The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997 shocked not only the nation, but also the world, and millions of people watched her funeral on television. The burden of the service and its preparation fell on Wesley Carr, who had been Dean of Westminster Abbey for barely six months. “It is the biggest thing I have ever done,” he said at the time. “But it is a rare opportunity for the abbey to bring together pageantry, royal history and the common touch.”
In the week between Diana’s death and her funeral Carr spent many hours in consultation with Buckingham Palace and the Spencer family in an attempt to strike the right note. “One difficulty has been that the entire world wants to have a say in the order of the service,” he said. “We have had so many letters and telephone calls here suggesting that this hymn or that prayer should be included.” Despite such careful preparation, hackles were raised in some quarters by his agreement that Earl Spencer should deliver a eulogy that turned out to be critical of the royal family. “Who would have invited a multiple adulterer into his pulpit for such an occasion?” muttered one member of the General Synod.
Carr, a classicist, theologian and psychologist by training, was the right man for the job, being organised, efficient and calm. Yet he, like many others, was bewildered by the public reaction to the princess’s death. On the morning of the funeral he wandered around the crowds outside Westminster Abbey, eventually coming to the conclusion that vast numbers of people had forgotten, or had never known, how to grieve. Reflecting on the funeral four years later he recalled that “the most memorable part was the extraordinary silence as we passed by the west door”.
It was not the only great event at the abbey during Carr’s nine-year reign. He also oversaw the funeral of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 2002, as well as services to mark the Queen’s Golden Jubilee the same year and the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War three years later. Between them came the day-to-day running of the abbey. As dean, Carr was effectively chief executive of the Anglican church’s most historic shrine, a Benedictine abbey complex of immense historical and artistic importance. It fell to him, assisted by the chapter, a mini-college of clergy, to balance the competing interests of tourism, sanctity and tradition, while keeping enough money coming in to maintain the royal tombs, fan vaults, paintings, statues and a staff of 150.
Many found him to be remote, insensitive and high-handed; a “zealous liberal” determined to stamp his authority on the abbey, was one of the kinder descriptions. He believed firmly that once an issue was settled it should not be revisited. A case in point was female priests, a big issue for the Anglican communion in the 1990s. “I believe the Church of England is bending over backwards far too far for those who are against the ordination of women,” he said with typical lack of compromise during one debate.
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“He was described as ‘an overbearing prat’ after sacking the organist
Carr was quite fearless in not avoiding issues, deploying what some described with understatement as a robust management style. “Show Wesley a nettle and he will grasp it,” someone once said. During his time at the abbey he dismissed the director of music, Martin Neary, in 1998 after allegations of financial irregularities; he sacked guides over the age of 75, citing insurance reasons; was accused of exploiting Diana’s memory by selling off abbey chairs from her funeral for £3,000 each; donated the choristers’ fees for singing at the funeral to charity without their parents’ knowledge; implemented a pay cut of almost 20 per cent for staff at the abbey choir school; installed crowd control, security cameras and a system of visitor management known as “recovering the calm”; and introduced a £5 charge for non-worshippers because too many people were “demanding to see Elton John’s piano”.
The case of Neary, whose wife, Penny, was also sacked as the abbey’s concert secretary, proved particularly demanding. Neary, whose supporters included the MPs John Gummer, Sir Edward Heath and Frank Field, hired Cherie Booth, QC, the prime minister’s wife, to represent him. Carr, caught up in a case that even Anthony Trollope would have struggled to satirise, found himself described as a bully and a “bossy, overbearing prat”. He remained unruffled, saying that he had followed employment law to the letter and insisted that it would have been negligent for him to have “pulled a carpet” over the matter.
Neary appealed to the Queen, as Visitor of this Royal Peculiar. Lord Jauncey of Tullichettle, a retired law lord, was appointed to investigate, and after a 12-day hearing ruled in Carr’s favour, although he gave the dean and chapter “gamma minus” for their handling of the dispute. Carr was unrepentant, insisting that he had handled the dismissal in a “Christian manner” and accused “self-proclaimed Christians” of waging a “malevolent” campaign against him.
