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I'm Mandy Barry, it's the 18th of May 2023, and I have the privilege to be with Reverend Lisa Wright in Streatham today. I'm looking forward very much to hearing what Reverend Wright has to tell us. So, as we discussed, if it's all right with you, I'd like to start right back at the beginning of your life. Could you tell me where you were born, please?

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I was born on the 8th of September 1933 in a clergy household. My father was at that time, the vicar, it was his first posting, in Wensbury, Staffordshire. And my mother was a very talented woman, although she was a vicar's wife, and therefore didn't count herself of any, but she was, she was a power in the land. She was very, very clever with

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her hands and her mind. She was very musical. She was great fun. She was extremely attractive. She had no money, and so she made everything that needed to be made in the household, not just clothes and things, but covers and bedclothes and all sorts of things. A fantastic woman. She worked herself solidly. She was a wonderful thing. She was great fun. And my father was

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a very careful scholar. Can I just ask you a little bit more about your mother? Did your mum have formal education training? Oh yes, oh yes. My mother, and both my parents, my mother was born to a musician, a music teacher, and her husband was a photographer and also played cello extremely well. So there was a lot of music going on and dance and all the rest of it when she was

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little. This is sort of 1905, 1910, you know, so way back then. And they lived in Whitstable, which my mother said was a dump, but I always thought it was lovely. She said it was a dump. And my father was also born there. They were born in the same road, actually, in 1901. And his father, his ancestors, about 150 years ago, before that, had lived in Harble Down and been human farmers,

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which is just outside Canterbury. And in 1780 or something, they were tipped off their land and had to go. And so I said to him, what did you do? And he said, we emigrated. And I said, where to? And he said, we went to Whitstable, six miles north. And we turned into oyster fishermen. And at that time, they were just beginning to find, you know, it was beginning to be a thing. So he, his family,

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were the people who actually started the Royal Oyster Fishery Kings. And they lived there for the rest of their life, really. I mean, the house is still there, etc, etc. And they were great. So they were very honest. And they were staunch. His family was staunch Congregationalists. And he thought that was very boring. But he is, he had one brother younger than him. But his, his grandfather,

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his, his mother's grandfather was the church warden of the church in Whitstable. And he used to take little Jackie to church at 6.30 on a Sunday evening. And he thought that was much nicer. And so he decided he would like to be clergyman. But that he certainly wasn't going to have anything to do with the Congregationalists. And then he won a scholarship to Christ Hospital

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when he was about 10. So he spent his school days there, whereas she just sort of stayed in Whitstable. They knew each other, but not well at that time. Everybody knew everybody in Whitstable at that time. And, and, and then from, from Christ Hospital, he got another scholarship to Lincoln College, Oxford. So he went there and didn't do, and at that, then by that time, he decided he

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wanted to be a clergyman, but he was too young. So he had to be a schoolteacher until he was old enough for the required age for it. And, and, but he did, I don't know, politics, something, PP, whatever it's called. Anyway, yeah. But he, and history was his real sort of thing. But then he, he became very interested in, he was a very careful, cautious scholar, really, if he taught

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you. But he was fun. It was fun, but it was beautifully organised and all the rest of it. I had quite a lot to do with him in my education as we went on. And I was the only child. So I was the parish child. And I was spoilt, rotten, I think, completely rotten. But my mother had enough sense to sort of keep this in check. So your mother's work, apart from bringing you up, was very much

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involved with the parish? Oh, very much with being, and at that time, of course, she was very young, because wife, it was their first parish and that, but they, they both of them loved the black country. They really liked being in the black country. He was ordained in the Litchfield Diocese and went off up to the potteries. And I said, that must have been tough. And she said it was lovely.

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Everybody was really rough and friendly and they enjoyed themselves very much. And so was this, this was? This was, this was 1933 to 1939. So this was your early formative years? That was my early sort of years. I was around in Wensbury with a good black country accent, apparently, which took quite a long time to change. And, and then he wanted to come closer to London and his family.

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And so he got a job just before the war started in a real shanty town called Pitsy on the marshes then, which at that time was not subsumed by Basildon and thing, but it was still a little shanty, marshy, tacky village really. And it had the most beautiful, beautiful church up on a little bluff because it was completely flat, but there was a little bluff and there was

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St. Michael's Church on the top, which looked out across the marshes and about a mile away was the only large house really, apart from the doctors, in the village, which was a, the remnants of a, of a farm. So it was 18th century farmhouse at the front of it. And then somebody built on a real Victorian monstrosity at the back. And there was a huge garden. And it was,

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for me, it was bliss, complete and utter bliss with sort of an orchard one side and tacky trees the other. And, and I rocketed around here. That was September 19, no, June 39. And so no sooner had we got there and the war started. Just thinking about your father for a moment, was he the, the first member of his generation

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of the family to go to university? Oh yes, he was. Yes, definitely he was because they'd all been fishermen really. I mean, they were very competent, capable men. They got this thing up and running and they made a lot of money out of oysters and so on and so forth. But yes, he was. And, and it was his grandfather,

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I think, that made him think he didn't want to have anything to do with the congregation. So he headed for this. And so he went to Lincoln College, Oxford. And then, as soon as he was, and then taught in Wensbury, which is why he was a schoolmaster in Wensbury, until he was old enough to enter ordination. I think he had to be 28 or something like that.

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I mean, he wasn't old enough to start. So, and then he trained at the Theological College in Wells, but, but was ordained and went back to the Litchfield Diocese, which is where he ended up in some 50 years later. But then he came down to Pitsie. And Pitsie, for me, was idyllic, absolutely idyllic, but not for anybody else. It was right on the marshes, the Essex marshes, and all the

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German reconnaissance planes came across the marshes to see how far they could get and to do things like that. So we were constantly having battles in the sky and things like that, which didn't bother me, but bothered my parents. And so I got evacuated. And I got evacuated to another lovely place called Hales Owen in Worcestershire, which was, and we were just

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outside Hales Owen, coming down an enormous hill called Mucklows Hill, but with farms either side. So we went down in the busy black country, because it was lovely. I thought it was lovely. And I went to school in Hales Owen, and I was with a lovely couple who'd known me when I was a very little girl,

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and I went to school down there. And I was very happy at the Hales Owen grammar school. It was a very small adjunct to the grammar school. It was almost kindergarten, but not quite. So I was very happy there, and they were very nice to me. And again, I was able to trot around my homes and farms and things like that without being stopped. I mean, really,

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I had it made, because they were just nice, and there was a farm up the road, and I used to go and play with my friends earliest every Saturday. And I read. I read constantly. I could read. I think they said I had taught myself to read, really, because nobody seemed to have. So when I was about three, they sent me to school, because I was such a nuisance, and constantly

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wanting things to learn. But I went to the local little school over the road in Wensbury. And then I went to this nice place, the Hales Owen grammar school, where you had a uniform and a hat, which was ironed. You know, I was the bee's knees, absolutely. How long were you evacuated?

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When I was evacuated, I would have been... Well, in 1940, I would have been six and a half, and I was evacuated there until about the end of 1941. A long time.

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But it was a night. But my mother could come, and unlike if we'd been still in Whitstable, you wouldn't have been able to have gone there. You would have had to have had a 24-hour pass or something to visit your relations and that, because it was on the seafront. Anyway, we didn't. But it wasn't a terribly good place to be evacuated,

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because it wasn't that far from Coventry. And about that time, and they were heading for Coventry and for all the black country factories and all the rest of it. So every time my mother came to see me, which she did every two or three months when she could, she spent the night in the basement cellar, drinking coffee and beer and things,

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and with me on a little bed beside, while Coventry just got battered to bits. Right. 20 miles away. But again, it didn't bother me. Can I just ask you another couple of questions about your family?

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Were they engaged in politics at all? What were their political views? Well, they didn't talk about it. My father quite definitely didn't talk about it in the parish and things like that, because he just didn't talk about it. And he had to cope with everybody, and he did and he would and so on and so forth.

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My mother, I think, was just quietly conservative throughout. But again, he always chose, my father, as you'll hear, working class parishes. That's where he wanted to be. And they were mostly Labour, I suppose. In fact, I know in some places, they definitely were tremendously. And I think he was too. He was a good socialist guy.

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What newspapers did you have in the house? What? What newspapers would he have had? Oh, he had the Times, and my mother had the Daily Mail and the Women's Own. And no nonsense,

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thank you. And all the Vogue pattern books, whenever they came out. I mean, she had an order for them, so the Vogue pattern books. My clothes were bits of pieces that other people didn't want, because it was rationing time. But she would cut them up and turn them into nice things for me. I was this size. I mean, I was a chubby, solid person throughout,

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but she behaved as if I was a princess, whatever it is. So I always got nice stuff. So religion was part of your life from the moment you were born? Yes. And in those years when you were growing up,

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can you remember what your spiritual beliefs were then? Well, they were very simple. We had a lot of nice Christian picture books and things like that. So it was pretty biblical in a way. And I had a nice Bible picture story book, so I knew all that. But I was completely omnivorous in my reading. I was the only child, and no others came to my

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parents' sadness. But anyway, so I got all the attention. And if there was a book there, I read it, whether I was supposed to read it or not. And if I didn't like it, I left it. I remember there being a big row once, because my mother had all this in heaven too, on her bedside table. And I started to read it. And she said, No, thank you. I wasn't going to read it. I was six.

