Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Extraordinary man left a mark like few others
Once hailed as “the fastest white man in the world”, the Rev Nicolas Stacey left a mark on it like few others.
His sprinting efforts at the 1952 Olympics and place in an iconic picture of friend and fellow athlete Roger Bannister are two highlights of an extraordinary life.
But it is for his work and achievements off the track that one of Canterbury’s most flamboyant and outspoken clergymen will be best remembered following his death on May 8, aged 89.
Born November 27, 1927, he was educated at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, and saw service on HMS Anson in the last months of the Second World War.
He took part in the liberation of Hong Kong, and witnessed the devastation of Hiroshima shortly after VJ Day, arriving in one of the first boats.
He resigned his commission in the Navy to read modern history at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and then trained for the priesthood at Cuddesdon Theological College.
During this time he represented his service, university and country in athletics, competing at the 1952 Olympics, where he narrowly missed out on qualifying for the 200m final, which featured only black athletes.
He is also seen in the famous photograph of Roger Bannister – a friend of his from Oxford – collapsing in his arms after running the first sub-four-minute mile.
Ordained in 1953, he served his title at St Mark’s, Portsea, Portsmouth, before becoming Domestic Chaplain to the Bishop of Birmingham in 1958.
It was during his time in Birmingham that he began to receive national attention, founding and editing a tabloid church newspaper, the Birmingham Christian News, which gained a reputation for comparatively racy journalism and a sensationalist approach to church news.
In 1960 he became rector of Woolwich, where he remained for eight years before leaving the Anglican ministry to pursue his own secular path to God, first as deputy director of Oxfam, a job he stayed in for only two years.
His next move was to become the first director of social serv-
‘Seen from outside, Kent was a deadbeat place. It wasn’t somewhere you went to work, it wasn’t cutting edge...the place was absolutely dire and in many ways it was quite brave of Nick to go there’
ices for the London Borough of Ealing in 1971. It was a controversial appointment because Rev Stacey was neither a social worker nor a local government officer.
In spite of this, three years later he was appointed Kent County Council’s director of social services.
The publication A Study in Leadership: Nick Stacey and Kent Social Services, written by Don Brand, explains: “Stacey inherited a department needing extensive modernisation in an authority with little appetite for change.
“Seen from outside, Kent was a deadbeat place. It wasn’t somewhere you went to work, it wasn’t cutting edge...the place was absolutely dire and in many ways it was quite brave of Nick to go there.”
By the time Rev Stacey left in 1985 he had transformed Kent into one of the leading departments in the country with a national reputation for imaginative innovation.
He was also responsible for pioneering from scratch two projects which were to become national government policy.
The first was to introduce professional fostering for delinquent and troubled teenagers, dispelling the belief that the only, and best, place for them was institutions.
The second was community care for the elderly. Instead of sending old people unable to care for themselves into residential homes, they were individually assessed to see what services they would require in order to stay in their own homes.
Revered both as a maverick and a passionate supporter of the arts and innovator of ideas, he is also credited with saving the Canterbury Festival early on after it experienced financial problems.
Television producer Peter Williams, who is president of the festival and was a good friend, said: “I was very sad to hear of his death. He was an extraordinary man who led an extraordinary life.
“He was something of a maverick who bristled with ideas,