(1890 LESLIE STANNARD HUNTER - 1983) (1939 BISHOP OF SHEFFIELD - 1962) JAMES DERICK PREECE Submitted for the Degree of Master of Philosophy Department of History University of Sheffield August, 1986 CONTENTS ii INTRODUCTION V BOOK ONE 1 THE FORMATION OF A BISHOP CHAPTER ONE JOHN HUNTER i. Temperament 2 ii. The Liberal 4 iii. The Churchman 8 iv. The Preacher 13 v. Social Concern 17 19 vi. The Church of England 22 CHAPTER TWO GLASGOW AND OXFORD i. Scottish heritage 22 ii. New College, Oxford. 33 CHAPTER THREE VOCATION AND INSPIRATION 42 i. The Student Christian Movement and Ordination 42 ii. H. R. L. Sheppard 54 iii. Charles Gore 57 iv. Friedrich von Hugel 61 V. William Temple 63 vi. O. C. Quick 72 CHAPTER FOUR BISHOP IN THE MAKING 76 i. Canon of St. Benedict Biscop 77 ii. Vicar of Barking 85 iii. Archdeacon of Northumberland 93 iii BOOK TWO BISHOP IN ACTION 110 CHAPTER FIVE A DIOCESE FROM WAR TO WAR 110 i. The Diocese of Sheffield 1914 - 1939 119 ii. The Diocese of Sheffield 1939 - 1962 CHAPTER SIX A BISHOP'S CREATIONS 151 i. Church in Action 152 ii. Sheffield Industrial Mission 157 Whirlow Grange Conference House 168 iv. Hollowford Training Centre 174 179 V. St. Mary's Church and Community Centre CHAPTER SEVEN A MEMORIAL TO GREATNESS 191 William Temple College CHAPTER EIGHT A BISHOP AS ADMINISTRATOR, PREACHER, TEACHER i. Administrator 203 ii. Preacher 210 iii. Teacher 219 CHAPTER NINE A BISHOP AND HIS CATHEDRAL 234 i. The Cathedral Benefice 234 ii. The Cathedral Enlargement 245 CHAPTER TEN THE NATIONAL BISHOP 262 iv CHAPTER ELEVEN A BISHOP IN EUROPE 276 i. Scandinavia 276 ii. Germany 289 iii. France 300 CHAPTER TWELVE LESLIE STANNARD HUNTER 307 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Leslie Stannard Hunter after iv 168 Whirlow Grange : House and Chapel 168 Chapel : exterior interior 171 William Temple College : College House and Study-bedrooms 195 Common Room 195 Sheffield Cathedral : The Nicholson plan 252 The Pace plan 252 St. George's Chapel 255 The Lantern 259 APPENDICES 1. The Evidential Value of Mystical Experience 339 2. A Service for Choirboys 349 3. The Church Commissioners' Scheme for Sheffield Cathedral 355 NOTES 363 BIBLIOGRAPHY 496 INDEX 504 L4 H. &&wo oývJ. hL'LH (1890 LESLIE STANNARD HUNTER - 1983) (1939 BISHOP OF SHEFFIELD - 1962) JAMES DERICK PREECE Vo . Submitted for the Degree of Master of Philosophy Department of History University of Sheffield August, 1986 V INTRODUCTION The incentive to explore in detail Bishop Hunter's long ministry to the diocese of Sheffield came after the weight of my own work had been eased by retirement. My intention has been two-fold : first, to pursue the research as a means of expressing my thanks to the bishop from whom I received the orders of deacon and priest; secondly, to examine the evidence for Hunter's complex personality, to attempt an evaluation of his worth and in so doing, to avoid the temptation to disregard those aspects of his words and actions for which, by some, he was severely criticised. On one occasion Hunter said to me "Do not apologise for me"; he accepted without flinching responsibility for his decisions. Mary Walton's The History of the Diocese of Sheffield, 1914- 1979 contains a not uncritical though judicious survey of Hunter's policy as bishop and its results within the diocese. I have been indebted to it though I do not always agree with her conclusions. It is an acknowledgement of her achievement to say that she has brought into focus the episcopates of the first four bishops of Sheffield from which there emerges, fortuitously maybe, the extent to which Hunter is a sounding-board by which to distinguish the truth, ring of of practical wisdom and of achievement in the direction taken by the Church in South Yorkshire from 1914 to 1979. vi Gordon Hewitt's Strategist for the Spirit has its own valuable purpose. It is a celebratory volume written by those who were recruited for work in the diocese by Hunter, and who themselves had fallen under "the snare of the Hunter". They rightly believed that he was a bishop who, by living to a great age, could undeservedly be forgotten. Their persoacl relationships with Hunter were on a level of intimacy enjoyed by few others. I am to grateful the Dean of St. Paul's - Hunter's literary executor - for permission to use the papers and memoranda in his care, and to Canon Hewitt for his personal kindness in delivering them to me and in answering, from time to time, my queries about them. My method of work has been to let Hunter, as far as possible, speak for himself. At no time was my personal relationship with him on the more intimate level exemplified in Strategist for the Spirit : on no