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I can’t pass a church without popping in, time and lock
permitting. I relish breathing the chill stony air that once
filled the lungs, unscarred of traffic fumes if sometimes
plague or pox ridden, of all those who have gone long
before. I read everything from the architecture to the
memorials. I always sit and say a prayer, I always put some
money in the box and I always read the list of incumbents.
Often it is the fabric of the building, the beauty of the glass
or the celebrity of those who lie there at eternal rest that
occupies the church visitor so to redress the balance a wee
bit, this piece is all about the incumbents.
Deptford in South East London, where I live, has one of the
finest churches in England. Betjeman called St Paul’s
the
pearl in the heart of Deptford
. It is one of the Queen Anne
Churches built following an Act of Parliament in 1710 and
funded by continuing the coal tax that had rebuilt the City
of London after the Great Fire. Dwindling congregations
were a growing problem for the Church of England and the
plan to build fifty grand new churches was intended to
stem the flow of literate skilled workers to the Dissenters
chapels. They would be bribed with grandiosity! Deptford
church is one of just twelve built: it is possibly the best,
the pinnacle of English Baroque designed by Thomas
Archer, the lesser-known contemporary of Hawksmoor
and Vanbrugh. As a church visitor but not a church goer
my interest in incumbents, these men (women of course
since 1992) who serve God in Heaven and the people on
earth, is undoubtedly because of two remarkable men
Father Diamond of Deptford and the Reverend Chad Varah
of St Stephens Walbrook in the City of London but more of
those remarkable men soon: first a few of the very many
who came before.
An Interest in Incumbents
Richard Conyers was so loved in Helmsley that when he
was given the living of St Paul’s Deptford he had to leave
Yorkshire in the dead of night. Many clergymen in the 18
th
century barely believed in God but Conyers did having had
a spiritual experience that in modern parlance we might
describe as
being born again
. This terrified the Church of
England at a time when John Wesley was travelling hither
and thither drawing the crowds and no less than the
Archbishop of York came to Helmsley to check he wasn’t
being too evangelical. Ten years later in Deptford Richard
Conyers was laid to rest in 1786 in a plot he had chosen a
week before his death. His friend John Newton, the former
slave ship captain and author of the hymn Amazing Grace,
came from St Mary Woolnoth by the Bank of England to
preach the funeral sermon.
Charles Burney’s father was an historian of music, his
brother an Admiral who had sailed with Captain Cook and
his sister was the satirical author (and great influence on
Jane Austen and Thackeray among others) Fanny Burney.
Charles inherited the living at Deptford (and the post of
Chaplain to George III) when his father died. Charles
Burney was infamous for feeling the cold and his first
words to any visitors were always
Shut the door!
It was
joked that this was what he said to the pair of highwaymen
who robbed him in his carriage one night. Sent down from
Cambridge for pinching books Burney’s classical library
of huge importance was bequeathed to The British Library.
Charles Burney has a memorial tablet in Westminster
Abbey, which after last month’s deliberations in
The Kettle
about time I am delighted to tell you reads
Died on the
fifth kalend of January
in the holy year 1817.
The Parish Incumbent