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And I was absolutely livid and said, Well, but it's got a lot of children in it. And she said, I don't care. It gets nastier as it goes on. Of course, that made me really want to read it. But I did read everything. So that was a great comfort to the people who had me when I was evacuated, because they were an elderly couple. They were lovely. But they,

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you know, if I hadn't been such a reader, life would have been much more difficult, I think. So you said you started school at three, and then you were evacuated about age six. Yeah. And so you went to school.

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And I went to school down in Hales-Owen, the grammar school, all the time I was there. It was really a sort of preparatory school, a little preparatory school. And I can't remember that there were many children there. There can't have been more than about 40 children in the whole school. I think it was on the edge of a big Hales-Owen grammar school, but it was a sort of

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adjunct to it. And I liked that. I mean, I liked everything really. But I was a wonderful show-off. When people would come and I would say, would you like me to recite to you? And of course they'd say yes, and I would. And then my mother said, that's lovely, darling. I would have taken it off. And poetry I liked and I enjoyed it. I wrote it, aged about six or

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seven or eight. I don't remember doing it much later on. Anyway, I had a very nice time while I was evacuated, but I, you know, I missed them all. And it was just wonderful to go back. So would you have done your secondary education when you were back where your parents were living? So then we went back and they were still in Pitsy. I mean, I was there about between,

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I can't work it out, not two years, definitely. I mean, a year, 18 months perhaps at the most. And then what to do with me, because there was no school that my father considered reasonable. So this was in the 1941, I suppose. The blitz had faded, but we were still getting a lot of other things. But they sent me, so they sent me to the Bernadine convent in Westcliff-on-Sea,

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which was nine miles away. And they took me the first couple of times. And from then on, I walked to Pitsy station, got a little train in the morning, which chuffed its way along to Westcliff-on-Sea, and was there. And I, it was lovely. I loved it. And then back again in the, it was once, the only time, the only time I can remember being scared of bombs or things. I mean,

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yeah, it was just a nuisance, but it didn't bother me. But was, I was in the train in an empty carriage, and I was waiting for my friends who would get in at Benfleet, which was the next station. And we stopped between Pitsy and Benfleet. And planes flew over, and we waited and waited. And I thought we were going to be late, and I'd be in trouble, and all the rest of

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it. And finally the train, is this okay? Yes, yes, yes. Finally the train started off again. And so I hung out of the window, as I always did, waiting for them to say, I'm here, look, I'm on my way. And they were all crawling out from underneath cases and things like that. And they'd been dive-bombed by German planes. Nobody had been

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hurt, but they'd all had to hide, and sort of huge excitement. But mercifully nobody had been hurt. I mean, it had been straffed, we were making things like that. And so they all got into my carriage and said, we've been bombed. And they'd all had to hide underneath everything they could think of. And we got on, and the train went on. Extraordinary, isn't it really?

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And another couple of things. And when we got to Westcliffe, and you had to run up quite a steep street to the convent. And we ran like rabbits, because we thought we should be told off for being so late. And we said, we're sorry we're late, we're sorry we're late. But the train was dive-bombed, and our station was dive-bombed. And the nun who was in the

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corridor said, well, in that case, you better just go take your coats and go straight to your classrooms, and I'll mark you in on the register. Nothing else was said at all. And so we went, nobody told us off. Oh, thank goodness. It was just amazing. Then you came back again.

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Wow. Did you have the whole of your secondary education at the convent? No, well, not at that convent, because we were there for until another year. And then my father wanted to get further in to London, but he always liked my poor mother, who was a real classic woman, really, who played the piano beautifully in his own house.

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And she always, she said, well, you marry the circus, you have to go around with it, don't you? She said that she did. And he moved, you'll never guess where, to Dagenham in 1942. And that, well, you see, when I think of it, I did have an extraordinarily valuable childhood, really. Because we went there, and that, instead of that wonderful

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house and garden, which was sort of rambly in here, this was a 1930s solid four square vicarage with a lawn there and a lawn there, and then the Dagenham estate, that country estate, roads and roads and roads and roads for miles, for people who'd been rehoused from Stepney, just before the wars. And they were all cockney to a T. But the real glory of this,

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do tell me if I'm diagno... No, no, you tell me. The glory of it, of course, my father had a curate when he got there, but he was called up within minutes, so, not a curate, you know. All the families still had their men, because their men were all working at Dagenham and the forward works, not making tanks and ambulances and everything like that. But of

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course, we were constantly bombed, because it was the forward works. So we never got bombed out, but we had our windows and so did the streets, constantly, you know, and of course things were. And then, after that, there was the doodlebugs. I was very cross, because it was the night I was confirmed. Oh, tell me about that. Well, really, nothing. I mean, when I was confirmed and it was

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great. And the siren went as we were coming back from the thing like that. So I spent, you know, we used to go into the boiler house at church. We didn't have a room, I'm sure, so I went there. And after a couple of days, they gave up doing the all clear and the siren. And they had the siren, we got the all clear about three weeks later, because the doodlebugs

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just came over, you didn't know whether they were coming or not. I had been sent to another convent school, the Ursuline in Ilford. And so that was a bus ride, but I mean, not as far as coming to go to Westcliffe. And they were wonderful. I mean, I had a lovely time. I loved my school days. I think if I'd been a scientific child, I should have had a hard

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time of it, because I don't think they were very good on the science and things like that. But as far as what I needed, it was great. Did the Ursuline take you through to school leaving? Yes, right through to right through to school leavers. And you said it gave you what you needed?

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Absolutely, English. And also, as I realise now, but I didn't realise then, all the non-teaching, all the non-nones were retired women. So we got taught a 1920s syllabus, really, which was, as far as I was concerned, wonderful, longer English poems and and Shakespeare every term. And for me, and there was a good art teacher. And maths,

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I was hopeless at until one little woman, wonderful little nun with a moustache, which always fascinated us, Mother Mary Angela. And she was, for some unknown reason, all the rest were Irish. But she was very classy, very classy. And she had a copy of the Times always tucked into her sleeve. And, and she actually pulled me together for maths, because I wasn't

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really good at it at all. My mother was hopeless. But, but she just gathered us up in the upper fourth. And she divided us within minutes, she divided us into A's and B's. And I was a B. And this was a time when I was really not coping with sort of algebraic things at all, you know, just what? I couldn't do it. So she divided us into A's and B's,

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and all the A's sat at the back, and all the B's, which is me, and several others sat at the front. And she would explain whatever it was we were going to do. Right. And it didn't make any sense to us in the front at all, we just sat there. And she would then set sums for the back ones to do. Then she would do it all over again, for us. Right. And then she would set the homework,

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five sums or whatever it was, and the five, and the back people would do them. And the next morning, you came back and you said got what the answers were. And the back ones had always got them all right. And the front ones hadn't got them right at all, didn't know what it was. And then she would, you would stand beside her, as if you were a junior child, you know, and she would mark,

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go through everything that you've done. And my turning point was one day, when having got them all wrong, she gave me B minus. And I said, but I've got them wrong. And she said, no, no, you, you got nearly got this one right, right, right. It was, it was here you went wrong. And, and no, no, you, you, you got,

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you got them all right down to halfway, she said. And she gave me B minus. And I realised it was a, it was a, one of these wonderful moments, when it wasn't that I didn't understand it, it was that I was careless. I'd gone all right down to there. And then she, she just put her finger on it. And she'd say, there's the culprit.

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And I had to sit there until I'd worked out what the culprit was. So, and from then on, I was, I was away, completely away. I've got distinctions in my mind. But that was it, thank you. I wasn't going to go on to anything else after that. But I, I knew what I was doing. So what age did you leave school?

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Why did I? What age did you leave school? Did I leave school? I left school when I was very nearly 17. Because I'd started on a higher school certificate thing. I got my matric because

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you only had to have five subjects, it's sort of credits and things like that. So I'd done that. And, and I'd loved, I'd loved my school time and the drama that they did and plays I was in and so on. But by that time, by then the war finished. So you could go about and you could get around. Doodlebugs was lovely. Loved the doodlebugs. Because they closed schools. All the schools

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were closed. It was summer term. And these things just would come off. And they really did. Americans called them doodlebugs. And they would go, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, and they'd cut off. And if they cut off, close, hide, you, everybody in there in the streets, we played, you played in the street, they weren't going to play in my garden, thank you very much.

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So we all played in the street. But everybody's front door was open. And so if it was looking as if it was coming from that, you just drop the cricket bat or whatever, and you ran into somebody's house. And you waited until it had gone over. And if it came over really close, you got under the table. We never had a crack in our street. But we had, there were in other streets and so

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windows got broken and cracked and things. And after a while, people didn't bother to come around to mend them if they hadn't actually broken. You just stuck them up with whatever you could stick them up with. And then so then we'd go out again and go on playing in the street. So that was lovely. That was, that was very nice. That summer was a lovely summer for me.

