Profile

Nature

Wild Trout Hero 2016

Maureen Brierley, member of the River Mel Restoration Group tells us that South Cambs. Ecology Officer, Rob Mungovan has recently won an award from the Wild Trout Trust. Rob has been an advisor to the Group since it was formed, which has done so much to improve the Mel and restore it to a proper chalk stream. This is from their website.

Rob Mungovan, Wild Trout Hero 2016 Rob’s day job is as an ecologist with South Cambridgeshire District Council but, for wild trout, he comes into his own working on the rivers across eastern central England. Rob is a truly passionate wild trout fisher and an equally passionate advocate for the conservation and improvement of our rivers, a very worthy Wild Trout Hero. Congratulations Rob!

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Profile

Lizzie Shipp

You have already had a brief introduction to the new Priest in Charge at All Saints’ Church but I thought it would be nice to find a little more about the kind of person she is.

Born in Castle Rising, Norfolk in 1981 into a farming family, Lizzie has an older brother who works in London as an IT specialist for Barnardos. The farm was mostly arable, with a PYO sign in the summer catering for the visitors to Castle Rising, who would buy strawberries and other fruit for their picnics. The family attended the church on the Royal Estate and she enjoyed a happy rural childhood. At the age of 15 she had a ‘Road to Damascus’ experience and knew that she wanted to devote her life to the Church. She was confirmed when she was 18 by the Bishop of Lynn (now the Dean of Windsor).

On leaving school in 1999, she went to Leicester University to read business economics, but found she had no desire to follow her fellow graduates into the city to pursue a life in commerce. She returned to Norfolk and started training to be a social worker. During this time, she felt even more strongly called to serve God and went into retreat in a Benedictine Monastery to contemplate her future. With a naughty grin, she admitted that they served a wicked chocolate dessert!

At the time she had her doubts about the ordination of women and resisted any suggestions that she should go into the ministry, but after a great deal of soul-searching she eventually realised that was her vocation and so allowed her name to be put forward. During the selection period (things move somewhat slowly in church circles) she left social work and for 18 months trained as a chartered accountant in King’s Lynn until she was accepted into Cuddesdon Theological

College, near Oxford. Already having a degree, she was able to do the Oxford Schools degree in 2 years instead of three and in her final year did an MA in Ministry. In February 2007 she spent a month at the Irish College in Rome – Lizzie thinks that she is the first woman to have done this – studying alongside Catholic Seminarians. She loved her time in Rome, studying hard during the day and going out with her fellow students at night for a glass of wine, all the time discussing theological questions. She found the Irish Catholics enormously supportive and they welcomed her as a fellow disciple.

At the end of her first year at Oxford she won a scholarship to study for a month at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute on the outskirts of Jerusalem. At the end of her second year she completed a month at St Giles, Cripplegate in the City of London, and was also attached to St. Paul’s Cathedral. Whilst in Jerusalem, taking a short cut one evening to get to Manger Square, she was apprehended by a group of Israeli Special Forces waving machine guns at her – a very hairy moment.

Lizzie met her husband Tom through a mutual friend who ‘set up’ a date for 13th October 2011 at 2.23 p.m. in a coffee shop in Worcester! (How many of us remember the exact time and date we met our partner? I do). Tom, Yorkshire born, was teaching Classics in Monmouth and they found they shared a love of walking, cycling, dogs and gardening – so the mutual friend knew them both well. Tom has an older sister Katy who is a consultant Psychiatrist in Cheshire and a younger brother George, working in medical research in Hitchin and between them they provide two young nephews and a niece.

Tom has taken up a position as Head of Classics at Kings School, Cambridge. He took his degree at Emmanuel College, Cambridge – so the Boat Race can provide some excitement as they are in opposite camps. As well as sharing Lizzie’s passions he is also an organist and they have a love of opera. They went to Glyndebourne in the summer and are shortly to see Cosi fan Tutte at Covent Garden to celebrate their first wedding anniversary.

Lizzie was ordained in 2007. She was assistant Curate and Priest-Lecturer at Wymondham Abbey in Norfolk until 2010, then in 2011 Chaplain to the Bishop of Worcester and a Minor Canon of Worcester Cathedral. She and Tom were married in the Cathedral in October 2015. They had a splendid nuptial mass, with the Bishop marrying them, the Archdeacon delivering the sermon, the bell ringers giving them a full peal as a wedding present and they had trumpeters from Birmingham School of Music! What a splendid affair. Tom’s best man, a composer, wrote a special anthem with a Latin setting of Ubi Caritas and their honeymoon was spent in a place with no mobile phone reception!

Asked about her hobbies, Lizzie revealed that she loves travelling, particularly in France and Italy, walking, cycling and – the big surprise of the interview – she has run FOUR marathons! London and Berlin in 2009, Edinburgh in 2011 and London in 2012. In Edinburgh her time was 4 hours 4 minutes and she feels that she must do one more marathon, possibly in New York, to break the 4-hour barrier. She runs in support for the East Anglian Children’s Hospice (EACH).

Both are very keen gardeners and are planning to do great things at the Vicarage, constructing an Italianate garden with cypress trees (already bought) and a Japanese meditation garden with a bamboo grove. As a farmer’s daughter, she is in tune with the soil and the seasons.

Dottie, the black Labrador who greeted me effusively, is a very important part of the family – sadly their corgi/collie cross, Audrey, had to be put down shortly before they moved to Melbourn so a new puppy, Patsy, will soon be joining the household. Let’s hope she does not decide to take an interest in digging in the garden!

As if all this were not enough to fill this energetic young woman’s day, she is also doing a PHD on 16th Century Church politics (a fascinating time in the evolution of the Church of England) and has completed 60,000 words of the required 100,000. This is done as a part-time distance student at Durham University.

Lizzie is enormously excited to return to parish ministry, and is very much looking forward to meeting as many people in Melbourn as possible. She was born a country girl so village life is not alien to her, but she is amazed at just how much goes on here! Very aware of the problems of providing homes for young people when there is so much pressure from the enormous amount of accommodation needed for the Silicon Fen explosion in the area, Lizzie feels there are challenging times ahead. She is a sincere and caring person (with a lovely sense of humour) and with her experience as a social worker is conscious of the problems facing young people today.

So if you see a slight figure with a large black dog and a small puppy out walking, or a lycra-clad runner pounding the streets do call, ‘Hello’. It is our dynamic young Priest in Charge and she would love to meet you. Mavis Howard