Bishop Simon Burrows has died aged 86.
For twenty years he was Bishop of Buckingham and at his death he was honorary Assistant Bishop of his home diocese Winchester.
His grandfathers were both bishops.
Simon Burrows was aged 8 when his father Headley Burrows was appointed vicar of St Peter’s Bournemouth in 1936. By the time his father left in 1942 to become Archdeacon of Winchester, the country had entered the Second World War and Simon was at Eton.
Just before the family left Bournemouth, his father organised a chain of buckets to prevent the church catching fire following the bombing of Beales opposite which created a big fire.
Simon was able to reach back 140 years for as a child in Bournemouth he met the verger Harry Crumpler who had been appointed by the town’s first vicar Morden Bennett.
As assistant Bishop he worked with Bishop of Winchester Colin James who had been vicar of St Peter’s Bournemouth in the late Sixties.
The funeral of the Right Reverend Simon Headley Burrows is at Winchester Cathedral on Friday 21 August at 11am.
As Simon’s sister, Sarah, was a school friend of mine, I was invited to the Archdeaconry in Winchester, when their parents gave a party for Simon’s birthday. I think he was probably 16 and I remember, as an 8 year old, learning Sir Roger de Coverley!
I had made the acquaintance of his grandfather who was Bishop of Sheffield when my father was Vicar of Ardsley, Barnsley and I was then only 3!
Later, Simon was Chaplain of Jesus College, Cambridge and missed my fiancé, an undergraduate, by a year! He was, however, friendly with the student who later became a godfather to our daughter!
I sometimes wonder where Sarah is now? We lost touch when she left my school and went to board at another.