Press release from the Prime Minister’s Office. There is more information on the Norwich Cathedral website.
Appointment of Dean of Norwich: 6 September 2022
The Queen has approved the nomination of The Reverend Canon Dr Andrew Jonathan Braddock, Interim Dean of Gloucester, to be appointed Dean of Norwich.
From: Prime Minister’s Office, 10 Downing Street
Published 6 September 2022
The Queen has approved the nomination of The Reverend Canon Dr Andrew Jonathan Braddock, Interim Dean of Gloucester, to be appointed Dean of Norwich, in succession to The Very Reverend Jane Hedges following her retirement.
Background
Andrew was educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and trained for ministry at Ridley Hall, Cambridge. He served his title in the parishes of Ranworth with Panxworth, Woodbastwick, South Walsham and Upton, in the Diocese of Norwich and was ordained priest in 1999.
In 2001, Andrew was appointed Rector of Cringleford and Colney, also in the Diocese of Norwich, taking up the additional role of Rural Dean of Humbleyard in 2004. In 2008, Andrew was appointed Diocesan Missioner in the Diocese of Gloucester and in 2013, he became Canon Missioner of Gloucester Cathedral and Diocesan Director of Mission and Ministry.
Andrew was commissioned as Interim Dean of Gloucester in April 2022.
Excellent appointment – Andrew is both capable and compassionate, Norwich are lucky to have him.
There has been discussion on TA over the last few days of cathedral deans and canons who, prior to taking up a role as such, had received episcopal consecration. Just about within living memory there was a Dean of Norwich who was a bishop, Herbert St Barbe Holland who was Dean of Norwich from 1946 to 1952 and Bishop of Wellington NZ for ten years before that. I can find no record in Crockford that he was also an assistant bishop (he probably had enough to do as Dean!).
As Dean of Norwich he would not have been an Assistant Bishop while in office as Dean. Like you, I have not been able to establish that he held further office as an Assistant Bishop after retiring, rather implying that he did not. At face value he appears to have had a 14 years period of retirement.
I don’t understand why ‘he would not have been an assistant bishop while in office as Dean’. There are examples of that of which I will give two. Recently, Jonathan Frost was concurrently Dean of York and an honorary assistant bishop in the Diocese of York. From 1937 to 1951, taking in almost the entire period when Herbert St Barbe Holland was Dean of Norwich, Norman Tubbs was Dean of Chester and an assistant bishop in the diocese.
Thank you. I’m happy to let you have the final word. Tomorrow I enter my ninth decade of life and as a layman cannot guarantee that everything I have said about the C of E – in which anomalies abound – is 100% correct.
Happy birthday for tomorrow!
Happy Birthday Rowland! And thanks for your contributions to TA from which I have learnt a lot.
If a Dean, who held episcopal consecration, were to function from time to time as a bishop in the diocese, would he not require being licensed as an assistant bishop? A dean is licensed to function as a priest.
Regarding Norman Tubbs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Tubbs
It is recorded in Jonathan Frost’s Wikipedia entry that he was so licensed.
The Wikipedia entry, as I observed last night, only records that he was an assistant bishop whilst he was Archdeacon of Chester prior to being dean. I checked in Crockford, however, and Tubbs was an assistant bishop during his time as dean.
Answering your question, I would have thought so, but I don’t claim any exclusive knowledge. We have covered a number of different permutations. The first Dean of Guildford, George Clarkson, was a bishop (and it was a matter of surprise that he supplanted the existing Provost, but proved to be an outstanding Dean). The Dean of Windsor is a bishop; the current Dean of Westminster is not, and they use the respective ‘handle’ for their clerical status. We could get onto the subject of ‘civilian’ titles for clerics. The Dean of Windsor is KCVO and but for his ordination and… Read more »
The “valid exception” for Dame Sarah is that in order to use the honorific “Sir” you have to actually be knighted, i.e. dubbed with the sword. Clerics may not take up arms and so are not dubbed with the sword, and so are not entitled to the honorific “Sir”. Simple. Dames on the other hand are never dubbed and are entitled to the honorific “Dame” nonetheless. So a female cleric may be a Dame, but a male cleric may not be knighted. There are two further exceptions, which enable a male cleric to be called “Sir”. One is if they… Read more »
Thank you for this detailed explanation of the wonderful obscurities of the C of E and our honours system, averting the hornet’s nest I anticipated. One can learn every day. As an organist I was familiar with the Victorian works of the Revd Sir Frederick Gore-Ouseley, and once played for a service conducted by the Revd Sir John Alleyne, then a Winchester incumbent. I was aware that the latter is a baronet, and think Sir Frederick was also.
