Revd Canon George Warner

We were incredibly saddened to receive news of alumnus Canon George Warner who passed away Sunday, 28 January 2024. A friend and loyal supporter of our work at Westcott, he will be very much missed. Obituary and photograph kindly shared by Mrs Sue Molyneux Warner.

George was born in Glasgow in 1936 when his father, Kenneth Warner, was Provost of the Episcopal Cathedral. He was by far the youngest member of the family, with two older sisters and a brother 20 years his senior.

After Marlborough College, George saw National Service with the Royal West Kents. He took part in the Suez Expedition and afterwards was posted to Cyprus. In 1957 he went up to Trinity College, Oxford, where he read Greek and Roman History and Philosophy and played a good deal of hockey. He never claimed to have a vocation, but decided to offer himself for ordination and said afterwards that he was surprised to be accepted!

Before beginning his training at Westcott House he spent a year in a theological seminary in the USA. While in the States he met Leonie, a Rotary student from Belfast; they were married in July 1963 and spent the short summer term in Cambridge before moving to Birmingham.

George was ordained the following Michaelmas by Bishop Leonard Wilson and began work in Newtown. The incumbent was Geoffrey Brown and the training somewhat unorthodox: St George’s Church had been demolished because of structural problems, so the small congregation met ‘in an upper room’. George enjoyed the challenge enormously and retained a love for the Midlands. His two sons, Ken and Mark, were both born in Birmingham. George’s second curacy in Maidstone was more conventional, except that there was a significant period of interregnum very soon after he arrived there.

In 1969 George became chaplain and head of RE at Wellington College, where his daughter Rachel was born in 1971. Wary of becoming too comfortable in Berkshire, George and Leonie moved to Coventry, where he was Rector of the newly-formed Caludon Team – a pioneering collaboration between four churches, unusual in those days. They worked there for 17 years.

George never defined himself as a clergyman, but his priesthood illuminated his life. He characterised his way of being as ‘a ministry of interruptions’ – the interruptions being as important as whatever had been planned. His spirituality and theological understanding demanded a rootedness in what is actually happening and meeting people where they actually are.

Although his formal teaching career only lasted seven years, he was a lifelong educator. His aim in pastoral settings (and in his sermons) was to draw people out, and encourage them on – into new ways of thinking and into new rôles and responsibilities. He was immensely patient and profoundly kind. In liturgy he looked for focus, pace and dignity, but would always find space for silence, and for laughter.

George and Leonie moved to Leamington Spa in 1995; Leonie died two years later.

In 1999 George married Sue, the daughter of one of his Coventry curates, and after his retirement in 2002 they moved the few miles to Brailes in south Warwickshire, becoming happily immersed in village life. Throughout his retirement George served the churches of the Shipston Deanery and the South Feldon Group.

The enormous congregation at his joyful funeral was a testament to the love he gave and elicited during his 60 years of ministry and throughout his life.