THE COMMON ROOM AND STAFF Three masters left us in July: Mr John Orr and Mr. Trevor Tiffany to take up other appointments, and the Revd. Noel Kemp-Welch has retired as Chaplain; his sermon preached at the Commemoration Service is reproduced in this edition. The Headmaster has written about all three, and we join in wishing them well. We offer our good wishes, too, to Mr. E. W. Herring who has been our Caterer; for him nothing seems to have been too much trouble, and we have been fortunate in his quiet and courteous efficiency; and to Mr. J. G. Coates who, as Clerk of Works, has had a very important part in the tremendous range of improvements in our buildings in recent years.
N.H.K-W. Noel Kemp-Welch leaves St. Peter's after twenty years as Chaplain. A Choral Scholar at King's College, Cambridge, he graduated in History and Theology in 1933; his parish experience was gained in Liverpool in the late thirties and in parishes in Berkshire, and for three years he was Chaplain of King's College, Cambridge. After the war, he spent nine years as Warden and Headmaster of St. Michael's College, Tenbury, before coming to St. Peter's in 1956. I can speak from personal experience only of Noel's last nine years in York. These have been increasingly busy and noisy years, so memory suggests, and in that business and noise Noel is not a man to have raised his voice. But his voice has been heard clearly all the same. Thus, in all the confusion of a rehearsal for one of the great Minster services, Noel would be there, quietly deploying his vast forces and miraculously getting us in the right places at the right time. He has introduced the new liturgical services of the Holy Communion into the School, so that we are now well used to Series 3. In his introductions to readings in Chapel, in his meditatively personal sermons, in his taking of Family Communions and in his readings in the Compline services, he has constantly reminded us of an alternative society, of a needed dimension, of the futility of competition and conceit and self-seeking. He has exemplified, as well as preached, peace of mind. Yet the message was not passive: he called us to self-discipline, with firm expressions of conviction, and showed an alert appreciation of beauty. Nor was he narrow or sectarian. In the Chapel and the Theological Society he has welcomed variety of voices—high and low, Quaker, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Jewish, agnostic—as long as they were sincere and affirmative. I retain clear memories of Noel in various contexts—as a genial umpire of cricket games in the summer; as one struggling gallantly in the Common Room to impose order on notice-boards and work-tables; as the man behind the examination scene calmly coping with the problems of panic-stricken omission by G.C.E. candidates; above all as a musician, singing as the Christus in that superbly simple setting of the Passion by Vittoria. And I remember the rapt attention he gained when, in a Chapel service, he sang one of Vaughan Williams's mystical songs, a setting of words by Herbert—surely a priest with whom Noel has an affinity. It is good news indeed that Noel will continue to exercise this gift of his in the Minster Choir. Our gratitude to him cannot be measured in normal ways. Our best wishes go with him and Stella in his retirement. P.D.R.G. 8
