the event, Julian Scharf took on the responsibility. He had been Priest-in-charge of St Paul Shadwell since 1975, and four years later became also Rector of St George's. Julian is the son of the artist Theo Scharf (pictures and biography here) and grew up in Germany and Australia, where he attended Melbourne University. He studied theology and trained for ordination at Ripon Hall, Oxford; during his time at St George's he completed a London PhD. After a curacy at St John Hackney he had been part-time chaplain to Trevor Huddleston, Bishop of Stepney: Piers McGrandle Trevor Huddleston: Turbulent Priest (Continuum 2004) describes their daily routine.

auschwitzlogoA major event in his time here was the still-remembered 1983 exhibition in the crypt hall 'Auschwitz and the East End', organised by a committee chaired by Jim Thompson, the Bishop of Stepney. 20,000 people visited, after which it went to Birmingham in preparation for further appearances is six major cities over the following two years.. Tower Hamlets Arts Project produced two booklets, 'Auschwitz And...' (with brief essays by well-known local figures) and 'Auschwitz: an exhibition' [texts of both on right]. Hugh Montefiore, Bishop of Birmingham and a Jewish convert, gave a Lent lecture to clergy of the Stepney area; another outsitanding talk was given by Lord Elwyn-Jones, a Welsh barrister who lived in Germany for a time and was involved in the Nuremberg trials, MP for Plaistow and then West Ham South, later Attorney-General and Lord Chancellor - and father of Dan Jones who with his wife Denise has had long involvement in local political life. (See here for a brief historical overview of the local Jewish presence.)


In 1990, while discussions about pastoral re-organisation of the area continued, Julian Scharf became incumbent of West Ham parish church (All Saints) in 1990, retiring from there in 2005.

Since he lived at Shadwell Rectory (which raised some legal issues about where his parsonage should be, and the legal rights of the various occupants of the 'Old' Rectory at St George's), the Rector's accommodation in St George's church was occupied by Garth Antony Barber and his family (who keeps in touch with the parish). Garth was the Chaplain of the City of London Polytechnic from 1979-86, and served as an honorary priest here; he made representations about the 1985 proposals of the Pastoral Committee. He then moved to Twickenham as a parish priest and Chaplain of Richmond College, and from 1997-2002 was Chaplain of the University of East Anglia. His current post is at St Andrew Kingswood, and he is Area Dean of Reigate; he is a cosmologist, and a member of the Society of Ordained Scientists.

Gillean Weston Craig (Priest-in-Charge 1988, Rector 1989-2002)

Fr Gillean, who had studied at York University and, while training at Westcott House, Queens' College Cambridge, had served curacies at Marylebone parish church and St Barnabas Ealing before he came here. In view of the ongoing uncertainties about pastoral provision in the area, he faced many challenges during his time here, to which he responded with flamboyance and enthusiasm. He built up parish life, reinvogorating the worship (though not all were convinced by the dawn eucharist on Easter morning or Ascension Day carols at the top of the tower!) and forging strong links with our primary school (which at that period, though increasingly Muslim in intake, continued to produce a trickle of confirmation candidates), and hosted many sociable gatherings. In 1991 he married at St George's the opera singer Dr Linda Hirst, of Trinity College of Music [now Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance], whom he had met when he was an unpaid 'trog' (piano shifter) at the Dartington summer school. He read his own banns - which is lawful, though unusual nowadays. Linda brought many musical contacts - including our former organist Elspeth Wilkes.

In Gillean's first year here there were two tragedies. Six months after the wedding of Debbie and Steve Faldo at St George's in February 1989, Steve died when the Marchioness, the disco boat of which he was skipper, sank in the Thames after a collision with a gravel dredger. And in 1990 he was shocked on going into church when he heard noises to find that 25-year old Mark Hazlewood, from Stratford, had attempted to hang himself. He was gasping for breath and breathing violently; Gillean cut him down, and resuscitated him and he was taken to the Royal London Hospital and put on life support.

Two particular projects absorbed much energy and produced volumes of correspondence. He promoted a £4m project, launched in 1991, for further remodelling of the church to provide a home for the Guildhall Ensemble (described in detail here), and was deeply frustrated that it eventually came to nothing - despite a visit from the Prince of Wales in July 1992 (linked to the tenth anniversary  of Business in the Community and a series of 'Seeing is Believing' visits). Two years later he also hosted a visit by Princess Margaret. More successful was his meticulously-researched bid for the restoration of the Rectory, made possible only with English Heritage funding; for this his successors will ever remain in his debt.

Here are some pictures from 1998 of Fr Gillean blessing the new offices of The Times, across the road at News International, in typically ebullient style. NI held their first carol service at St George's ten years previously, and this tradition continues.

Gillean is now Vicar of St Mary Abbot's Kensington – where David Cameron's family were members of the congregation before his move to number 10. He is the Librarian of Sion College (although it is now a society rather than a library!) and tv critic of the Church Times.

John Austin Cullen (Priest-in-Charge 2003-04)
There followed an uncertain five years, in which various plans came and went. Canon Dr John Cullen [pictured] , who was also the Bishop of London's personal assistant, was priest-in-charge (non-resident) for eighteen months during 2003 and 2004. He is a New Zealander, who had been a ministry development officer in Winchester diocese with wide experience of reviewing and supporting clergy; he is now the vicar of St John, Palmer's Green, and remains a good friend of the parish.

In that short time here, Fr John did much to organise the affairs of the parish, as well as exercising a valued pastoral ministry. His first priority on arrival was the provision of a new flagpole, since health and safety officers had condemned the old one as a dangerous structure and it had not been possible to fly the flag on St George's Day. £3000 was raised for a new one, dedicated on the anniversary of consecration. He organised the redecoration of the church and the provision of service booklets, and spent much time sorting through and dealing with the files that had accumulated in the office.

As he left, to become vicar of St John Palmer's Green, the diocese was adapting part of the crypt to house the North Thames Ministerial Training Scheme (of which the diocese is the licence-holder); during the vacancy, a confident congregation steered plans to convert the rest of the crypt into a home for Green Gables Montessori Nursery.

Michael Ainsworth (Rector 2007- )
A permanent, resident post depended on two things: a congregation committed to the ongoing mission of the parish, and staffing levels within the deanery of Tower Hamlets. When a post elsewhere in the deanery was 'lost', it became possible to advertise for a new Rector, and various candidates were interviewed. In the event, Canon Michael Ainsworth was appointed, and the Rectory (which had been inhabited by clergy and other members of St Paul Shadwell) was made available. Michael has served most of his ministry in the north-west, in parishes and in ministerial training; most recently he had been Team Rector of Worsley in Salford, Area Dean of Eccles, and chairman of the House of Clergy in Manchester Diocese and Deputy Prolocutor of  the Northern Province. He continues to be involved in national church activities, as vice-chair of the Church Buildings Council (and chair of its organs committee), and the Anglican appointee on the ecumenical Churches Funerals Group. He also continues his involvement in ministerial education, as a Bishops' Inspector of ordination and Reader training. His wife Janina (also ordained) is Chief Education Officer of the Church of England, and Secretary of the National Society.

CURATES

In the early part of the century, 220 Cable Street (rented from Lord Winterton) remained a base for church staff, including curates, though single men often lived in the Rectory. During and after the Second World War, most clergy lived in the Rectory until the church flats were created in the 1960s.

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