Boldly innovative Dean who brought a welcome openness to Norwich Cathedral and St Paul’s

Alan Webster was Dean of Norwich, 1970-78, and of St Paul’s, 1978-87. He was a radical priest firmly rooted in the Church of England.

He spent the years 1942-46 as a curate in Sheffield under the quietly visionary leadership of Bishop Leslie Hunter, to whom he was always devoted. Webster’s life’s work was to be a development of the Hunter approach: the Church of England could be, and had to be, loved into new life so that it could be once again the moral and spiritual centre of the whole community; and one key to this process was the warmly human, imaginative and energetic parson, more concerned about the lay world than about ecclesiastical conventions.

 Dean Webster's Memorial Service in Norwich Cathedral, November 2007
 Photo courtesy of Norwich Evening News

Alan Brunskill Webster was born in 1918, the son of a clergyman. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and Queen’s College, Oxford, and he prepared for ordination at Westcott House, Cambridge.

Though he was attracted to history – in 1954 he published a biography of Joshua Watson, the layman who galvanised and organised much of the revival of Anglican church life after the Napoleonic wars – Webster was too much the restless activist to be content with the academic life. His vocation was to be a clerical and more boldly innovative kind of Watson.

Lenin in one corner and a holy icon in the other Mikhail Gorbachev described the secular and the spiritual in his childhood home as 'peaceful coexistence'.

He fulfilled this vocation partly by training other priests. He returned to Cambridge as vice-principal of Westcott House and was an enthusiastic teacher of ordinands at a time when there was considerable confidence that the reconstruction of Church and State would lead to a good future, together with an assurance that graduate priests would be accepted in the vanguard of progress. While he was at Westcott he met and married Margaret Falconer, who was then working for the Student Christian Movement. They formed a very strong partnership, especially in later years when Margaret became one of the leaders of the Movement for the Ordination of Women.

When Webster left Cambridge in 1953 it was in order to put his theories into practice as vicar of Barnard Castle, a country town in the diocese of Durham. Six years later his effective pastorate there was one of the reasons why he was appointed principal of Lincoln Theological College.

At Lincoln he was given scope to be creative in two courses which came to dominate his life – reconciliation with the Free Churches and the recognition of women. A college which had always had a distinguished staff but on a firmly Anglican basis, now found a Methodist teaching. The ethos of a men’s club, hitherto standard in seminaries, was also transformed by an active welcome not only to wives but also to women students.

Webster was not a creative theologian, but he was a friend and ally of radical thinkers such as Bishop Robinson, whose Honest to God therefore came as little surprise to this college in a cathedral city which on the face of it could be expected to be exposed to no winds other than those which blew over Lincolnshire.

This liveliness in the leadership of potential and actual clergy might have led to a bishopric, for example in Sheffield itself. But in 1970 Webster was invited to be Dean of Norwich.

He successfully switched his energy to that cathedral close, which is virtually an 18th-century village around a Norman monastery. He soon became a well-known figure in a diocese which was being shaken by changes with a rapidity not familiar to Norfolk – the drastic reduction in the number of isolated vicars under one bishop who was an enthusiast for teamwork, and an injection of doctrinally conservative but pastorally vigorous Evangelicalism. Webster’s own vision of the Church was different from Bishop Maurice Wood’s, and many in the diocese were grateful for the balance. But his main interest lay in relating the Cathedral to the laity living near-by. He made the central Sunday service a friendly Eucharist and he welcomed into the ancient building any event which seemed likely to bring Church and people closer together. The worship made the Cathedral a “momentary monastery”, but the main Christian action took place outside and another of his phrases was that the Close must be “open”.

This meant being more open to tourists, for whom a visitors’ centre provided a restaurant, a shop and an exhibition; more open to those seeking truth, for whom a study centre housed many conferences; and more open to the poor. A “night shelter” for vagrants was opened in the teeth of the objection that Norwich had no social problems.

When it had overcome its surprise at this dynamism, Norfolk was grateful. Webster was helped particularly by the support of the Cathedral’s high steward, Sir Edmund Bacon. Some grumbles from the other clergy could be heard to the effect that they were not being consulted, but Webster’s impatient individualism became a problem only when he reluctantly accepted a call to become Dean of St Paul’s in 1978, incautiously describing himself as a new broom in the hearing of a more strong-minded set of clerical colleagues and a more powerfully conservative business community.

He remained in London’s greatest church for nine years of hard work. Despite controversies (sometimes bitter) behind the scenes, he did in St Paul’s what he had done in Norwich – but on a bigger scale. Regular congregations were large; tourists came in millions; all were welcomed with a human touch and, so far as was possible, made into pilgrims and friends; representatives of non-Anglican Churches were prominent on the great national occasions in the Cathedral such as the deliberately subdued service to mark the end of the Falklands conflict.