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So by the time you were 17, we were now about around about 1950. 1950. Yes, 1948. In 1948, we moved again. And we moved closer into London. Do tell me if I'm sort of rabbiting. No, you're not. We moved to East Ham, which was a huge parish. There were two churches and it was, and it was, it was quite different. Well, everybody was in

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in Ford Works. But here, everybody worked down in the docks. It was East Ham and Peps and Gas Works and the Woolwich Docks. So this completely solidly socialist borough. They all worked. And the mayor was a bus conductor. So they were great people. And he, my father, loved it. That was 1947 or eight, I can't remember which. But anyway, as soon as

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he arrived, and he was the mayor's chaplain and for various, there were other churches as well. Ours was the main one in the centre. I went on going to the Ursuline. And they, but they had lost my train of thought. I was asking what happened when you were 17, and then you left, you left school. Well, I left. I left because as soon as the war was over,

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and you could get about again, and I was 13, 14. I had the drama bug. I got the drama bug. And my godmother, my mother's greatest friend, was a tremendous, she'd always wanted to be in drama herself. But and her great friend, one of her great, she was in a very arty sort of group, was, you remember Bernard Miles?

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Yes. That was their great friend. And so because of her and her daughter, her and Bernard Miles' daughter, I got to know them. But I if I got enough money, it's extraordinary, isn't it really to think? It was such a sort of wild thing. You, if you if I had enough money, I would go off at

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lunchtime, just before lunchtime, go up on the tube to Charing Cross, get out, go to any of the little theatres in Charing Cross Road. I'd go up to Shaftesbury Avenue, but I was a bit scared to go any further. So it was basically the sort of five or six places which were there. Book a stool outside for the gallery for sixpence, right? I got your ticket and you could sit on it. That meant

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you'd get into the gallery. Go back to the Lion's Corner House, to the salad bowl, where you got as much on your plate as you could possibly get for one and ninepence. And then I'd go back and sit on the stool until it was time for, I didn't quite often, I didn't even look to see what was on. I didn't care what was on. I didn't go to, musicals frightened me a bit and were too expensive

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anyway. So I didn't go to that. So I didn't care what it was. I didn't care whether it was Shaw or Henri or you name it. I would just go to it. And I'd go up into the thing and mostly the people who were sitting in the gallery were middle-aged women. So you'd go for something like one and sixpence. I talked to everybody I could see. Nobody ever tried to take advantage of me.

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Well I wasn't much, I mean I was pretty much solid and one wasn't dressed up because there wasn't anything to be dressed up in. And my parents hadn't the faintest idea where I was and of course there were no telephones or anything like that. But as long as I was back by seven o'clock, nobody cared. Right. And so you got into drama and is that what you then

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pursued after you went to school? And then I had this sort of drama thing and I used to, I was in all the school plays, I directed the school plays, I did this, I did that. And when the other thing that I did, which actually is pretty good when I think back of it, though I didn't think it was at the time, but I was writing poetry. Dreadful stuff.

00:41:29.720 - 00:42:08.700

Dreadful stuff. But I sent some to the BBC Children's Hour and they rang me up to say, and talked about it and said yes they would like to read them and would I like to read them. Right. So I said, yes. And I said, why did they do that? My mother said they wanted to see whether you got an East Ham accent or not. Of course I hadn't. I could do. You wouldn't

00:42:08.700 - 00:42:43.460

have known. But I didn't know. They want to hear what your voice is like, she said. So well that sort of changed me a bit. So for quite a, several months during one summer, I must have been before the exams I think because I wouldn't have been, God damn it. I went up to and read them on the radio and had a wonderful time. I did it four or five times

00:42:43.460 - 00:43:13.160

with two things. And there were other people, other children who got some things to read as well and he would do it. And I had a lovely time. Fantastic. It was absolutely wonderful. So that was it. I mean, thank you very much. I did not want to finish my higher school certificate. So what did you do? And so I applied to, because of darling Auntie Doris, my godmother,

00:43:14.020 - 00:43:43.420

um, I applied to Central School of Speech and Drama because I wasn't, there wasn't any money in the household at all. So I was going to have to earn my own living. I couldn't just go on the acting course. So I went on the teaching course to teach drama. And I was very happy about this. I actually was one of the few people on the teaching team that actually wanted to teach.

00:43:43.540 - 00:44:15.520

I mean, there was no question. You've got to earn your living, mate. Once you've left here, we can't look after you anymore. So I knew that that was on. So when I was just exactly 17, September 1940, 50, I went to Central School for Speech and Drama. And that was in, at that time, on the third floor of the Royal Albert Hall.

00:44:16.380 - 00:44:36.400

Oh, wonderful. So I went up there. I went to South Kensington Station and walked up Exhibition Road every day for three years and had the most wonderful time. And then you went into teaching. Yes, and trained as a teacher for teaching drama. And it so happened. I mean, really,

00:44:36.640 - 00:45:18.440

the way things fall in. But at that time, before that time, well, I suppose the war had a lot to do with it. Drama in schools was the school play. That was it. And elocution, yes. But about the time that I went to do the teaching course, which was mostly the school play and literature and poetry and so on, there were several people writing, one of whom actually

00:45:18.440 - 00:45:54.360

was a teacher in East Ham, of how to work with working class children rather than polite children who would read speeches and things. And then the thing was dance drama. You had a record player who put it on and it played the Gollywog's Cakewalk. And you would say, go on, act me out something to that. And they'd all get round into groups of five or six. And you

00:45:54.360 - 00:46:22.580

play it again and again and again until the teachers next door would say, excuse me, we're trying to do whatever it was here. And then they would act out their little thing of trying to put two mattresses on top of another or whatever it was. It was dance drama, really, and started in boys' school in East Ham, although I didn't know that at the time.

00:46:23.940 - 00:47:00.240

But then from then on, the whole thing of improvisation, improvising a play or a scene, just began to take off and it was all very new and there were no holds barred. Still did the school play, but nevertheless. So there you were, this young woman had amazing upbringing, qualified as a teacher in this new world of drama. When did you start feeling that you were being

00:47:00.240 - 00:47:35.640

called to the ministry? How did that part of your life come about? Oh, not for a long time, although I was always very comfortable. I mean, I never, I don't remember, well I didn't, I never thought, oh God, eight o'clock church. I mean, I just did. And if I was away from home, I still went, I would go. And so I was always very comfortable amongst clergy people and

00:47:36.640 - 00:48:09.780

prayerful people and if they said, it was Church of England, it wasn't, oh now we'll all go down on our knees and say our, but there was a good, firm backing to it all. So I always felt very comfortable. I was always very comfortable with clergy and their ilk and I knew this was the ordinary, ordinary thing that one did really. So an unquestioning faith? Yes, I mean, I didn't

00:48:09.780 - 00:48:41.180

think, you know, I was being particularly good about it or anything like that. And I was never, I do remember, I nearly always used to go to Eden Song in East Ham, down at the little old parish church, not the great big one, because I had two or three friends down there and they would go. And so I had churchy friends and my best friend was a good Roman Catholic,

00:48:42.160 - 00:49:14.160

Mary, and she was, and she was always talking about, and the Roman Catholic priest used to go to her house to have a glass of whiskey. It was that sort of thing, so you know. So at what point did you decide that this was going to be part of your life? Well I think really it sort of fell into my life because when I was,

00:49:14.660 - 00:49:49.860

when I'd finished at the Central School and was a teacher, my mother had found a friend who, an American friend, a very wealthy American friend, it just all falls into your lap, but who had always come over before the war and had lots of friends. She was a very musical woman and she had got musical friends in, who sang, you know, oratorios and all sorts of things all over

00:49:49.860 - 00:50:18.580

Europe and she'd go and visit them. And of course she couldn't come during the war. So when the war came back, stopped, she came back and she was very shocked that all her friends looked so grey and my mother said, well, you know, silly bloody woman, we haven't had any makeup for all this time, you know. But they met at a concert in the green room because they both had a friend called Mary

00:50:18.580 - 00:50:51.180

Jarrod who was an oratorio singer and they met in the green room, I think, and they fell in love with each other. Her name was Mrs Hamlyn Hunt and she had a lot of money and she'd come over and she was very shocked to see how tatty everybody was. So she handed out all her clothes to them which were classy, classy clothes. I mean, all we wanted was two or three yards of something.

