Williamson, Eric Stanley (1905-1996)

Transcription of obituary published in the Minutes of Conference

ERIC STANLEY WILLIAMSON: born in Leicester on 6th January 1905. He attended Burton-on-Trent Grammar School before moving to Hampshire where he preached his first sermon at Emsworth, He was accepted as a candidate for the Primitive Methodist ministry in 1926 after failing the medical examination in the previous year. He was sent for training to Hartley Victoria College under Dr A S Peake. His probation was spent in the Brighton and Hove circuit, and thereafter he served in the following circuits; Liphook, Chichester, Ryde (East Wight), Shaftesbury and Gillingham, Eastleigh, Ilkeston, Mansfield, Silchester, Buckfastleigh and Southwold. 

In the Liphook circuit he met Jeanne Brooker and they were married in 1938. They had four children, Martin, Christopher, Gillian and David, who were an important part of Eric’s life. After three years as an active supernumerary at Henley-on-Thames in the Reading circuit, he retired in 1972 to Barton-on-Sea in the Christchurch and Lymington circuit where he continued to preach and exercise a valued pastoral ministry. Worship was important to him, and he was meticulous in his preparation.

Eric was a genuinely humble, modest man, but was proud to have preached his last sermon at the age of 90 back at Emsworth, where he had begun seventy-three years before. He never ceased to marvel that he had been called to be a Methodist minister; and the quality of his life and ministry derived from his living close to God. After a period of increasing weakness and failing health, he died on 6th August 1996 in the ninety-second year of his life and the sixty-sixth year of his ministry.

Family

Eric was born on 6 January 1905 at Leicester, Leicestershire, to parents John William Abell Williamson, a dispenser of medicines (1911), and Harriet Smith.

He married on Jeanne M Brooker (b1919) on 10 August 1938 in the Petersfield Registration District, Hampshire. Birth records identify four children.

• Martin J (b1940)
• Christopher B (b1943)
• Gilliam M (b1945)
• Alan David (b1946)

Eric died in August 1996 at Barton on Sea, New Milton, Hampshire.

Circuits

• Hartley
• 1929 Brighton
• 1933 Liphook &c
• 1934 Chichester
• 1936 East Wight
• 1942 Shaftsbury &c
• 1948 Ilkeston Central
• 1951 Mansfield Central
• 1954 Silchester
• 1960 Buckfastleigh
• 1965 E Suffolk
• 1969 Barton on S (S)

References

Methodist Minutes 1997/56

W Leary, Directory of Primitive Methodist Ministers and their Circuits, 1990

Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers