The Rt Revd Graham James writes:
THE Ven. Raymond Lockwood Ravenscroft, who died on 18 May, aged 88, served in parishes in the diocese of Truro for 26 years before becoming Archdeacon of Cornwall in 1988. Yet, when was born in South Africa in 1931, he weighed just three pounds and was scarcely expected to survive.
He contracted diphtheria as a young child and saw his mother and father only through a window for many weeks. He knew social distancing early. When his mother fell ill for an extended period, Raymond went to live with another family for a year. He thought that all this contributed to his independent streak. In a memoir written for his grandchildren, Raymond said that, apart from his deep love for his family, he was “very much a loner”.
I would qualify Raymond’s estimate of himself. Loners are not always team players. But Raymond was. He proved to be an excellent member of the Bishop of Truro’s staff team, collaborative and considerate. That is where I first got to know him, almost 30 years ago. Raymond was loyal to decisions that he might not himself like. He did not go his own way, as some loners do.
It was in his teenage years in South Africa that Raymond caught religion. His sense of vocation to the priesthood spurred him to apply for a place at the Hostel of the Resurrection in Leeds to study under the aegis of the Mirfield Fathers. His selection interview with Fr Trevor Huddleston was bizarre. It took place in a lift in an insurance office in Cape Town, with the lift going from the top floor to the basement and back again as Raymond’s suitability for ordination was assessed. He passed. Just a few days before his 19th birthday in September 1950, he left his homeland for five years in England.
The climate of West Yorkshire must have come as a shock to the young Raymond, but within a week of his arrival in Leeds he met Ann Stockwell, a medical student. An attachment developed, but in August 1953 Raymond declared to Ann that he was not in love with her and intended to be a celibate priest. Within a few weeks, he changed his mind and asked her to marry him. It was the wisest move of his life, although Raymond said of himself that he was then the most frightful prig. Fortunately, Ann was not put off by Raymond’s immaturity, since it is hard to think of the one without the other. Ann died in 2008.
Nearly expelled from Mirfield for not asking anyone’s permission to get engaged, Raymond then had the nerve to write to the Archbishop of Cape Town to inform him that he would be returning to South Africa to be ordained. The Archbishop was given no choice. I wonder what the later Archdeacon of Cornwall would have said to that brash young man.
Ann joined Raymond in South Africa, they married, and a busy round of ministry and family life began, alongside Ann’s own developing medical career. Raymond eventually ministered in Francistown, now in Botswana, where Walter Khotso Makhulu, later Archbishop of Central Africa, worked with, and then succeeded him. Concerned for their two children, Gillian and David, and their education in a divided society, Raymond and Ann decided to return to England.
Only the Bishop of Truro responded to his letters seeking a curacy. Thus began a ministry first in St Ives, then Falmouth, Launceston, and Probus, before he eventually became Archdeacon of Cornwall. No one could say that this archdeacon had no parish experience. St Ives was a joy, Falmouth was a grind in a church locked in the past, Launceston was happy, and in Probus his wider diocesan engagement grew so that it was natural for him to be regarded as archdeacon material.
Raymond shifted a long way from the priggish and self-absorbed ordinand. His sympathies grew. The rigidities in some of the parishes that he served made him a radical. He was an early supporter of the ordination of women, not a popular view in the diocese of Truro 40 years ago. He wanted clergy to be more accountable, and the Church to be more transparent. He stood his ground and did not mind being in a minority, but eventually discovered what it was to be in the majority in many of his convictions.
When Raymond retired as Archdeacon in 1996, the service and subsequent bunfight was held at Camborne, expressing his preference for an ordinary parish rather than the pomp of the cathedral. Although he was a faithful Canon Librarian alongside being the Archdeacon, it was in the archdeaconry parishes that his heart lay.
Raymond was of modest physical stature. But he was a man with a big heart and a wide range of sympathies. May he now know the abundance of life in Christ.