00:50:55.380 - 00:51:26.080

And then she'd go back, then she'd go to Norman Hartnell's and order a new set of clothes for the winter in New York and then she'd bring them back the next year and hand them out again all over and people and she'd hand over and she was, she was very cross one day with my mother and she said, did you like that blouse I gave you? And my mother said,

00:51:26.160 - 00:51:55.800

it's absolutely wonderful, I've taken it in and things like that. She said, do you know, she said, I gave so and so and so and so a couple of pairs of cami knickers, she said, and she turned them into a shirt. Anyway, she said to me, now what are you going to do? We finished and I said, I'm going to,

00:51:56.600 - 00:52:28.600

I'm going to get a job teaching drama and it would probably have been in a grammar school or a private school at that time and there weren't very many and she said, how old are you? And I said, I'm nearly 20. She said, you can't teach yet? She said, you haven't had any fun, she said, and what she used to do and she loved, she got grandchildren

00:52:28.600 - 00:53:00.020

of her own and she loved them and what she liked during the winter, she wasn't, she was in her middle seventies and not terribly well but fine and she lived in New York and her family didn't like her living by herself in this super flat in New York with everything done for her and she said thank you. No, she wasn't going to have any old woman that wanted to play bridge or anything

00:53:00.020 - 00:53:36.520

and what she would have would be the daughters or granddaughters of her European friends and take them over from September to April when she would come back again and she didn't need them anymore. So, I went with her when I was just 20 over to there just for the eight months. I was just to go from September till April. Well, it was absolutely blissful but I mean I didn't have

00:53:36.520 - 00:54:08.180

anything to do. It was a civic cure. I'd get her breakfast, I'd do some ironing and the best thing about it was that she couldn't read very well and she loved being read to and I loved reading to people. So, we had this lovely time but she treated me like a grandchild and I was friends with her granddaughters. So, I had a wonderful time and about Christmas time I realised, you know,

00:54:08.180 - 00:54:39.560

this was absolutely wonderful but this was New York social register sort of country. This wasn't my sort of life. I needed to see some real proper ordinary Americans really and the only way to do that would be to teach but because I was British I couldn't teach in an American state school unless I had a subject which they couldn't provide from their own thing

00:54:39.560 - 00:55:16.760

so that went to private school. But she was, oh and she belonged to a church on 91st Street, East 91st Street called the Church of the Heavenly Resurrection and and it was, I mean it was upmarket beyond upmarket but I didn't know, I didn't care. Anyway and that's where she went so I would go there and she would,

00:55:16.760 - 00:55:47.340

I would quite often accompany her in the mid morning or I would go early. So, I got to know the clergy there and they looked after me and introduced me to friends so I had friends there. So, that was nice. So, I had my sort of church background which I felt very comfortable with and and knowledgeable about and I was in the church youth club and such and such.

00:55:48.520 - 00:56:16.240

But then I got this job because of her because she knew all about private schools and her own children had gone to them and there was Chapin was the girl's fashionable school and she said no, no darling you don't want to go there. That's just, that's not a good school. That's not a good school. That's just a finishing school. Nobody cared there.

00:56:16.600 - 00:56:49.620

You want a school where people want to learn something she said and so she put me on to, we went to, I headed off for a job at St Margaret's Episcopalian School in Connecticut, in Waterbury, Connecticut which was exactly what I wanted. It was very middle class, half boarding, half day but certainly they all wanted to get into Smith

00:56:49.620 - 00:57:25.740

or Brandt or wherever it was they could get into and these people in the middle of February, they'd had some, something or other, anyway their young, young English teacher had gone so they needed somebody like now and I was supposed to be there until April and Nano said and they'd offered me the job and I said well I don't know so I went home,

00:57:26.140 - 00:57:56.100

got on the train back to New York and when I got back Nano said oh Miss Fairbanks and I, we've been having, she sounds a really nice woman she said and she says you can have the job if you want it and I said well I can't have it until April because I'm supposed to be with you, I don't need you she said. If you have it you've got it, I got Betsy, I got Catherine, I got,

00:57:56.220 - 00:58:28.660

I got lots of people and I'm going to go in April so they want you and if you do a good job they'll have you for the summer term and then you can really think again. So within about 10 days I had upsticked and you know it never occurred to either her or my parents to telephone from, they, it was all done by, by letter

00:58:28.660 - 00:59:06.860

and I set off for St Margaret's, Wallowberry, to teach and said yeah I think we can cope with that she said. Now drama, oh you do drama, oh that's good, that's good. Well you'd have to teach a sophomore English which was every day the same class for a year you had them, all the, all the academic classes were in the morning and things like art, PE and things like

00:59:06.860 - 00:59:43.160

that were in the afternoon and the clubs. So I was busy all the time because I not only had to do English in the morning but debating and drama clubs in the afternoon and, and also she said, oh yeah she said and, and you're going to have to do economic geography with the eighth grade and I said I haven't done any geography since I was 15

00:59:43.640 - 01:00:11.580

and she said these girls haven't done any geography at all. So, so I did that and I was so happy, I mean it was lovely, they all looked after me, I was very nice, I didn't have any disciplinary problems and it was great and I had to work bloody hard because as you had a lesson you did the same class every day, you were

01:00:11.580 - 01:00:36.380

bending practically all your evenings, marking and sending back but it was lovely, the other teachers were great. So how, how did your life then converge with your, with your faith? You were doing all this amazing teaching. Well it was a church school, the Episcopalian school, so we went to church every Sunday and that was fine by me, I mean everybody just went,

01:00:36.780 - 01:01:10.960

I mean I think there were some teachers that didn't go but I was very happy to do so I also joined the church youth club and we did things, various things and had that but it was all very surface really. So what, what made the shift then? What made you decide that you were going to, you know? The shift, the shift was when I came back, shift was when I came back and I

01:01:11.940 - 01:01:39.420

didn't really, until I married Martin there wasn't, I mean I would, I was a church person, he, he has never been a church person, I mean he goes to church and he will do things but he, but I think the real shift was when we were first married. I came back and I got down teaching jobs and I'd always been, I mean I'd always been a,

01:01:39.980 - 01:02:13.420

an eight o'clocker, I was always an eight o'clocker and if there was, and if it was Lent, I would probably go to some of the Lent courses and things as a matter of course because some of the other 20s, 18s, 20s were doing that as well at that stage, it was much more if you were in, you were in, if you know what I mean, but after I got married I was teaching,

01:02:16.100 - 01:02:51.740

and whereas have I lost my, I've lost my... I was asking you when you made the shift from religion being something you'd always done and enjoyed as the role model to actually... And we went to church, I did, he came as well, to St Mary's Primrose Hill, and St Mary's Primrose Hill was very high and had a wonderful

01:02:54.840 - 01:03:31.860

gay clergyman, only we didn't know who he was at the time, but he was great, and that, and, and they had a youth club, and there there was a youth club which cared about church things, and between sort of 18 and 25, and we belonged to that and we made friends, which we've still got, through that, and it was that really that did it, and sort of, and also at St, I bel, I belonged to

01:03:31.860 - 01:04:00.000

the sort of the, well it wasn't called a church youth club, but that's what it was, at St Margaret's Waterbury, down at, in, in the church, in St John's Waterbury, and I got in, got with them then, and they would have weekends away, and if I could I would go, and they would talk about things, and I began to think about it then, I think, and think that this

01:04:00.000 - 01:04:29.300

was important, and ought to do things, it, it wasn't sort of heavy in any way, I didn't sort of go over, but it was there, and it was, it was, I was comfortable in it. Okay, did you then start to do some formal training? No, nobody said anything about formal training at that time, but there were definitely weekends away where somebody or a preacher would come and take us

01:04:29.300 - 01:05:14.340

for the weekend, or we'd go on a walking tour, and so on, and I would do that, but then very soon after we did that, we got married, but then the babies started to come. Aha. So, what year would, would, what year was this? Ninety, we were married in 1957. 57, right, so late 50s. So I came back in 54, 55, from, when did I go? I went in 50, so I came back in 53, and no, I went in 53, and came

01:05:14.340 - 01:05:46.760

back in 55, and then got married in 57, in which time I was teaching drama in various places, and, and then, when Martin, Martin was perfectly happy about me doing all this, but then we went to Great St Mary, to, to St Mary's, Primrose Hill, and that was a much more in-your-face thing, you, if you didn't like it, you didn't go to it, you know, and I did like it,

01:05:46.760 - 01:06:17.300

and Martin was quite happy to sort of, we made good friends there, so it was then that I started to sort of think about this a bit more, but not to be ordained or anything like that, but just to be sort of part of it. Were you, were you a reader? And I suppose really, we, we then had a bleak time for me, really, because we, and for him, because we moved

01:06:17.300 - 01:06:50.060

from Swiss Cottage to Aylesbury, when children were very, very little, during the very, very cold winter. We didn't make a lot of friends there, we couldn't, I mean, children were too little, and that, but, and I didn't go to church very much there, but began to do so, began to go up to the little parish church in the next village,

01:06:50.740 - 01:07:23.260

because it was the quickest to get to, and, and then we moved to Cambridge, and in Cambridge it suddenly began to sort of run out, because Martin was working at the Institute of Criminology, and I'd still got all these little children around, you know, but we found, we went to Great St Mary's, Cambridge, and at that time, right in the middle

01:07:23.260 - 01:07:48.820

of Cambridge, and I would take everybody there, and there was a nice upstairs room where they could all racket about, until I got to know mothers and people like that, and it was about that time that I thought, sort of, well, I'd better start teaching these children some prayers, Fred, we'd better start saying our prayers, hadn't we? How do I do that?

01:07:50.780 - 01:08:25.460

And so, but there were other mothers in the same boat, and there was Hugh Montefiore, who was the vicar there at the time, and a whole bunch of folk who zoomed around, and were, got you into things, and got you going, and so on, and then when he left to come down here, to be the Bishop of Staths-Southwark, who followed him, but a guy called,

01:08:25.740 - 01:09:02.340

called, I know his name perfectly well, but my memory goes, oh, he was Bishop of Manchester, Stanley Booth-Clibbon, and his wife, and their four children, who by then, our children were seven to twelve, or whatever it was, and then it, I really started to get going, and also, Martin, from the word go, before we got married, was very interested in,

01:09:02.900 - 01:09:41.040

in people who had no homes, in, in tramps, and things like that, and started a thing called the Simon community, which became the Cyrenians, and used to go out at night with soup kitchens, and things like that, and so, he became very interested in that side of it. We've got about a third of the way. Would you like some more coffee?