Arthur Wesley Carr was born in Beckenham, Kent, in 1941. His parents, Arthur and Irene, were senior officers in the Salvation Army and Carr retained connections with the army thereafter, as well as something of an upright bearing. He won a scholarship to Dulwich College, where he first felt called to the ministry, and read classics at Jesus College, Oxford, and theology at Jesus College, Cambridge, before preparing for ordination at Ridley Hall, Cambridge. In his younger years he was something of an evangelical, but over time came to describe himself as a “radical conservative” whose talents lay in problem-solving and reforming.
He met his future wife, Natalie Gill, at a church youth club in Beckenham and they were married in 1968. She survives him with their foster daughter, Helena Mann. They ran a hospitable home and Carr was an excellent cook. Walking round the abbey and its precincts offered ample exercise, and he was very happy to remind visitors that “Benedictines have always been in favour of red wine and I enjoy it as much as ever”.
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Carr served a four-year curacy at Luton parish church, after which he returned briefly to Ridley Hall as a tutor, but was felt to be unsuitable and was asked to leave. He then took up the Henry Stephenson Fellowship at the University of Sheffield, where he wrote his PhD thesis, which was published as Angels and Principalities.
“One bishop was heard to ask, ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?’
He moved to Chelmsford Cathedral in 1974 where Dick Herrick, later to be provost, was an educationist who worked closely with the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. He had set up a centre for training and research and Carr was the deputy director and then director. He became a residentiary canon in 1978 and headed training programmes for the diocese.
Soon his character traits were emerging. He was at “daggers drawn” with another canon, while the Bishop of Chelmsford, the Right Rev John Trillo, was heard to murmur: “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?” Yet Carr’s track record as an efficient administrator was a guarantee of promotion in the Church and soon he was climbing the clerical ladder.
Despite his reputation for abrasiveness Carr became known for his understanding, if not his practice, of pastoral ministry. He wrote eight books on the subject, the most significant being The Priestlike Task (1985). His last publication was The New Dictionary of Pastoral Studies in 2002, which he edited. From 1980 to 1997 he was a member of the General Synod, being an effective chairman of committees and an astringent inspector of theological colleges. As honorary fellow of New College, Edinburgh from 1986 to 1994, he investigated the impact of the media on aspects of pastoral ministry (published in Ministry and the Media in 1990).
In 1987 he was appointed Dean of Bristol in succession to Horace Dammers. This was a cathedral with few resources and Carr soon launched an appeal for its fabric, securing sponsorship from Npower. However, Carr had no wish to compete with parish churches in the diocese and so offered little at the cathedral that people would see as parochial. In a foretaste of future events he was involved in the dismissal of the cathedral organist and the resignation of the cathedral school’s headmaster.
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A decade later Carr succeeded Michael Mayne as Dean of Westminster, thus putting him firmly in the public eye. His position enabled him to reflect deeply on the role of the Church in society, which was a matter of great concern. There was little time to write while at the abbey; however, his preaching was always direct, drawing on human situations and often quoting poetry.
Parkinson’s disease began to affect him just as he arrived. It sometimes affected his voice and he had to walk very slowly, but the abbey had sufficient resources to carry him. He spoke eloquently about it in 2001 before the effects had become too debilitating. “The worst thing is the effect on my handwriting,” he said. “My hand won’t do what my brain intends.”
In 2004 a festschrift entitled The Character of Wisdom was published in his honour and two years later Carr retired to Hampshire. He and Natalie worshipped at Romsey Abbey, although illness prevented him doing much more. An uncompromising explorer of the Christian faith, Carr summed up both the place of the abbey and his own faith in a sermon preached at the Edward the Confessor Festival in 2005 when he said: “By focusing on the abbey . . . and illuminated by history and tradition, by culture and art, by pastoral care and sovereignty, each can find some way into an exploring faith.”
The Very Rev Dr Wesley Carr, KCVO, Dean of Westminster, 1997-2006, was born on July 26, 1941. He died of an infection on July 15, 2017, aged 75