Peter Hayward

Priest

THE REVEREND Peter Hayward, who has died at 93, was a senior cleric in the York diocese and a regular correspondent to The Yorkshire Post for some 70 years.

Born on Halloween 1926 in Coventry, he was the youngest of seven children. After obtaining his school and higher certificates, he took work until the war’s end as an articled clerk at the local council.

But the church was already an influence. His father, Harry, had been a church warden, and in 1945 Peter began ecclesiastical training at the College of the Resurrection in Mirfield and at Leeds University. He was ordained in Wakefield Cathedral in 1950, taking up the post of curate of South Elmsall with Moorthorpe in the Wakefield diocese, later becoming the priest in charge of the Mission Church at Moorthorpe.

In 1956, he took up an appointment in the Birmingham Diocese as the Bishop’s Chaplain to develop church life and oversee the construction of the new St Thomas’s Church, which opened in 1960. He also became involved with the RAF Training Corps, serving as chaplain to several Midlands units and later the Central and East Yorkshire Wing. In July 1970 he moved to the York Diocese as rector of Hotham and vicar of North Cave with Cliffe. Dealing with a population of 1,500 instead of 15,000 he completed his thesis on Early Greek Christian Hymns.

Additionally he served as Rural Dean of Howdenshire from 1984–93 and took responsibility for the neighbouring parish of Newbald in 1997. In 2000, as his health failed, he retired to Allonby in Cumbria, to be closer to his daughter and grandchildren, and joined the Carlisle Diocese as Associate Priest in the Solway Deanery. His wife, Joyce, whom he married in 1956, died in 2016, and he is survived by his son, Richard, daughter, Rosemary, and three grandchildren.