01:09:41.200 - 01:10:01.180

Just pause us for a moment. So, did you, did you start entering the church, for example, working as a reader? How, what was your path in? My path in was simply as a, a member of a congregation,

01:10:02.220 - 01:10:40.860

up around here at St. Mark's, Streatham, which was a very going, thriving little congregation, youth clubs, and choirs, and all sorts of things, and with that, I was a part of it, and, and then, when that lovely elderly guy had retired, there came another guy who was full of it, with small children as well, and he was, he, one day, he said, there's too much for me to do

01:10:40.860 - 01:11:15.060

here. He said, I've taken six funerals this week, and I haven't had time to do any of the other things I need to do, like visiting, and sick visiting, and taking communions and things, and I can't go on like this. I need some help. So, me and another woman said, well, we'd help you if we, you know, if you tell us what to do, we can do that, and he said, well, you can't just

01:11:15.060 - 01:11:44.160

go and take communion. You can take communion, but you've got to be trained to take sick communions to people, and things like that, and you need really to have a, a course, a bit of a course, just to, to help me, really. And I don't want you to take the funerals, but I, you know, and just sort of know what's going on. I don't think I'd already been helping out with the

01:11:44.160 - 01:12:16.560

Sunday school, and so on and so forth. And we also, I was also well known in the parish, because I would do the Nativity plays, and the Easter plays, and this is and that's, and, and they all liked having somebody who would organise that, so we did that, so there was that. So I took a course, which the Southwark Diocese put on, for people who would assist in a parish,

01:12:16.560 - 01:12:47.700

in a completely non, non, well, I'm definitely was, you know, who could say some prayers with people, but nothing, nothing more than that, really. And then, but then the course meant that you would be able to take some communion, and so on and so forth. So I did that, and that was a year course, which Southwark put on, went, ran for quite a long time, and did that, and I became

01:12:47.700 - 01:13:29.400

to do this. And at the same time, I was then teaching at a school called Tulls Hill School, which was a boys school. Sixteen hundred boys. Fifty percent Cockney, fifty percent Caribbean. A wild school. Anyway, and, but it was only ten minutes away, and I thought, right, I can take them, take Ellie, who'd just started school, and then I can go on there and I can teach part

01:13:29.400 - 01:14:01.860

time in the afternoon. And it was really hard. I found that this was not what I had been used to doing. And I came home, and I would come home and lie on my bed for about ten minutes before I could get the other poor children some biscuits or whatever it was. And Marty said to me, you don't have to stay there, you know, you don't have to put yourself through this.

01:14:02.720 - 01:14:34.360

And I said, thank you very much. It's dead cold. And I said, I'm not going to be put down by those buggers. I'm going to do what I want. But I discovered that the staff were wonderful. Those that stuck it, and a lot of them didn't. Those that did were totally pro-comprehensive education and were going to buy every tooth and nail. And they were really nice to me.

01:14:35.000 - 01:15:09.100

They never said, you know, oh God, here she comes again. In fact, the guy in the classroom next to me said, if you have any trouble, he said, no, he didn't. He said, when you have trouble, you do great big guy with red hair. Call me, he said, next door. Just send a boy in and say, go and ask Mr. Carrington to come. And so I did two or three times. And he would always

01:15:09.100 - 01:15:51.840

come, and he would stand there, and he'd say, well, he'd say, and who is it? And he'd look around. And frequently, the boys, one of the boys would say, because they wanted help as well. They needed some help. And he'd say, come into my room. And they'd go in his room. And nobody ever said, you stupid woman, you know, you wash out.

01:15:53.200 - 01:16:18.120

And I had this tremendous sort of support. And then I made friends with the music guy, and we just went. The first thing we did was to put on a very small public performance of Josie from the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I tried to do drama, but didn't have a drama room. I mean, I would do drama, but it had to be in desks,

01:16:18.640 - 01:16:55.200

just little things you could do. And so we do that. And then we did this show. And it was a huge success. And the next term, I got a drama room. I had a room for myself, and I could, that was it. And it was wonderful. I stayed there doing my productions as well as teaching. And in fact, after 18 months, I didn't do any more English lessons. I just taught drama. And so this was

01:16:55.200 - 01:17:25.180

in sort of parallel with what was going on at the church. And of course, I did plays at the church as well. We do, you know, we did a pageant of St. Margaret and all sorts of things that you would do. And the children, I drew Morley Nunnum and so on and so forth. And poor old Martin coped with himself. But when did the next step come that you decided that you were going to be ordained?

01:17:25.200 - 01:18:02.880

Well, I think really how it actually began... Did you focus a deacon in the meantime? Yeah. Oh, is that? Oh, don't worry about that. Oh, right, right. Well, I was talking to the head of RE, who's a lovely West Indian guy, and he was training to be ordained as well. And I said to him, how do you manage it? Because he was the head of the school for RE.

01:18:04.320 - 01:18:46.820

And he said, and we were talking about it, and he said, why don't you train to be a deaconess? And I said, oh no, I don't think so. And he said, well, you will in the end, so why don't you stop pussyfooting about? And this sort of stuck really. And I thought, how would I do this? What do you do to cope with this? So I went to talk to my vicar, a nice young man, and he said,

01:18:47.520 - 01:19:20.240

oh, don't do that, I shall lose you. And I said, no, no, no, I don't intend to do that. He said, oh yes, you've got to go, and he put me on to various people. Also, because of this, I've been very interested, I've been getting very interested in the movement for the ordination of women, because he was talking about this. Your vicar? No, the church at the school, he said.

01:19:21.020 - 01:19:55.080

I'll leave you to it, excuse me. Make sure you leave enough time for St Leonard's. Yes, yes, we're getting to St Leonard's. And so this would be sort of the beginning of the 1980s, I suppose, and the children were getting quite big. And I thought, yes, I could do this. Ellie was the little one. But I could do this, I could cope with it. And there was a year's course.

01:19:56.040 - 01:20:23.440

It wasn't sort of ordination training or anything like that. It was just church things and how to organise things and prayer weekends and things like that. And I couldn't usually go on prayer weekends because of the families and things like that, but I could do the other things. And I did get very interested in the movement for the ordination of women.

01:20:25.900 - 01:21:06.960

How did you come to hear about it? Well, I just would go to meetings and sort of think about it. And there was a guy who is still a great friend called Tom Sutcliffe, who was on opera, wrote things about opera. And so I was interested in him because of that. But he was interested in it as well. And he used to pick me up, take me to meetings

01:21:06.960 - 01:21:35.280

from the car, sort of all over the place. So I got to know quite a lot of other women who were, and of course, quite a lot of them were deaconesses, and were interested in it, and were organising and were beginning to be much more militant at that time. And so I thought, well, I'd better join this group, I think, and see what's what. And so I did.

01:21:38.660 - 01:22:14.240

And that would be about very early 1980s, I would think. But still, I wasn't really serious about it, I don't think. I was just very, and I wanted to support them quite often, because they were treated so rudely by such a lot of the clergy, who, you know, if you liked them, you could say they were members of Mo, and if you didn't,

01:22:14.360 - 01:22:48.200

you said they were members of Mao, or Meow, or whatever it was, you know. And I thought, no, fudge you, I'm not having this, you know, I want to support this. And they were all still deaconesses, and there was no, nothing like that. And so I sort of went back to a nice guy at school, and said, well, I was thinking about this a bit more, now what did I do? And he said, well,

01:22:48.920 - 01:23:21.240

go and go and see the chaplain in order, she's, who's in order for this. And I did, can't remember what her name is at the moment. And she said, what about training to be a deaconess? And I said, I don't really want to be a deaconess, I mean, I can go on doing that sort of thing at St Margaret's, I can take communion and all sorts of things. He said, no, no, go and

01:23:21.240 - 01:23:56.200

see. So I went to see the guy who ran it, whose name I can't remember at the moment, but I knew it perfectly well. And said, could I do this? I was, I'd just changed schools again to be not at Tulse Hill School, but at Pimlico School, which was a, and I didn't really want to be a deacon, because it was a huge job. It was creative arts, it was music and drama and media and,

01:23:56.200 - 01:24:24.040

you know, hardly anything. So I didn't want to start anything else, thank you very much, but I just wanted it. And so I said, yes, I was interested, and I did want to learn more about it, and I wanted it. And he said, well, you join the Southern Coordination Course. It's, it's been taking in women to be deaconesses the last 30 years. I mean, it's way in the forefront

01:24:24.040 - 01:24:54.020

of all the other things in that. And I said, I don't really know if I want to go down that route, really. And he said, well, it's getting very hot now, because now Movement for Coordination of Women has come along. They're making a lot more noise, and they're being heard by a lot more people. And you'll find, you know, a lot of parishes are pro-it, and a lot of parishes are

01:24:54.020 - 01:25:28.620

against it. And it's in the news as far as, so I thought, well, I don't know. It's, I, so he said, well, we would accept you, only understanding that you'll very likely be deaconess at the end of it, but we'd accept you. And you wouldn't have to pay for, because I've got all these children and Martin. But you could go. So I talked to Martin about it. He said, he didn't mind at all.

