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Obituary: Prebendary Duncan Ross

05 April 2024

The Rt Revd Nicholas Holtam writes:

DUNCAN ROSS was one of the finest of parish priests, with a gift for prayer, liturgy, teaching, and caring for countless individuals and the whole community. He was an East Ender who was born in Calcutta and grew up in Hackney. The whole of his ordained ministry was in the Stepney Aarea.

Duncan lived most of his adult life with serious illness, living longer than he or anyone expected. Small of stature, he was big-hearted and unusually accommodating of difference, and made everyone feel special. East Enders saw him as like them; professional incomers met a modest priest who had been a scientist and spoke Russian. There was much more to him than met the eye.

Duncan was born into a recently partitioned independent India. He was “the brown sheep” of an otherwise white Anglo-Indian family, the product of a recessive gene. His parents were Roman Catholics, and his father was divorced; his grandmother suggested that the Anglican Church might be more tolerant of the children.

As a small boy, Duncan saw violence and murder in the turbulent street below the family apartment in Calcutta. In 1956, when he was eight, the family left for England, their ship the second to last to pass through the Suez Canal. At Tilbury, Duncan expected a land of cottages and gardens, but the taxi to Hackney brought them to a two-room flat with a mezuzah by the door. His father was an accountant, his mother was a secretary, and his sister, ten years older, was the PA to a bank manager. In five years, they had their own home.

In a solidly Jewish primary school, Duncan stood out as the only brown child. Racism was a fact of his life, not shared with his family. The good start to his education in India helped him to gain respect. With a love of astronomy, he went from Hackney Downs School to University College, London, to read physics and work on their early space research.

Duncan’s priestly vocation was nurtured by a churchwarden at St John at Hackney. He trained for ordination at Westcott House, Cambridge, and served his title with Fr Norry McCurry in Stepney (1978-84). A linchpin of the local community, he helped to found Stepping Stones Farm. He also ran a brilliant church youth group.

Duncan was Vicar of St Mary of Eton, Hackney Wick (1984-95), and St Paul’s, Bow Common, (1995-2013), and, in 1995, he was made a Prebendary of St Paul’s Cathedral, which he loved and where he was held in high esteem. Rowan Williams, his tutor at Westcott, preached at both his first mass and a few weeks before his retirement.

The Church that Duncan inhabited was large and accommodating. Prayer and worship were at the heart, deeply influenced by the Orthodox Church. In demand as a spiritual director, he was close to several religious communities. Retreats were important, and he led an annual pilgrimage to Taizé, often taking groups of young people. He prayed daily for those in his care, their photographs on his desk like the icons around his room. He cared for several young people, to whom he gave stability and whom he helped to find purpose, including Nicky Sutherland, who, at 16, became his foster son.

Duncan’s churches were welcoming, inclusive, and diverse. St Mary of Eton encouraged women in ministry. Gay people were part of the community. Beautiful liturgy, with lots of candles and icons, included children. At the end of the service, everyone was invited into the big band to make a joyful cacophony before being sent out into God’s world. Like Duncan, it was remarkably understated and extraordinarily good.

At St Paul’s, Bow Common, Duncan inherited a small, eclectic congregation of faithful people with strong views, some with reputations for being difficult. Duncan, who was determined and could be stubborn, included and loved them so that they, too, became part of the remarkable community of God’s varied people. In Duncan’s care, what was architecturally one of the most significant church buildings of the second half of the 20th century came to life. The conductor on the 277 bus would shout at the stop, “Gate of ’eaven”, and those on the bus knew it in their midst.

In 1997, at an exhibition in the V&A, “Shamiana: The Mughal Tent”, Duncan was moved to tears, discovering his heritage. He knew that his parishioners in Bow Common would not go to the exhibition; so he raised the money for the exhibition to come to St Paul’s, where it engaged the whole community, including many Bangladeshi Muslims. Recently, he was deeply affirmed by his inclusion in Eithne Nightingale’s Child Migrant Voices in Modern Britain (Bloomsbury 2024).

Duncan retired in 2013, first to a flat in Mile End, made available to him by one of those who had been awkward on his arrival at St Paul’s. His health deteriorated, and the pandemic was particularly difficult for him. After he had cared for so many, it was his time to be cared for; and so he moved to the Charterhouse.

Duncan died in University College Hospital, London, on 15 March, two days after his 76th birthday. His funeral will be at the Charterhouse, and his ashes will be interred with those of his parents and sister. On Saturday 11 May, there will be a requiem mass at St Paul’s, Bow Common, which, being “The Gate of Heaven”, will have plenty of room.

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