From the Exeter diocesan website:
Bishop of Exeter Announces Retirement
Posted: 10th May, 2023
The Bishop of Exeter has announced he is to retire on 30 September 2023 after more than nine years in the role.
The Rt. Rev’d Robert Atwell was installed as bishop at Exeter Cathedral in July 2014.
He is currently convenor of the Bishops in the South-West region, chair of the Church of England’s Liturgical Commission and the lead bishop for Rural Affairs.
He has been a member of the House of Lords since November 2021…
Surely this resignation should give rise to a serious review of Diocesan boundaries. Truro is relatively ‘new’ and small, and formerly part of Exeter. Job for the Dioceses Commission??
Truro is relatively new and small – however I’d suggest that politically and geographically (and by politically I don’t mean church politics so much as very much secular ones) if you were going to start merging dioceses then Exeter and Truro would be a long way down the list. If they were even on it.
It’s going to take new leadership of the House of Bishops and General Synod for there to be any meaningful change. And a lot more authority vested in the Dioceses Commission. Philip Mounstephen would be an excellent Bishop of Exeter and Truro, but don’t bet on it any time soon.
Interesting that it’s almost unthinkable to rationalise the number of dioceses and their associated functionaries; meanwhile at the coalface of mission and ministry, benefices (especially rural ones) are routinely broken up and reconfigured. Why are dioceses and their clergy dignitaries sacrosanct and yet the backbone of the CofE always undergoing surgery?
Good luck with that! Although a man from Bude will have far more in common with a Devonian from Holsworthy than his fellow Cornishmen in Truro, Cornwall has been highly successful in creating itself as an ‘imagined community’. Much of this is little more than harmless romanticism (even the pasty may have originated in Devon’s Tavistock) but it does have resonance – as the Boundary Commission soon discovered when proposing an entirely logical and equitable ‘Devonwall’ constituency straddling the Tamar.
Isn’t it something to do with how the cream is put on the scone! 😂
Absolutely! However, my wife who is Cornish (of the lineage of Pascoe) puts the cream on first -Devon usage!
Wars have been fought over less.
Think of Swift’s Big-Endians and Little- Endians,
when it comes to boiled eggs.
Why can’t we have a colourful eccentric as the next Bishop of Exeter just like the bicycling Fish Cecil? On leaving a shop in Exeter he mounted a bicycle and after cycling a fair distance he realised that it wasn’t his cycle. He returned to the shop apologised to the owner of the bike and immediately mounted the same bike and rode away.
Cecil once took the train to Ilfracombe for a confirmation, leaving his chaplain behind to work on the bishop’s Sunday sermon. Later that day the chaplain was alarmed to get a telegram: “Am in Ilfracombe. Why?” Some, on arriving in that splendid resort, still ask the same question.
When staying overnight at various vicarages in the Exeter diocese Fish was notorious at leaving his pyjamas behind. His wife was so fed up with this that she remonstrated with him and urged him not to forget to pack his night clothes. On returning home after an overnight parish visit his wife unpacking his case and found not only his pyjamas but also the sheets from the bed he had slept in the previous night.
There is a variant of this story which is that he was asked by a ticket inspector somewhere in Devon for his ticket, and had to express his regret that he did not have one. The inspector remarked, “oh well, my lord, we know how it is” (or something like that, the bishop’s reputation going before him). He replied to the inspector, “yes, that’s all very well, but if I don’t have a ticket, how do I know where I am going?” There is also a story of him being so absent minded when vicar of Hatfield that he forgot… Read more »
There is an excellent, and sympathetic, chapter on ‘Fish’ in the late Kenneth Rose’s ‘The Later Cecils’ (1975), at 111-26, although there are no notes. His sister, Gwendolen, remarked that ‘he genuinely hated being a bishop’, and his brother James (4th marquess) is supposed to have remarked of his preferment to Exeter in 1916 that “this time the prime minster [Asquith] has gone too far”. However, he was happiest at Hatfield, but regarded his time there as an extremely diligent rector (Hatfield is one of the largest parishes, by area as well as population, in Hertfordshire) as a failure, writing… Read more »
Does Hatfield House still retain the services of a permanent Domestic Chaplain, one of the last of the Stately Homes to employ a clerk in Holy Orders to officiate regularly at services?
I believe it is Paul Gismondi (former Lazards banker and ex-Sandringham benefice), who is not rector. There is a service there at 08:30 each Sunday morning, BCP of course… David Say, for example, was concurrently rector and chaplain, and it was almost certainly via the auspices of the former Tory ‘kingmaker’ of ‘Bobbety’ Salisbury that he was preferred directly to Rochester in 1961 (in succession to the one-legged Chavasse, though Say was a more moderate evangelical than Chavasse). Salisbury had helped put Macmillan into the premiership (‘first in and first out’ over Suez) – “Whom is it to be? Wab… Read more »
A moment to say thank you perhaps to the present, retiring bishop? I first met him years ago when he was a monk at Burford Priory and I have been grateful whenever our paths of crossed ever since – not least for the last few years as my bishop here. Gentle depths. Profound preacher. Worship leader. Deep man of prayer. Faithful servant to this region. He will be missed. And his most recent contributions to the wider church and nation deserve mention. He drafted the LLF prayers that are giving significant direction to present discussions. And, as chair of the… Read more »
Following on David Runcorn’s comment, perhaps as the Easter season draws to a close it is appropriate to quote one of Robert Atwell’s reflections, which I appreciate and have incorporated into a lay learning course I am producing for the Diocese in Europe: ‘Resurrection is more than a doctrine: it is a reality to be lived each day. It requires as much effort, imagination and practice as does the observance of Lent. I am challenged not just to remember the events of Easter, but to be changed by them. As St Paul puts it, “If you have been raised with… Read more »
Thank you David. You speak for many and I too have been most grateful for the profound ministry of Bishop Robert.