Little Hulton

We had arrived in Newcastle on the rebound from my first job as a Vicar.

When I was licensed as Vicar of St John the Baptist, Little Hulton, my former Vicar The Archdeacon of Bolton preached the Sermon, ‘Your new vicar’ he said, ‘is a radical in the truest sense of that word, he will get to the roots of the matter and begin rebuilding from there’.

How true.

As I walked from the Church to the school for the bun fight I fell into conversation with an elderly clergyman who had been Vicar of a Church I had briefly attended before I moved to Stoke on Trent. That’s a bloody awful service he said, I sometimes think when they read out all that rubbish, ‘shove a brush up my arse and I’ll sweep the Sanctuary as well!

Encouraging!

But after our friends had left Janet and I had tucked the children into bed and settled back with a glass of wine I mentioned the comment to Janet. We both knew that this move was a mistake. How soon could we move without it ruining my career prospects? I worked it out. It was 1974 if we said four years was a respectable length of time to stay that would be 1978, so if I started looking for a job in say late 1977 then we could move and Crockfords would give the dates as 1974 – 1978 and that would look OK, in fact it would appear to be four years even if it was only say three and a half.

The next morning I took a communion service accompanied by Teddy Roberts, Teddy had no official role in the Church, he held no office, but he was the Master of Ceremonies, he had wheeled my two predecessors around the sanctuary defining their roles and actions according to a C19 Anglo-Catholic Vade Mecum.

After the service as I was about to enter the Vestry I was offered the service book open at what was known as the last Gospel, I read it and then entered the vestry and into the first of the many rows, both public and private, that Teddy and I were to have in the, hopefully few, years ahead.

Later that day I met with Teddy and the Architect, it still hadn’t dawned on me that much of what I was and would continue to experience in the parish was a direct result of the very strong links that Teddy and the folk he was associated with had as a result of their membership of the Freemasons.

After the Architect had undertaken his inspection I was informed that, ‘It’s Dry Rot Vicar, in the Sanctuary roof and the Organ’ and so the plan for the first two years of the four I had allowed myself was set.

Get rid of the old fashioned Anglo-Catholicism, replace it with a Modern Liberal Catholic practice and Liturgy.

Root out the dry rot including the Organ and replace the rotten wood with new wood.

And if possible renew the church community, without replacing the old congregation, with some new, younger families.

In other words: ‘Get to the roots of the matter and begin rebuilding from there’, all in four years.

Little Hulton was a large Salford Council overspill estate with a population of 60,000 people, spread across two other Church of England parishes, St Paul’s, Walkden and St Paul’s, Peel. Even without the challenge of deep rooted traditions reaching back to a predecessor who had been Vicar for thirty four years until perhaps five years before I was appointed, this was a big job for a young man not yet thirty years of age. But as I reasoned Jesus started when he was thirty, worked for only three years and look at what he achieved.

So we set to in more ways than one and there were some good moments and good experiences and the one liberating and essentially life-saving aspect of my time was that Elizabeth, now Dame Elizabeth Hoodless of CSV, when I said that I wouldn’t pursue my application for the job she had offered me, asked if I might be interested in working for CSV for twelve hours a week in a development and support role in the North West.

I said yes to that offer.

So when the going got tough, which it frequently did, I could jump in my car and drive away from the parish to meet volunteers or other CSV staff and have sensible conversations over a glass of beer.

It also meant that I could begin to pay down some of the accumulated debts of the first ten years in ministry and buy a reliable car.

From my induction through to my resigning of the living I battled with the contradictions of being a Vicar. You are person of both importance, and, no importance. You are a figure of respect as well as a figure of fun. You are welcome and not welcome.

From building up a successful youth club with visits to youth camps on the Fylde Coast to chasing youngsters away as they tried to climb up the lightening strap to raid the Kestrels nesting in the church tower, the job was a constant contradiction.

There were successes, the Worsley Churches Care Scheme, funded by the Manpower Services Commission was an Ecumenical Job Creation scheme and was briefly the largest employer in Little Hulton.

The fundraising campaign was hugely successful and the Church was restored and redecorated and rededicated and the congregation rose from around forty communicants on an average Sunday to around a hundred. The only complaint from the Treasurer was when the Diocesan Quota was increased as a consequence.

There were Baptisms and Weddings and Funerals, times of celebration and Joy along times for weeping and sadness.

One Maundy Thursday the young people held a disco for people with disabilities, under the auspices of phab – the organisation for physical handicapped and able bodied young people.

The timing of the event on Maundy Thursday had been hotly contested by the PCC and their approval had only been given because of my casting vote as Chairman.

I had preached at the Maundy Thursday Service on Jesus washing the disciples feet and the gone over to the disco being held in the Church School Hall.

Harry Dearden, a member of the PCC came across and was watching proceedings from the doorway. I went across and asked what he thought. ‘Vicar’ he replied, ‘this is a proper foot washing is this’.

I found his comments inspirational.

Then during the long, hot summer of 1976 the Vicarage developed an extremely deep crack and the front of the house ripped away from the rear, subsidence had caused the concrete raft on which the house was built to snap and the house all built collapsed, to the point where it was dangerous and had to be demolished and the front rebuilt on new foundations, meanwhile with three young children aged five and under, it was assumed that we would continue to live in the back.

It was then, earlier than planned, that I applied for a job in Newcastle.

The news of my appointment coincided with an article in the Daily Mirror in which I was hailed as: ‘Britain’s First Punk Vicar’.

What had happened was that during a confirmation class which preceded the Youth Club, I played the young people a couple of tracks from a new Album by the Sex Pistols.

It made for a different confirmation class but we had a good discussion and that, I thought, was that.

The next week when I met the group they had sneaked into the class room in the school and written on the Board, ‘Mr Smith is a Punk Vicar’. I thought that was great and mentioned it in the Parish magazine along with a piece announcing that I was moving to Newcastle as Bishop’s Adviser in Social Responsibility.

Somehow this came to the attention of the Daily Mirror who sent a photographer, that day was a day off and I was wearing black jeans, a T Shirt with a rip in it and a leather jacket, the camera flashed in my face, the report asked some inane questions and the next day I was Britain’s first punk vicar.

Soon the Daily Mirror was followed by most daily newspapers.

The Manchester Evening News carried ‘Punk Vicar gets Top Job’, echoed by the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, ‘Pin Back your lug holes Tyneside, here comes the Revd. Punk’.

I got a spot on radio Four, BBC Look North and was a footnote in the Reith Lectures.

Later that week I went to get fish and chips for supper, as the young shop assistant wrapped my fish and chips I once again saw the headline and my picture.

Today’s news, tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapping.

That should be my epitaph.

Some years later I was invited back to preach at a centenary service at St John’s Church in Little Hulton.

I was greeted affectionately by a former parishioner who told me that ‘I was the best Vicar they’d ever had’ I pointed out that as my immediate successor had died in office and his successor had run off with the organists wife that all I’d ever had to do was leave in good health with the woman that I had arrived with.