The Rt Revd David Wilbourne writes:
IN THE 1960s, Hull benefited greatly from clergy like Christopher Hawthorn, who simply rolled their sleeves up and engaged with all; Christopher even scored a century for the local cricket team.
When St Nicholas’s, West Hull, had to be demolished because of subsidence, the diocese was all for carving up the parish. Christopher, newly vicar, stood his ground, raising the money for a new church by launching a catering company staffed by church ladies who did cut-price wedding receptions. It was hardly French cuisine, just ham salads and pickled onions. The waitresses were packed into Christopher’s car, food to boot, the suspension shot: a homely, even eucharistic, hospitality.
It wasn’t just fund-raising that he undertook. Christopher alternated sleepless nights as a new father of twins with sleepless nights as a Samaritan, and also paid for beds for tramps at the Salvation Army Hostel.
Christopher quietly exercised his right as a registrar in the Church to marry those whose previous marriages had sadly failed. He had really set his face against church practice or prejudice — in East Hull, at the time, divorcees were not able to receive communion. There was also shame attached to those who conceived before wedlock, but not for Christopher, who welcomed all who sought God’s blessing: no censure, no judgement.
Christopher was a vicarage child: his father, John Christopher, was Vicar of Chatteris, in the fens, for 35 years. He knew the C of E inside out and loved it. This relaxed him and gave him the nerve to take risks. A strong advocate for the ministry of women, Christopher was inclusive before the word was invented, and this shaped his incumbencies in Coatham and at St Martin’s, Scarborough.
Christopher became a caring Rural Dean of Scarborough. He was a very popular Rotary Club president, and was chaplain to the summer shows. He would drop in and out of the Futurist Theatre, in Scarborough, caring for every cast, the highest and the lowest. How tickled Ken Dodd was to have a quiet talk with Christopher.
He was also chair of the House of Clergy in the diocesan synod, bustling around with a bulging briefcase, always a smile. It was no surprise when Archbishop John Habgood made him Archdeacon of Cleveland in 1991. A former Bishop of Whitby, Gordon Bates, wrote: “Chris was the perfect archdeacon, much respected, always welcomed wherever; law-abiding but never rigid; traditional but open to new ideas; deeply spiritual but with a great sense of humour; serious in thought but with a lightness of touch. He made my job so much easier than it might have been, and much more fun than many people realised.”
A former Archbishop of York, David Hope, said: “Chris told it as it was.” If he felt you were wrong, he would say so, “but always with that pastoral and priestly heart which pervaded the whole of his ministry”.
During his hospitable retirement, Christopher built an impressive record of helping out with services: 40 per cent are led by retired clergy, and Christopher took 39 per cent. He revived his boyhood interest for philately, specialising in stamps of the Levant, overprinted for use in the Ottoman Empire. He produced learned tracts for the GB Overprints Society.
Late one night, at the vicarage in Hull, Margaret, Christopher’s wife, was nursing the twins when Christopher answered the doorbell. “Tell them to go away,” she yelled, assuming it was yet another tramp come to pester. It wasn’t: it was Archbishop Donald Coggan who had popped in on his way home “to see you all, enjoying a precious family moment at hearth and home”.
Christopher was also a wonderful son, caring for his parents in their old age. Christopher’s father, JC, complained that their home in Great Ayton was too small for an archdeacon, with no dining room; little did he realise that it had been converted into his bedroom. On sunny days, they would put JC out in the bath chair in the garden, usually remembering to bring him in at dusk.
There were annual family holidays enjoyed beneath Wetherlam, in the Lake District; he helped on the sheep farm, and took the funeral of the chief shepherd, who had contracted cancer from carcinogenic sheep-dip.
The Ven. Christopher John Hawthorn died on 22 February, aged 88.
