Transcription of obituary published in the Minutes of Conference
LANCELOT BROWN: born in Willington, County Durham in 1886. After training at Hartley College, he was appointed to Lowick in 1912 and thereafter spent his entire ministry in the north-east, twenty-eight years in County Durham, the county which had nurtured him and whose people he loved, and to which he gave himself unsparingly until his active ministry ended in 1955 and he retired to Arnside.
He served in circuits in Sunderland, Ashington, South Shields, Blaydon, Houghton-le-Spring, South Bank, West Auckland, Bishop Auckland and Stockton-on-Tees. While serving in these circuits he filled many offices in the districts of the north-east region and his administrative abilities found full recognition in his appointment as Secretary of the Middlesbrough and Darlington District. For six years he served the district in this capacity with great distinction. His devotion and ability, his sound judgement and warm disposition won for him the admiration and esteem of all Synod representatives. He was recognised as a statesman the wisdom of whose policies for the district were fully acknowledged.
A diligent student, he made himself familiar with the best literature in theology and philosophy and to the end he continued to feed his richly stored mind. Through all the years of his ministry he was governed by a high conception of the ministerial office and by an exalted sense of pastoral responsibility. He possessed preaching gifts of a high order, his utterances manifesting clear thinking, incisive phrasing and practical wisdom, and all in the service of a humane and compassionate spirit. During the war years, and notably during the years of industrial depression, he was a tower of strength to his people, bringing help and protection to the oppressed and comfort to the sorrowing. It was in this and in his distinguished service as a hospital chaplain that he showed the largeness of his heart and the deep caring of his spirit. Upheld to the end by a gracious and loving wife, he died, after months of declining strength in which he showed exemplary patience and fortitude, on the 2 November 1965, in the seventy-ninth year of his age and the fifty-fourth of his ministry.
Family
Lancelot was born on 12 November 1886 at Willington, Co. Durham, to parents William Adamson Brown, a coal miner, and Isabella. He was baptised on 21 November 1886 at Bishop Auckland, Co. Durham.
He married Sarah Robson in the summer of 1916 at Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland. The 1933 Methodist Who’s Who records they had one son.
Lancelot died on 2 November 1965 at Beaumont Hospital, Lancaster, Lancashire.
Circuits
- Hartley
- 1912 Lowick
- 1916 Sunderland IV
- 1919 Ashington
- 1924 S Shields
- 1929 Blaydon on Tyne
- 1935 Houghton le Spring
- 1940 South Bank &c
- 1946 Bishop Auckland Cen
- 1953 Stockton
- 1955 Kendal (Sup)
References
Methodist Minutes 1966/196
W Leary, Directory of Primitive Methodist Ministers and their Circuits, 1990
Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers
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