As chairman of the Deans’ and Provosts’ Conference, Webster saw his colleagues from all over the country beginning to work in the same pattern, making the Cathedrals the strongest and most attractive part of the Church of England’s public face. He was often asked for advice.

His outside interests and struggles were also on a new scale. With his wife he was in the forefront of the campaign to ordain women. His continuing concern for the poor now took him to Nicaragua or to meetings with neighbours in the City of London to promote the report about urban deprivation, Faith in the City. And his could be a critical voice as a church commissioner discussing the stewardship of assets. In the General Synod he was a spokesman for the Open Synod group, which although reluctant to see itself as a pressure group was in fact a liberal or radical alternative to Catholic or Evangelical conservatism.

It was not easy to humanise Wren’s architecture or to interest the top of the City of London in Latin America’s liberation theology, and as a member of the Crown Appointments Commission recommending men for diocesan bishoprics Webster may have asked himself whether he was in the right job. But he will be remembered not only as a forceful dean with strong convictions but also as a person of warmth and almost boyish zest at times. To the end he remained busy, always generous with his wisdom and his time, not least as a regular and valued contributor to the Faith page and the obituary columns of The Times.

He made his home a place of welcome to many. He was appointed KCVO in 1988, in which year he retired to Norfolk and a cottage at Cley next the Sea.

He is survived by his wife and their two sons and two daughters.

The Very Rev Alan Webster, KCVO, Dean of St Paul’s, 1978-87, was born on July 1, 1918. He died on September 2, 2007, aged 89.

From the Norwich Evening News, 24 November 2007:

Hundreds attend service for former Dean

Members of the congregation reflect on the life of former Dean of Norwich and St Paul’s cathedrals, the Very Rev Alan Webster at a memorial service for Dr Webster at Norwich Cathedral. Hundreds of people gathered to remember the life of the former Dean of Norwich and St Paul's cathedrals - the Very Rev Alan Webster.

  Photo: courtesy of Times Online

Norwich Cathedral was full for the memorial service for Dr Webster, who died at the age of 89 in September this year.

The Dean of Norwich from 1970-78 and St Paul's from 1978-88, was remembered in an address by the Very Rev Colin Slee, Dean of Southwark and a curate in Norwich when Dr Webster was Dean.

Mr Slee, who recalled being allowed by Dr Webster to preach from Norwich Cathedral pulpit a few weeks after being ordained, said: “He was a man with an open mind and an agile imagination. Some people spark in the company of the young; Alan was one of them. During his time in Norwich, the cathedral had over-night starve-ins and danced liturgy.

“He persuaded the landed gentry and farmers of Norfolk to fell their prized oaks to restore the roof of this marvellous cathedral. Norfolk landowners do not cut down 400-year-old oaks without being seriously convinced it's good for their souls.”

But he reserved most of his words for the two greatest challenges of Dr Webster's life - campaigning for the ordination of women and trying to open up cathedrals to the public.

Mr Slee said: “His untiring encouragement and engagement with those seeking to achieve change in the Church of England that would enable the ordination of women must be one of his greatest achievements.

Dr Webster pictured outside St Paul's Cathedral in 1987. “But the work for change remains unfinished until there are women bishops also.

“Opening up cathedrals to enable people to discover their contents was a major part of his life. After doing it at Norwich, he tried St Paul's. He achieved much, but didn't fully succeed.”

The former Dean took part in many of the great state occasions during his tenure at St Paul's, including helping officiate in the marriage of Lady Diana Spencer and Prince Charles in July 1981.

Educated at Shrewsbury and in theology and history at Queen's College Oxford, he was ordained in 1942 and served in the dioceses of Sheffield, Ely and Durham before his appointment as warden of Lincoln Theological College in 1959.

He was made Dean of Norwich in 1970 where he ministered for eight years and was responsible for the foundation of the Norwich Night Shelter in 1973. In 1978, he moved to London to become the 89th Dean of St Paul's. He spent almost a decade endeavouring to make the cathedral a more welcoming place for visitors.

He retired in 1988 and moved back to Norfolk where he continued to minister until 2001. He was made Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) in 1988.

He is survived by his wife, Margaret, two sons and two daughters.

...But Alan's wife, and Alan himself, were not entirely happy in St Paul's...
...In Norwich there had been some protests, at least in the early years, when the Dean launched his projects without a full consultation with the residentiary canons who with him constituted the Chapter, but in St Paul's tensions and disputes were far worse because the canons were more formidable. It was therefore with relief that in 1987 the Websters retired to Norfolk,...