01:25:28.820 - 01:26:01.220

He'd be very happy to do this. So I applied, and I had to go through the, you know, the hoops, really, to sort of catch it. But they passed me and said I would be, you know, they would be willing to take me on as a trainee deaconess. And so I started. And I was in a group that would be, when would that be?

01:26:04.140 - 01:26:47.940

Nineteen. Ordination ordained as a deacon. I was ordained as a deacon in 1984, 86, and I've got it here somewhere, so I can look it down. Two years. And we did the, started off every Tuesday and Thursday at Christ Church Blackfriars, doing old and

01:26:47.940 - 01:27:22.440

New Testament and ethics and something else, I can't remember. And a weekend a month, and the children were old enough to actually hack that now, down at Witchcroft, which was the diocesan study centre down in Surrey. And there were twenty-five of us, I think. Several men who were, it was a ministry, it was for the ministry,

01:27:22.640 - 01:27:57.380

so who would be ordained in the end as a priest. And, and about, about six or seven women, who we all thought were going to be deaconesses. But Mo was really getting going by that time, and being very militant. And so we were all members of that as well. So all of the women were part of your group?

01:27:57.660 - 01:28:26.560

Yes, yes. Yes. And, and, but it was a sort of bit of a mishmash, there were a couple of guys who were going to be congregationalists or something like that, but they were doing the course as well. So I think we got a jolly good training, I mean it was wonderful really. And so we were all going to be deaconesses. And then

01:28:26.560 - 01:29:11.620

it was a two-year course. And in the autumn of the beginning of the second course, for some unknown reason, I do not know why, General Synod decided they would accept deaconesses as deacons. So we would be ordained as deacons, women deacons. But that would mean that, that was it mate, for the next seven years. Because it wouldn't come up again until the next

01:29:11.620 - 01:29:59.220

General Synod. So you know, you either, you took it. And, but by that time you thought well, it's getting closer, you know. And so we are, you know, okay, so we'll go along with it. And certainly, the next year, the year we'd finished, we were ordained as deacons. All over the country, everybody was ordained as deacons. And in Southwark, lots of people.

01:29:59.800 - 01:30:31.760

It's always been very pro-women's ordination anyway, so it was going to be. So there were a lot of people that gravitated towards the Southwark Diocese for their trainings and things, and were there. So I think in the Southwark Diocese that year, I think something like 90 women were ordained deacon in the Southwark Diocese.

01:30:31.840 - 01:31:02.160

How did that moment feel? Oh, it was just extraordinary, absolutely, completely extraordinary. And they had to do it in three bunches, with Kingston, Croydon, and Stretworth, Waterloo, or whatever it was, you know, Southwark. Because there were just so many of them,

01:31:02.160 - 01:31:31.720

who had, over the years, been serving as deaconesses, some of them for 20 years as deaconesses. And then here were we just sort of marching in the first year of it to become deacons. And so there was all these wonderful ah, grey-haired old ladies like me who had to be helped up the steps, you know,

01:31:31.740 - 01:32:03.600

to be ordained as deacons. But we all then had to wait for seven years. And so what did you do in that seven years, and what was your involvement? I became deacon, and I worked at St Margaret's. And then, in the middle of that time, we had a new vicar who, in the end, just completely was ruining the parish, and I couldn't

01:32:03.600 - 01:32:29.340

bear it. Because I had to go on teaching, you see, I went on teaching, so it really didn't make a lot of difference to me, except, I mean, I couldn't take communion. I mean, it was more or less just the same as being a deaconess, and there were some things you could do. But we're still pretty limited for it. But nevertheless, one was, but of course,

01:32:29.420 - 01:33:03.240

all our fellows, men, who got deaconed at the same time, were priested the next year. And we weren't, we just had to go on like this. But it didn't last that long, because the General Synod, well, it must have, yes, it must have, it did last seven years. And during that time, I went on teaching at Pimlico, doing my big job there. But I could do and did do a whole

01:33:03.240 - 01:33:32.760

lot more stuff in the parish. Why was this vicar so dreadful? Why was the new vicar so dreadful? He was an absolute pain. We had a lovely gay guy with his partner, who was the chief server, and they were wonderful. I mean, they really sort of kept going, and although people didn't like that, they could recognize that he taught us very well, he was very careful.

01:33:33.620 - 01:34:13.900

I thought he was a great guy. But he didn't like women priests. He liked me, but he was obviously going to find it, when the time came, very difficult. And he was a young man, he should have moved on. So he moved on to a chap. But, and we got this woolly minded. He just, I don't know what he thought, really. He was a nice enough man, but he just,

01:34:14.600 - 01:34:52.780

he didn't teach them properly. And he didn't, he was neither one thing nor the other. He wasn't high church, he wasn't low church, he wasn't, he wasn't organized. And he started to put off very much. So I was there. It's a good, middle of the range, middle class parish. It's not upper class. It's not, it's ordinary folk. But anybody who was anything like middle class,

01:34:53.360 - 01:35:31.120

left, because they just didn't like the way he slobbed about, quite honestly. And he was very nice. But, and we had a, and I thought, I don't know how long I can go on doing this, really. He arrived in the middle of my deaconess ship. So I had another sort of three or four years to go. So I couldn't go anywhere, really. Anyway, I couldn't take it because

01:35:32.420 - 01:36:01.500

my father had always taught me, I mean, I was definitely Church of England at its most set out. I mean, it was, it was good. You know, historical stuff. It was, it all came to part of it. He knew what it was.

01:36:02.340 - 01:36:40.800

His church, his year was kept beautifully. And, you know, I didn't like it at all. So anyway, I stuck it through, because really, there was nothing much else to do. And I went on teaching. But I thought, if I do get to be ordained priest, I shall give up school and find a place for, I don't mind if I'm in the same place, but I mean, I shall be able to do

01:36:41.520 - 01:37:02.300

more than I want to. And was he anti the movement for the ordination of women, this priest, or? Oh, yes, he was very pro it. Well, he wasn't pro or against anything, really. I mean, it was very, but I, anyway, but when the sort of the, they were, you know, wonderful

01:37:02.300 - 01:37:50.380

women and men who put up with this for a long time. And we had a very nice, very nice Asian sacristan who was always there. And his sons were there and his family were, you know, he got to talk to me because he really thought he had got to just leave St. Margaret's. What will happen if you, you know, you do this? And he said no, because he's decided that he

01:37:50.380 - 01:38:19.080

doesn't want us to carry the cross anymore. And he doesn't want any candles anymore. And he doesn't want any service. So I mean, we'd, we'd managed to have a nice lot of little boys and girls who carried the cross and assisted at the altar and do things like this. And he said, I've trained them all up and I, I can't do this. I can't, I can't. I really somehow,

01:38:19.120 - 01:38:55.080

I don't know why I can't possibly come into church and not see a cross going before me. So goodness, awful. Anyway, they fell out completely and he did go. And so did all his little boys, because they'd been used to being on their rota and doing this and that and the other. And so they went. And then, so we didn't have a cross. But a lot of people had gone. I mean,

01:38:55.080 - 01:39:33.700

I think his congregation had halved. I was still there. And so they all came and moaned to me about it. And there was not a lot that I could do. But then he actually started coming in without a cross, right? And he just would wear a cast, a white, what do you call it? Towel. And I thought he was going to stop doing that as well. And we'd been really almost a high church

01:39:33.700 - 01:40:03.860

church with the guy before us. And before that, it had been very, very Anglican in its ways, doing things. He got rid of the organist. So we just had to have somebody who played the piano occasionally. I mean, it was just pitiful, really. And then one day, Cathy, who did all the flowers and things, came in and she said, where have all the vestments gone? And I said, well, they're

01:40:03.860 - 01:40:37.720

still in the cupboard. He doesn't wear them. She said, they're not in the cupboard. And so she said, so she got a friend to go and look in his study. And they went there. And he'd hidden them under the organ. Dusty just pushed them under there. So we got them out and we hung them back firmly. And he said he wasn't going to use them. And I said, you know, this

01:40:37.720 - 01:41:13.600

isn't sort of at all. And about that time, I did get ordained. I did come through here. And so, and I said, well, if I'm going to take a service, I really want to wear, if you don't want me to wear vestments, I won't wear vestments, but I'm definitely going to wear things like that. So we got them out again and we cleaned them up and put them, and I wore them.

01:41:14.220 - 01:41:51.560

But, and because of that, he would wear a surplus, but it was only a surplus. He didn't have anything underneath it. I mean, it was just, and, and also he didn't like the Eucharist, as we would think of having the Eucharist. And, you know, with the lessons, the readings and the prayers and the ordinary, ordinary things like that. And so we, we made a, once I was

01:41:54.900 - 01:42:36.380

priesthood, he said, why don't you take the 9.30 service and I'll take the 11 and we'll have a much more free service there. You've got somebody to play there. I said, yeah, that'd be fine. Oh, definitely. So I would do it. But then I discovered, um, Kathy came along one day and said, why don't you have the gospel anymore? And I said, we always have the gospel.