occasion was I addressed by my Christian name. My own knowledge came largely from those contacts which a priest variously has with his bishop, more often than not initiated by the latter. They were significant in many ways and were, for me, a valuable opportunity of appreciating his motivation and methods and those traits and gestures, his silences and his asides, which could only come from personal experience. My own debt to him is considerable. To be chosen by Hunter for an unusual or necessary its task was own reward even though one knew that there was an it. element of expediency about If Hunter of Sheffield and Dibelius Berlin he of would not, as said, have chosen one another, vii it is unlikely that he would have chosen Preece as his curate. Our likenesses were restricted to an acceptance of the place of reason in doctrine and ecclesiology and an emphasis on the importance of liturgy and its musical interpretation. And we both had an ingrained shyness. It has been necessary in this thesis to stress the nature of Hunter's Christian beliefs which made him the person he was and at the same time to indicate the aspects of and movements within theology which lay behind the direction his work was taking and which were influential in the life of the Church of England during the twentieth century. Much of this has been confined to chapter notes. In undertaking this self-imposed task I have been greatly helped in my search for relevant information by the many to whom I wrote and to others who gave of their time to talk with me. Their names are recorded in the notes. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Miss Joyce Peck for her long and illuminating telephone conversation and for several letters which were greatly encouraging; to Mr. G. H. Rayner to whom I owe entirely my information about Sheffield Cathedral; and to the Reverend Dr. N. M. Harrison who in his busy life as Diocesan Director of Education has found time to type this thesis. v viii My debt to Dr. Clyde Binfield is immense. He has imbued me with a zest for the discovery of material and the means of extracting it to the extent that over the months my first and last waking thoughts were so directed. 1 BOOK ONE. CHAPTER ONE JOHN HUNTER "A step I could not have taken.,... without the blessing and approval of my father. " Leslie Stannard Hunter wrote these words as he recalled his decision, the most far reaching of his life, to be received into the Church of England. (1) This is a compelling ream for prefacing a study of Hunter's preparation for, and exercise of, his episcopal ministry with an analysis of John Hunter's character and beliefs which had a deep and beneficial influence upon his son's development and outlook. Material for this is amply provided by Leslie Hunter's biography of his father. (2) John Hunter became one of the most esteemed ministers within the Congregational Unions of Britain. His independent stance underpinned by his intellectual power, together with his preaching, marked him out as a leader with his own interpretation of the distinctive principle of Congregationalism, that of "the scriptural right of every separate church to maintairi perfect independence in the government and administration of its own particular affairs. " ( 3) 2 i. Dr. Hunter was a Scot, his father William a rope maker and an ardent member of the Kirk. His mother, Jean Boyle, was an Episcopalian. Deprived by the poverty of his parents of secondary and further education, John was a great and wide reader. A sense of calling to the Christian ministry led to his being accepted for training in 1866 at the Nottingham Congregational Institute. His preparation for ordination was completed at Spring Hill College, Birmingham, later to become Mansfield College, Oxford, where he studied from 1868 to 1871. From early childhood the young John had taken "to haunting ) churches and religious meetings of all kinds. " (4+ This did not spring, his own son wrote, from an undue precociousness but from a sense of the sacred. A parallel (mutatis mutandis) can be found in the childhood of Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianney, the Cure d'Ars. (5) John was in no way gregarious. "He played no loved... games; he was solitary even in the home where he was If asked about his boyhood in after years the word 'lonely' always came to his lips. " (6)A fellow student at Nottingham wrote of him, "I. can recall his coming up to chapel, diffident and shy in (7) manner, but what eloquence. " The recognition of this - and the pain of it- led him to say to Dr. D. W. Simon, Principal of Spring Hill, "For your kindly interest in me I cherish a deep and lasting gratitude.