The most obvious example of a prelate who was also a baronet is Sir Edwyn Hoskyns (1851-1925), successively Bishop Suffragan of Burnley and Bishop of Southwell. He was the father of the theologian of the same name, who was his successor in the baronetcy.
I know of one non stipendiary priest who was dubbed a knight bachelor.
A dean in the Church of Ireland is (with two exceptions I think) simply an incumbent and paid as such. They are Very Reverend when in decanal office but should they move to an ordinary parish they become decreasingly reverent, or increasingly irreverent as you wish, and lose the qualifier. I’ve said it before but the episcopal Right Reverend reminds me of my Cumbrian childhood: “ee, tha looks reet scruffy” (note the demotic pronunciation). I suppose in both cases right simply means extremely. It’s all reet silly.
On the 15th of last month the Australian bishop John Bayton died at age 91. I first knew him in the 1980s when he was Vicar of St Peter’s Eastern Hill, the parish church of the City of Melbourne. He had previously been Dean of the Cathedral in Rockhampton, Queensland, and therefore went from being Very Rev to Rev. Once in a sermon at St Peter’s he said light-heartedly that he ‘wondered what had become of the Very’. John Bayton received two promotions in fairly late career. He became Archdeacon of Malvern, making him Venerable, and then Bishop of Geelong (both in the Diocese of Melbourne)… Read more »
This ought to be my last on this subject. Didn’t Robert Runcie during an interview by Michael Parkinson say that he had been ‘Very Reverend’, then ‘Right Reverend’ and, on his forthcoming translation to Canterbury, was becoming “increasingly Reverend”?
He did.
I note that out of 18 posts so far, 17 of them do not specifically relate to the subject of the new Dean of Norwich!
Sam Norton, who clearly knows the prospective Dean, spoke in glowing terms in the first comment on this thread. I wonder why someone who hasn’t until now contributed to the thread himself feels it appropriate to censure others who have done so!
Yes indeed, Rowland. I like the forays into playful irrelevance that threads so often induce. They are signs of imagination, creativity and the ability to extrapolate – even if on occasion somewhat randomly.They are playful episodes leavening sanctimonious solemnity, mischief pricking pomposity. At the age of 72 I’ll take as much joy and silliness as I can get. Some people need to get a life.
Some of the most interesting conversations drift from topic to topic. These threads can be similar. People have been talking about Deans in general.
Personally I think any post as Dean in a big medieval cathedral is challenging ( a euphemism for impossible in the organisation where I used to work). Visitor numbers and therefore income plummeted during the pandemic.
It remains to be seen whether the £2500 cap on energy bills encourages people to keep spending on non -essentials. I suspect that the leisure sector as a whole ( of which Cathedrals form a part) will be hard hit.
With regard to honorifics – civil and ecclesiastical – I’ll bet we in Aotearoa/New Zealand can top anything handed out in the Church of England (the place of my baptism and confirmation). The part-Māori Archbishop Paul Reeves, after his retirement was made Her Majesty’s Representative as Governor-General in New Zealand, for which he was knighted by Her Majesty. (He was my ordaining Bishop). Here is his Google entry: “Sir Paul Alfred Reeves, ONZ, GCMG, GCVO, QSO, CF, KStJ, CF was a New Zealand clergyman and civil servant, serving as Archbishop and Primate of New Zealand from 1980 to 1985 and… Read more »
In 2011 whilst based at the Auckland campus of Massey University in NZ I went to the cathedral in Auckland one Sunday and was surprised when it was casually announced that the preacher was Archbishop Sentamu of York. I later found out that he had gone to NZ for the funeral of Paul Reeves (or it might have been a memorial service). When I read Ron Smith’s post I found myself thinking also of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. In 2018 she became a member of the Companion of Honour (CH). I think that she is the only New Zealander amongst… Read more »
Dame Kiri sang at the wedding of Prince Charles (as he then was) and Princess Diana in St Paul’s Cathedral. Christopher Dearnley, mentioned by you on the Liturgical Resources thread, was both director of music and organist at that service. Instead of usual C of E choir dress, he looked very dapper in morning coat with a large floral buttonhole.
Another little ‘skite’: My wife, Diana, is the great-niece of Sir Ernest Rutherford, who was present at her Kiwi mother’s wedding in the U.K. who – as her uncle – ‘gave her away’ in the place of her father, who was not able to be present. How small a world we do inhabit!
Most interesting.
You will obviously be aware, Ron, that Ernest Rutherford married Mary Newton at St. Paul’s Church in Papanui (Christchurch) in June 1900. A group photograph of the wedding is on:
Rutherford’s Nuclear World: The Story of the Discovery of the Nucleus | Sections | American Institute of Physics (aip.org)