01:42:37.380 - 01:43:06.300

That's what you have to turn for, is to read the gospel, you know, has to be sort of the pattern. She said, well, they don't do it at 11 o'clock, she said. And I said, what do you mean? And she said, well, we'll have a Bible reading, but it won't necessarily be the gospel. Well, this just went against everything that St. Margaret's had ever done. I know there are

01:43:06.300 - 01:43:35.160

very low church, churches, but this was not, you know, I thought that's why we're hemorrhaging. It's because we've only got 20 people, including, including children who are doing this. So I thought, I can't do this. So I can't go in there at 11 o'clock and see whether he's, what he is doing. So I had my little spies and sure enough, sometimes he did,

01:43:35.700 - 01:44:05.540

but I mean, then he wouldn't have a, another reading, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't Anglican in any sense that I, also he was completely besotted with Holy Trinity Brompton. And so he wanted to go there in the evenings with his wife and, you know, a couple of people went with him. That suited me because we could have a perfectly ordinary evening song, spot on.

01:44:06.100 - 01:44:37.540

And so I was doing this and in the end, I thought, no, it's no good. I'm just resentful. Constantly. I can't be a resentful priest and I don't want people moaning at me all the time. So that's when you went to St. Leonard's? Was that when you moved? Yeah. And I went to the, so I went to the Bishop and, not top Bishop, but our local

01:44:37.540 - 01:45:16.580

Kingston Bishop and said, I want to talk to you and I want to, you know, I think maybe it's time that I moved on or did something about it. And the bugger said, I wondered how long it would take you to come. I said, you rotter. Absolute rotter. I, you know, this is just not on. He said, well, he said, I was wondering what was going to happen to it. If you did go, what was going to

01:45:16.580 - 01:45:50.160

happen? And so I said, well, I'm sorry, but really this is just not on. And he said, no, no, he said, fair's fair. And within about two weeks, he had offered me the places of being an assistant priest at two or three other places around Brixton. And he said, if you go down to this place in Brixton, you can have it all your own way. And I thought, I don't want it all my

01:45:50.160 - 01:46:22.520

own way. I was still teaching at the time. I just want to be in a reasonable Anglican prayerful place with a bit of brains to it. Before we go on to that next step, can I just ask you, so those seven years, you were a deacon in 1985. And then in 1990, I don't think it can have been that thing. I think, I think,

01:46:22.700 - 01:46:51.180

I think I must've got the dates a bit wrong because we did, we did see it through because there were masses of us all, all day. I wanted to ask you about that. I think, is it, is it, 19, was it 1987 we were ordained priest? I think it was 92. I'm getting woolly now, so you tell me what I put. It was 92.

01:46:52.800 - 01:47:18.540

Yes, 92. So what I was going to ask you about was you became a deacon. Yeah. And then there was this gap of years before you could be a priest. Yeah. What was your involvement in the movement for the ordination of religion? I did quite a lot for them. I went to the meetings, really. I wasn't a leader of things, but I went to the meetings and I went a lot.

01:47:19.180 - 01:47:47.720

Um, in fact, I went to, I went to quite a lot of the protest meetings. Um, and what, what was a constituted a protest meeting? Well, basically it was that you went where you knew somebody was going to be a guineet, right? And you, you know, had your placards and you, I wasn't a leader particularly, and I've never been very good at actually standing up and talking

01:47:50.960 - 01:48:24.020

without knowing what I really can't remember. They were some very, very competent women, extremely competent women at the time in the time. But I do remember once the, um, Lambeth and, uh, Lambeth conference met and they all came over to, uh, from over the world and they were going to have a final lunch at Lambeth Palace. And we'd done all sorts of things. We were very good at,

01:48:24.020 - 01:48:54.620

um, uh, buying balloons, hire, hiring hundreds of balloons with M-O-W-R, things like that. Um, and, um, and then we were all putting some little something on them. And, um, and so we were having a meeting to decide whether we were going to do this again because all the bishops were going to come to Lambeth Palace for, for this lunch. And then we said

01:48:54.620 - 01:49:25.740

that we'd got to go and buy some purple balloons, right? So we went to our balloon factory place and, and, and got them and they said, what did we want on them? And we said, um, well, we'll be nice to them, right? So hundreds and hundreds of these things. And we weren't allowed to go into the palace because we were outside the palace as the coaches drew up.

01:49:26.680 - 01:49:58.060

And so we'd had, um, um, have a nice lunch, love from M-O-W-R. And, uh, and we stood there with, uh, and they all came and it was so interesting because we were well away from the doors to Lambeth Palace and they were all going to go into the garden and hundreds of these bishops,

01:49:58.860 - 01:50:32.040

um, and one or two of them sort of, well, they, everybody saw us. They couldn't not see us and we were waving our arms towards the balloon and, uh, to sort of hand them out, but the helpers wouldn't allow them to come close to us. And the only person who came was Desmond Tutu, who just escaped, right? And we saw them going

01:50:32.040 - 01:51:02.500

through and he saw us and looked around and, and they were sort of ushering him in and he said, he skipped over to us and he took two, right? And we said, so we were all very happy about this. And then we thought, well, we're not going to get rid of them. So we'll just let them go. And God was with us and the wind blew them straight over into Lambeth Garden.

01:51:04.660 - 01:51:34.360

So they just all went up and over. So they must've gone a lot of them over the garden for seeing all that. So all these hundreds of balloons went, we felt we'd done well with that. And but, and we would do things like that and sort of call and, but we were, there were a lot of people, I mean, and then they had, they did have, before we were all ordained

01:51:34.360 - 01:52:14.780

priest, every, every, what's it called? Parish council in the deanery, deanery council had to have a meeting based on, on it. They didn't have to come to any conclusions, but a lot, a lot of them throughout the country said, yes, they wanted women priests. And quite often said they didn't, but it was, it was very strongly pro in the Southwark diocese. I think there were five

01:52:14.780 - 01:52:41.800

altogether that said no, they wouldn't have anything to do with it. And there were several that didn't like it, but. And so how did it feel in 1992 when the vote got through? Oh, absolutely amazing. Well, the, the, the stupid vicar was actually lovely that day, really, because we decided that we were all, yeah, we, well, I mean, he was, he was a nice guy, but he

01:52:41.800 - 01:53:10.920

was too lally, I think, really. But I decided I was not going to go up to the, to the vote. I would stay in my parish, in the parish, and we, church would be open, and everybody would just come in and out and have cups of coffee, and we'd have prayers every hour, and people sort of came in for it, and, and then, and we'd have the radio on in the church the whole time, and listen to it

01:53:10.920 - 01:53:40.120

while the debate was going. So we did. It was, it was lovely, it was tremendous, and lots of people came in, including lots of non-church people, who came in to say, right, they're up, you know. And I understand that people were, women were told not to be too jubilant if the vote went through. Yes, well, we didn't pay any attention to that in our parish, and I think a

01:53:40.120 - 01:54:13.120

lot of, it was only actually at the, at the voting that people could do it, because, I mean, I think, well, the churches were usually open, certainly if they were pro it, and, and so you, you know, you either came to it, or you didn't come to it. I, I don't think many of the churches were not open at all. Nearly all of them, I would have said, around here, were definitely

01:54:13.700 - 01:54:41.000

well open for the vote, even if they hadn't been open, but we had it sort of on all the time, and it was wonderful, and everybody cheered. We've got one church bell at St Margaret, and, and Geoffrey ran it. I'm conscious of your time, so you, then you moved to St Leonard's. Yes, well, then I thought I can't

01:54:41.620 - 01:55:12.440

cope with him anymore, so the bishop sent me to St Leonard's, and St Leonard's, of course, was a completely different kettle of fish, and welcomed me with open arms, the more so as, at that time, poor Geoffrey and his wife, Clare, their daughter was dying of cancer, and he was desperate. She was the eldest one of the four.

01:55:12.480 - 01:55:40.900

Geoffrey was? Geoffrey Wilcox was the vicar at the time, and had been for 20 years or getting on for that time, much loved by everybody in Streatham, whether they ever came to church or not. You couldn't go down Streatham High Road without, if you were walking along with him, without, about three people on the other side of the road saying, hello Geoffrey, and he would say,

01:55:42.620 - 01:56:11.160

hello my friend, and you'd say, who's that Geoffrey? I don't know, he said, probably buried their granny, he said, and he probably had because he'd been there a long time. Anyway, he was a great guy, and he welcomed me, and he was in the throes, they were in the throes of poor little girls last months, and so almost as soon as they got there, it was, it was

01:56:12.520 - 01:56:44.040

wonderful for me in one way, because I'd never met this child while she was 20, but I didn't know her, but we'd lost our own daughter two years before, so I knew what they were about, and everybody was so pleased to see me, I mean they fell over themselves to, to be nice to me, you know, do you know where this is, you know, do you know where the key to such and such, oh why not,

01:56:44.180 - 01:57:16.120

for you all get it, I'll do it, and because it was two years afterwards, I was able to cope with them all, because this had been a parish child, he'd been there nearly 20 years, so the whole parish was really upset with it, and so I really felt I was of use, and I had to keep it going. There was another guy who was, also ran the Spires Centre at the time,

01:57:16.340 - 01:57:50.360

for jobless and homeless people, Dan Shackle, so we shared the services and things between us, and I took most of it, and that, but the rest of the, of Streatham was very nice churches, and if I couldn't hack it all, you know, they, they would help, so that was actually for, for me, that was an extremely helpful and useful time, and I knew I was being of use, and I knew how to do it, you know,

01:57:50.360 - 01:58:20.920

I wasn't sort of in the same state as they were, poor things, and so I went, so that's where I went, and from then on, I just have settled on, I've been there ever since. I don't do anything now, I hardly ever go, I watch the services on Zoom, because I'm so lame, and I do, I'll go on Wednesday lunchtime, if I can, if it's nice weather, but

01:58:21.680 - 01:58:51.420

as you can see, I mean, I'm very lame now. I think you're doing amazingly well, actually, but I do appreciate the difficulty. So how long were you at St Leonard's? So I was at St Leonard's from 1993. Where have we got to with dates? Well, you told me you went there in 1993, so I wasn't sure how long you were at St Leonard's.

