Dean of Peterborough Cathedral is the Very Revd Charles Taylor.
He can be contacted at:
The Deanery, Minster Precincts, Peterborough PE1 1XS
Tel: 01733 562780
Secretary: Elizabeth Knight
DeanPetoffice@aol.com
www.peterborough-cathedral.org.uk
Biography of the Very Revd Charles Taylor
Charles Taylor was born in 1953, the son of a parish priest in the Lichfield Diocese. He was a chorister at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, where he sang at the State Funeral of Sir Winston Churchill and the memorial service for President John F Kennedy.
After reading theology at Selwyn College, Cambridge, Charles trained for the ordained ministry at Cuddesdon College, Oxford. He also studied at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, part of the Graduate Theological Union at Berkley, California. He was ordained at Lichfield Cathedral in 1976, and was then curate at the Collegiate Church of St. Peter in central Wolverhampton.
In 1979, Charles was appointed Chaplain of Westminster Abbey, where he met and married his wife, Catherine, who is the daughter of the Very Revd Trevor Beeson (then a Residentiary Canon of Westminster Abbey and Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons, later to become Dean of Winchester).
From 1984 he was Vicar of St Luke Stanmore with St Mark, Oliver’s Battery, a socially mixed parish in Winchester of 12,000 people. In 1990 he moved to Southampton where he was Rector of North Stoneham and Bassett, an even larger parish of 16,000 people and four churches. While there he was also a part time lecturer in liturgy at Salisbury and Wells Theological College.
He returned to Lichfield in 1995 as a Residentiary Canon and Precentor of the Cathedral. He has been responsible for the regular and special services, and has also been Diocesan Officer for Worship and Prayer. He was recently elected Chair of the national Precentors’ Conference, and has also written several papers on worship in Cathedrals.
His wide experience in different parts of Britain has fuelled his concern, in his words, “to live out the Kingdom of God here and now in the public community, that the hungry may receive their daily bread, the sinner and the broken find forgiveness and reconciliation. A cathedral in particular has a special opportunity to be a window of that vision of humanity.”
Family and wider interests
His wife Catherine currently works for Walsall Education Authority as a Home Tutor, teaching children who cannot be at school for medical or psychological reasons. They have two children – Rachel (22), a fourth year medical student at Newcastle University, and Benedict (18), who is hoping to study for a BSc in Paramedical Sciences.
His other interests are wide ranging. As a child he was a regular attender at Molineux, the home of Wolverhampton Wanderers FC, and he continues to follow their fortunes. A soccer and hockey goalkeeper while a student, he kept wicket for the Lichfield clergy cricket team when a curate.
Charles has been on the Board of Directors of the International Lichfield Arts Festival, and likes to tread the boards himself occasionally. He starred on several occasions in a revue, The Loose Canon Fires Again! Staged in Lichfield, it employed his love of Black Country humour. While a student he appeared in several Gilbert and Sullivan performances, including the first operetta ever staged in the outdoor Minack Theatre in Cornwall.
Apart from that, he is also keen on classic cars although does not possess one, and enjoys cooking when he has the time. He used to play the organ regularly, but says that now he has to wear varifocal spectacles they serve only to magnify his incompetence as an organist!
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