Press release from Number 10
Dean of Lincoln: Christine Wilson
From: Prime Minister’s Office, 10 Downing Street
First published: 27 May 2016The Queen has approved the nomination of the Venerable Christine Wilson to be appointed Dean of Lincoln.
The Queen has approved the nomination of the Venerable Christine Louise Wilson, Archdeacon of Chesterfield, in the diocese of Derby, to be appointed to the Deanery of the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Lincoln, on the resignation of the Very Reverend Philip John Warr Buckler, MA, on 31 January 2016.
Notes for editors
The Venerable Christine Wilson (aged 58) trained for her ordination at Southern Diocese Ministerial Training Scheme. She served her first title as Curate at Henfield with Shermanbury and Woodmancote, in the diocese of Chichester from 1997 to 2002. From 2002 to 2008 she was Team Vicar at St John the Baptist, Palmeria Square, Hove, in Chichester diocese, and from 2008 to 2010 was Vicar at Goring-by-the-Sea, in Chichester diocese. Since 2010 she has been Archdeacon of Chesterfield in the diocese of Derby.
She is married to Alan, a retired Head of Compliance for a division of an international bank. She has 2 daughters, her third daughter died when she was 29, and has 2 grandchildren.
Her interests include gardening, theatre and dance and hosting parties.
Good news! Another senior member of the Lincoln diocesan team who will Definitely Not Be Called Chris. 😀
My word, a lady Dean at Lincoln, I wonder what Canon David Rutter would have made of that? I think that this latest announcement brings the tally of female deans up to eight, six in the Southern Province and two in the North. I note that the present Dean of Canterbury is soon to reach his Biblical span and compulsory C of E retiring age. I wonder who will succeed him and take charge of the Mother Church of the Anglican Communion, the cathedral which George Belll so wonderfully revived when he was Dean of Canterbury?
Another ‘innovation’ is that she would appear to be the first dean since the fourteenth century to lack either a degree and/or a university education (see http://www.british-history.ac.uk/fasti-ecclesiae/1300-1541/vol1/pp3-4, although the educational status of several fourteenth century deans is obscure: they may well have attended a university, but they do not appear in A. B. Emden’s biographical registers or in the Venns’ ‘Alumni Cantabridgienses’.
Though all this matters scarcely at all, of course: best wishes to her in her new ministry.