CROYDON CHRONICLES: Denise Mead became verger at Croydon Parish Church in 1993. This week, after working with three Vicars of Croydon, organising countless church events and welcoming Archbishops and a Princess Royal to Croydon, she will take her leave for retirement.
Chorister and archivist DAVID MORGAN pays tribute
Farewell service: Denise Mead even had a piece of music composed in her honour during her 32 years of service
The Christmas Day service at Croydon Minster this year will mark the end of an era.
Denise Mead, the church’s verger for 32 years, is hanging up her robes, putting away her ceremonial virge, the stick she carries in church processions, and logging off her parish administrator’s computer for the final time before she heads off to well-earned retirement.
“I have been so lucky to work in a building like this,” said Mead as she reflected on her time in the Minster’s beautiful building.
Arriving to start her duties by walking through the silent and atmospheric building is one of the many things that she will miss. “I come into the building to get everything ready before the bustle of the day. Every day the light through the stained glass windows is different. It is such a calming place.”
Mead began her time as a verger in December 1993 . She took up the parish administrator role in 2001.
Christmas bells: Mead has been the organisational force behind three decades of services at Croydon Minster
During her time in the job, she has seen the church name changed from Croydon Parish Church to Croydon Minster. This happened in May 2011. I never ask her how many times she faltered when answering the phone, replying “Good morning, Croydon Parish Church!” instead of “Good morning, Croydon Minster!”
Mead has dealt with the widest range of people you can imagine. The Minster has many visitors, many of them from overseas. From time to time, Americans turn up and want to see the memorial to John Singleton Copley, one of the greatest of American portrait painters, who is buried here.
Genealogy queries occur when relatives are looking up their ancestors. Even though the Minster doesn’t hold the registers any more, Mead kindly directs the enquirers to the right place.
The Minster Church has the Archbishop of Canterbury as its patron, so Mead has had to liaise with their office on many occasions. There have been four Archbishops of Canterbury since she became verger. The last archbishop to visit Croydon was Rowan Williams.
One advantage in working both her roles is that during the week Mead can plan for whatever a service might need to run smoothly, and then on Sunday she can be present so that she can see for herself if anything has been overlooked and needs rectifying.
The church has been host to many significant services while Mead has been the parish administrator, the lynchpin of the organisation, linking together the various clergy with groups and families.
Mead remembered, especially, the funeral of Meredith Kercher in April 2012. The former Old Palace School pupil was murdered in Italy in a high-profile case. The church was packed to capacity for that emotional service.
Another poignant service which she coordinated was the funeral of Daniel De-Gale in 2008, aged just 21. He had been the first black person in the country to receive a stem cell transplant from an unrelated donor.
Organising a service where a member of the Royal Family attended brought its own challenges. In 2014, for the 400th anniversary of the Whitgift Foundation, Princess Anne was the guest of honour.
Many services of celebration are among the most noted during Mead’s time at the Minster.
The Windrush celebrations in 2019 for the 70th anniversary of the arrival in this country of West Indians eager to fill the gaps in the labour market in those post-war years was one such memory.
One of the very largest congregations Mead could remember was for the civic service which remembered the 50th anniversary of VE day. “People were standing in the side chapels,” Mead says.
Many civic and military services have been organised over the years. The laying up of the colours of the Dunkirk veterans was a memorable one. In all such services there was a mix of emotions which were reflected in how the service was planned. There was pride in what had been achieved, as well as sorrow for those who never came home.
Mead’s time at the church goes back to when she was a girl. Her family used to worship in St Mark’s, South Norwood, but were attracted to change churches because of the music at the parish church. Mead’s father hoped he could join the choir. He didn’t pass the audition. It was left to young Denise and her sister to take up the musical baton.
Drawn by music: Denise Mead, here in her verger’s robes and with her ceremonial verge
Denise sang in the girls’ choir in the 1960s, which, under the direction of Chris Phillis, was one of the trail-blazing girls’ choirs at the time in churches in this country. Mead only stopped singing in the choir when her daughter joined. “I didn’t want her to think that her mum was breathing down her neck.”
Mead has been vital in the running of the Minster’s choirs. “The choristers may remember her most for giving out their choir pay,” said Justin Miller, the director of music.
Mead has created a great network of church contacts, in the Diocese of Southwark and nationally and internationally. She is the conference secretary of the Church of England Guild of Vergers, of which she is also a fellow. Several vergers came to share a farewell Evensong for Mead. Among the pieces sung was the first-ever performance of something composed especially for her by Martin How, the Minster’s emeritus organist.
In June, Mead was awarded the Lancelot Andrewes medal from the Bishop of Southwark, Christopher Chessun, at a service in the Minster in recognition of her years of dedicated service. “She has served with grace and kindness and has been a blessing to the community here,” Bishop Chessun said.
Rev Canon Dr Andrew Bishop, the third Vicar of Croydon in Mead’s time at the Parish Church/Minster, summed up her approach to her jobs. “Denise has been a devoted servant of the church’s mission here at the Minster, with a deep sense of God’s call to be a verger. We are going to miss her.”
Supported by her husband Melvyn, Denise Mead has been a stalwart in the life of the church over many years.
They deserve a wonderful retirement.
David Morgan, pictured right, has been chronicling Croydon’s history for Inside Croydon for almost a decade. Morgan is a former Croydon headteacher, now the volunteer education officer at Croydon Minster, who offers tours or illustrated talks on the history around the Minster for local community groups
If you would like a group tour of Croydon Minster or want to book a school visit, then ring the Minster Office on 020 688 8104 or go to the website on www.croydonminster.org and use the contact page
Some previous articles by David Morgan:
- 10 shillings to join the Goose Club and lay on a Christmas feast
- Oh yes she is! Victorian dancer who became a pantomime star
- This was a pub landlord who never needed any bouncers
- The church fire that consumed a thousand years of history
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