Farewell to Rev James

I was pleased to be invited this morning to the final service (and a celebratory lunch after) of Rev James Blandford-Baker at St Dunstan’s with St Thomas’ Church in Friars Place Lane (http://stdunstanschurch.org.uk/). I’ve posted before about the great work that James has been doing (see 3rd October) since he came to East Acton in 1996. He’s now been appointed to the parish of Histon and Impington in Cambridgeshire.

The service included a ‘drama presentation’ covering some of the history of St Dunstan’s. It was built in 1879 on land donated by the Goldsmiths Company, whose member John Perryn owned most of old East Acton. John Perryn, his birth in Bromyard in Herefordshire, and the Goldsmiths are commemorated in school, road and other names locally. They subsequently gave land to set up St Thomas church in Bromyard Avenue in 1915 to serve the growing Acton Vale area, but the church closed in the 1980s and the site is now the Canterbury Court housing development. However, I have fond memories of the former St Thomas church hall as the venue of school discos when I attended Faraday Comprehensive School (now the King Fahad Academy in the 1970’s.)


James Blandford-Baker presiding at the service - the biblical extract above the aisle is Thessalonians 5 16-18

The church was packed with the many friends James and Katherine have made in their time at St Dunstan’s. The gospel reading for the day was the wedding at Cana (Jesus turning water in to wine – John 2.1-11), which James joked in his sermon was appropriate given the way wine flows at St Dunstan’s (cue for much knowing laughter). This was confirmed in the lunch later, which was a triumph of logistics in feeding over a hundred people with salmon, vegetarian alternative and wine. I talked over lunch to Rev Maggie Davidge-Smith about her work in the hospital chaplaincy service – and particularly at the Meadow House hospice, which I’m visiting again soon in my PCT capacity.

Chatting to James afterwards, I particularly thanked him for his work in the community as a governor of local schools – he currently chairs John Perryn School governors (my old school) and has also been an active governor of East Acton Primary. It’s a tribute to James that a number of other local ministers turned up to celebrate his work, and I took the chance to chat to Revs Mick Drake from Acton Baptist and Alex Afriyi from East Acton Baptist (London Network Church) about local issues.