My father, Nigel Lemon, who has died aged 83, was a lay preacher within the United Reformed Church and a senior lecturer in theology at Chester Faculty of Increased Training, which is now a part of the College of Chester.
Nigel preached in all of the locations that he lived, and as soon as he had settled down completely in Chester he served villages round West Cheshire and into Wales as an area pastor. In 1978 he was ordained, serving because the minister of Lavister and Trevalyn chapels close to Wrexham.
At Chester Faculty Nigel was recognized for his liberal and ecumenical outlook, which led him to introduce Islamic Research to the curriculum. He additionally arrange an MEd course that targeted on spiritual schooling.
Nigel was born in Bromley, Kent, to Winifred (nee Cole), who labored on the Co-Operative Wholesale Society’s head workplace in London, and Harry Lemon, who labored for William Brandt’s Sons & Co, a service provider financial institution. After attending Beckenham and Penge grammar faculty for boys he undertook trainer coaching on the Faculty of St Mark and St John in Chelsea, throughout which era he met Anne Barton. They had been married in 1964 after he began educating spiritual schooling at Colne Valley highschool in Huddersfield. It was a time of revolution in class RE educating, with a brand new dedication to elevating consciousness of the broader spiritual world past Christianity, and he thrived in that atmosphere.
After shifting on to show RE in Derbyshire on the John Port faculty in Etwall and the Herbert Strutt grammar faculty in Belper, in 1969 he went to Chester Faculty of Increased Training to show trendy church historical past. In 1981-82 the school granted him a sabbatical 12 months to review at Lancaster College for an MA in spiritual schooling, during which he achieved a distinction, and it was on his return that he launched his MEd course, additionally starting to show a part of a module on the historical past division’s MA in Victorian research.
Nigel had a gently subversive streak that manifested itself in quite a lot of methods on the faculty, together with his advocacy for colleagues who had been below strain from a sometimes-hostile administration and his assist for industrial motion when required. A touch of his political activism from a long time earlier than got here to gentle lately when considered one of his granddaughters underwent screening as a part of the method of turning into a particular constable – and Nigel needed to declare that he had been arrested on an Aldermaston CND march within the early Nineteen Sixties.
He took early retirement from Chester Faculty on the age of 59, however continued preaching, together with in chapels within the villages of Malpas, Barton and Farndon in Cheshire after which within the Preston and Fylde space after he and Anne moved to Lancashire in 2002.
Outdoors educating and preaching, Nigel’s pursuits had been equally divided between church historical past and transport, as evidenced by the truth that the 14 societies he belonged to on the time of his dying had been evenly break up between each topics. He had a eager curiosity in nonconformist and Quaker hymns (he had a wealthy singing voice), and was fascinated by the slender gauge railways of Switzerland.
He’s survived by Anne, their three youngsters, Katherine, Rachel and me, and three grandchildren, Rebecca, Grace and Ben. A fourth grandchild, Fiona, predeceased him.
