The Rev Timothy Tyndall obituary

The Guardian

29-01-2025

My father, Timothy Tyndall, who has died aged 99, was an Anglican priest who served for many years in Nottinghamshire before moving into more administrative religious work in the north-east of England and then at Church House in London.
Throughout those years he was a believer in the power of quiet witness rather than loud evangelism. Faith, for him, was less a matter of beliefs and doctrines, more a devotional practice.
Timothy was born in Birmingham to Denis, an Anglican priest, and his wife, Nora (nee Parker). It was a clerical family: a grandfather and an uncle were priests too. After schooling at Marlborough college, Wiltshire, he was called up for military service at 18 during the second world war. As he was a conscientious objector he served with the Friends Ambulance Unit in China. Afterwards he studied history and theology at Jesus College, Cambridge, before going to Wells Theological College to train for ordination.
At Cambridge he had met Ruth Turner, a medical student. After they married in 1953 they moved to Nottinghamshire, where Ruth worked part-time as a GP and Timothy served the diocese of Southwell, first as a curate in the mining village of Warsop then, in 1956, as a vicar in the market town of Newark.
In 1960 he became vicar at St Martin's church in the Sherwood area of Nottingham, where, rather than evangelising to bring parishioners into his church, his focus was to bear witness outside, through ecumenical outreach, community organising and chairmanship of the citywide Council of Voluntary Services.
Ruth, by then a geriatrician, was considerably less conventional than Tim, both ecclesiastically and culturally. She was readier than him to embrace a liberalised church, progressive political views, sexual open-mindedness and, above all, feminist insights. But he caught up with her in time.
In 1975 Timothy moved to the north-east to become priest-in-charge of St Michael's Bishopwearmouth and the rural dean of Sunderland, tasked with reorganising 20 standalone parishes into an integrated ministry. His career culminated at Church House in 1985, as chief secretary to the committee for the selection and training of candidates for ordination. He retired from that position in 1990.
Ruth died in 1998 and Timothy lived the final quarter-century of his life as a widower in London, first in Chiswick, then in Wapping. A creature of daily habit, he would drink his tea, read his Guardian, smoke his pipe, take his constitutional walk, catalogue his stamp collection and solve his puzzles. He also watched TV sports religiously – cricket, rugby, golf and athletics. Each day he would say his prayers and read his Bible just as he always had done.
Over the years Timothy cultivated an enormous circle of friends and family. A few months before he died, almost 150 of them assembled to celebrate his 99th birthday – and he greeted each by name.
He is survived by four children, Richard, Catherine, Rachel and me, and four grandchildren.