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Densham never visited his parishioners and was left to
his own devices by the Bishop of Truro, living as a
hermit on nettles and porridge and dying alone the year
Elizabeth II came to the throne. The sister of another
Cornish cleric had to secure her absent-minded brother
to the altar rail with a dog chain and a padlock to prevent
him wandering off before the service was over. Cornwall
really does seem to have attracted more than its fair share
of eccentric clergymen!
The Infamous Vicar of Stiffkey
But surely the prize, should there be such a thing, for
Most Shocking Story of an Eccentric Cleric must go to
the Vicar of Stiffkey Harold Davidson (above). Though
he became notorious abroad he was always much loved
and respected in his Norfolk parish, especially for his
kindness to families fallen on hard times and his sermons
were so popular that crowds came by charabanc to hear
him. His downfall came when he took to spending up to
six days a week in London, rescuing poor girls forced
into prostitution, returning by train on Sunday morning to
deliver his sermon. Eventually in 1932 incriminating
photographs made him a really big story on Fleet Street.
Disgraced, defrocked and ruined, he took a number of
temporary jobs including porter at St Pancras Station and
encyclopedia salesman. He applied unsuccessfully to
manage Blackpool Football Club but stayed in the town
with a circus. People paid to see the world famous
(thanks to the red tops) defrocked vicar sitting in a barrel
on the prom declaring his innocence. Later in Skegness
he played Daniel, preaching from the Bible inside a lion's
cage. In July 1938 a lion ate him. When his former
parishioners brought him back and buried him in the
churchyard the whole village turned out for the funeral
of the Vicar of Stiffkey. He was the inspiration for
George Orwell’s defrocked vicar in (my favourite book
ever)
A Clergyman’s Daughter
published in 1935.
More Tea Vicar?
It would seem that as fewer of us actually attended church
to see our vicars in the flesh so more and more fictional
vicars appeared on our television screens starting with
All Gas & Gaiters
in the 1960s. Derek Nimmo went on to
play clergymen in three other sitcoms. All angles have been
covered since from the slightly bumbling naïve
more tea
vicar
type to the bad tempered and officious vicar (Dad’s
Army) the sexy vicar (Keeping up Appearances), the
woman vicar (Dibley of course!) and more recently the
gritty human urban vicar as played by Tom Hollander in
Rev. Filmed at Shoreditch church the TV Rev muddles his
way through a parish life that includes drunks and deranged
characters but, sadly, the reality is not quite so funny.
The real Rev of Shoreditch Paul Turp recently admitted
that he had lost control of his church to the dealers and
street drinkers and a tough policy of zero tolerance has
been required to reclaim it back for the community. One
rotten downside of the popularity of the telly vicar is that
phrase
More tea vicar?
For vicars this is the same as a tour
guide being asked after the whereabouts of their umbrella.
One cleric who often appeared on the television and on the
wireless, including
This is Your Life
in 1961 and
Desert
Island Discs
in 1992 was the late Chad Varah of the
beautiful Wren church of St Stephens Walbrook in the City
of London, protected from all the noise and fumes of Bank
Junction by the great bulk of the Lord Mayor’s Mansion
House. Edward
Chad
Varah was the eldest son of a
Lincolnshire Vicar who followed the traditional route of
Oxford degree before ordination. His mission to help the
suicidal which would culminate in his founding of the
Samaritans in 1953 began with his very first service as a
curate in 1935 which was the funeral of a 14 year old girl
who had taken her own life because she had begun to
menstruate and did not understand what was happening.