01:58:51.440 - 01:59:26.760

Oh, until last year. Oh, I didn't realise. Oh yes, I, I was always there. I stopped actually taking communion when my hands got too shaky. Right. And, but I would preach and do things for quite a long time, on and off, but I did an enormous amount of visiting and things like that, and also once I had left, I almost, as soon as I

01:59:26.760 - 01:59:55.020

was preceded, I left St, I left school, and concentrated on, on St Leonard's. And, but I don't really, and because, but because of that, and because I always like plays, and I like writing large plays for a lot of people, because a lot of people always want to be in them, so you've got to have things where you can add, you know.

01:59:56.180 - 02:00:15.740

So you were there for all that time, which means, what I wanted to ask you about was, did you see a shift in opinion towards attitudes to, from the clergy and the congregation? Oh yes, absolutely. What was your experience? About the church?

02:00:15.760 - 02:00:51.260

About the, the changing attitudes towards women as priests? Well, you see, I was always, I was very lucky, because I, here at St Margaret's, everybody was pro-me anyway, so there, I mean, there might have been three or four people who moved away from St, but very few, and it didn't actually hit the brains of most of the people

02:00:51.260 - 02:01:27.960

here as to what it was about either. St Leonard's was always pro-it, I mean, obviously there were pros and cons in every parish you can mention, but it depended very much on, on what happened. I never, but then I think that's because I'm a fairly punchy person anyway, nobody was ever rude or unpleasant to me, although of, from my sisters, I mean, especially when we were deacons,

02:01:29.040 - 02:01:48.720

I thought I, you know, I would sort of say, literally say, why are you put up with that? I mean, that's plain rude, your, your clergy are not being helpful, or your congregation is being So what sort of difficulties were they finding? What sort of difficulties were they finding?

02:01:49.100 - 02:02:22.320

They were finding, they were either being treated absolutely as a dog's body, you lay this out, you tidy this up, you do that, or, or they were, or they were never given the chance to do this, take the service or preach the sermon on a major festival, or, stupidity things, you know, I mean, one quite understands you've got

02:02:22.320 - 02:02:54.760

to learn your trade, you've got to know what you're doing, you can't, and if you do anything wrong, you have to be told it, I mean, whether you're deacon, deaconess or curate or what, you expect to be told how to do that. But, you know, I've been running fast school departments and things for a long time, and I, I knew not to do that with people, and, you know, that you,

02:02:55.640 - 02:03:29.880

and so I didn't actually have any, very much, I didn't have any, there was only once, when we went over to Richard's church in, in Diocese of London once, he'd moved from it, and, well, I suppose it was when he was, he was instituted there, he got a nice gay guy who was his, sort of, second in command, his

02:03:30.540 - 02:04:13.660

chief server, and we all went over to his parish for him to be instituted, and I went as well, and I was the deaconess at that time, so I went, he was my deaconess, okay, and, and it was, he'd gone to a parish and to an area with a bishop who was violently opposed to women, so I was the only one there, and I'd gone, and so they were all down that end of the vestry,

02:04:14.660 - 02:04:41.300

and I was this end of the vestry, and I thought, right, this is where they're going to play it, and I don't care, right, so I didn't try, I just stayed down the bottom, okay, and after a bit, Simon, Richard's partner, sort of, came down to join me,

02:04:42.640 - 02:05:10.460

and I said, you don't have to be here, I think you ought to be up with, with him really, and I'm perfectly all right, and he said, oh, he said, a lot of old pigs, he said, and I'd rather be down here, he said, and so, no, it wasn't pigs, anyway, it was, you know, women, a lot of old, don't, don't want that, so he stayed there, and gradually,

02:05:11.400 - 02:05:33.080

some of the younger curates, whom I didn't know, I mean, I was never going to see them again in my life, so I came down to, to do it, but one little story I must tell you, even, is there other things you need to ask? I've got a couple of concluding questions, but you tell me your, your story, and then I'll ask you,

02:05:33.080 - 02:05:58.180

I don't know if we can tell them. Well, when? Oh, goodness. You ask me the things first, and you'll come back to me. Okay, just a, one, well, one question I wanted to ask was, if you were to be asked to give advice to women who might be thinking about being deacons today, what, what would your advice be?

02:05:58.180 - 02:06:31.760

Well, my advice would be, you know, I think, to be a deacon, if you're going to start off, you're going to be a deacon anyway, so you're going to be, a deacon is a dog's body, a deacon, and that's what you're doing, you're learning your trade, you, you follow around, you, you pick up after people, you get to know people, your job is to get to know people,

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and to help to bring them closer to God, and a comfortable feeling around you, to give them the confidence to, whoever they are, at whatever stage in their life, whether they're coping with somebody ill, or whether they are ill, or, or whether they're going to be confirmed, or whatever it is, you, you've got to be interested, you've got to find out what they want

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to do then, and if you can't do that, I think you ought to think hard, really, because the time is going to come when you'd love to be able to sit and talk to people, but you can't, because you've organised this, that, and the other, and parish work is a killer, if, if you let it be, unless you can gather yourselves, I mean, Geoffrey was in a middle-class

02:07:27.200 - 02:07:56.660

environment, and he had lots of people who could do with things, but there were stages when my father was the architect, and the cleaner, and the, you know, everything. What, what are your hopes for women as priests for the future? I mean, have we got complete equality? I think, well, I can't, I don't know. The women I know, I think, are great. Certainly the women

02:07:56.660 - 02:08:24.840

when we were fighting for it were, I think, some of them were absolutely stunning, and they were completely different sorts of personalities, really. I don't know who would, you've got to like people, and you've got to love your God, and you want to do what you've got to do what your God would like you to do for them,

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that's all there is to it. I had this wonderful range of upbringing, you see. Yes, yes. I mean, I was always perfectly happy with whoever I was with. My mother wasn't, and my parents weren't upper-class people, but they could, we could mix with anybody. We've been talking for a very long time, you've been very, very generous with your time,

02:08:57.200 - 02:09:27.300

but I must ask you, are there things that we haven't spoken about? Oh, I expect there's dozens of things we haven't spoken about, but it really doesn't matter. And I wouldn't want to leave where you haven't been given the opportunity to say anything. Certainly, I mean, I've got things here. Bishop Christopher has been, I mean, all the bishops that I've had to do with

02:09:28.420 - 02:09:58.880

have been what I consider good and proper bishops. They've looked after their flocks, and they've looked after their clergy. And what is this that I'm looking at, Lisa? But I mean, there's a lot of people in the diocese who've got something like this, a sort of an appreciation, and he pays attention to you. I've never asked to see him, I very rarely

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do, well, I don't now, when I've not been able to see a bishop that I've wanted to see, mostly they've been in... With your permission, Lisa, I'd like to take a photograph of this so that people will be able to see what you're showing me. This wonderful certificate that was presented to you by the bishop, so I've got a record of it, thank you. Yes, I was given... No, I mean, as far as I'm

02:10:30.180 - 02:10:57.540

concerned, I mean, I've been very lucky because, of course, Southwark has always been pruitt. And if I've needed to fight my corner, which I very rarely have, I'm perfectly equipped to do it. Well, I'm not now. I don't know. And so I've had a wonderful time, really. I've had a wonderful time. This is...

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You see, what I shall be remembered for is not my priesthood, I don't think, but what people like is being organised together in a big play, and I'm very good at writing them and directing them and bringing them in and making the best of them. And so I've always written my own plays to be done. If I never use anybody else's play, thank you,

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I'll have mine. Then if I want six extra soldiers, I'll have them, or whatever it is. And people are very willing to do that. And if they've got a leader like that, it's not really that it's... Yes, you're doing it for church, and yes, it's pilgrims' progress or handing on the baton or whatever it is. But a great thing we did in 1611, I decided we'd read the Bible

02:12:04.900 - 02:12:30.300

throughout, from start to finish. So it took us from February to October. And just said to the people in Southwark and in this area, do you want to read a chapter from the Bible? We're going to do it on Thursday afternoons. Let me know and I'll tell you. And if there's one you really want to write, you can. And if not,

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I'll just put you down for... So it took us eight months to do it. And somebody sort of gave me that for doing it. It was great. But there were about 150 people reading it. I'm looking at a wonderful certificate presented to Reverend Lisa Wright, celebrating the 400-year anniversary of the King James Bible, when she organised a group to read

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the entire Bible over eight months. And I'm taking a photograph of it for the record. Great. Well, that'll be fine. Lovely. Well, I can't thank you enough. Well, it's just lovely to be able to let me wrap it on. It was just great.

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The pleasure is all mine. And whoever, in the future, listens to our conversation. I'll turn off the machine now, if we're finished.