The Very Reverend Peter Haynes
Much-loved Dean of Hereford who landed in hot water when he proposed selling the Mappa Mundi
THE VERY REVEREND PETER HAYNES, who has died aged 92, was Dean of Hereford from 1982 to 1992, having previously been Archdeacon of Wells and a notable parish priest. His appointment to low-key Hereford suggested the culmination of a highly competent yet unsensational ministry. He soon discovered, however, that the cathedral needed urgent major repairs and that the Dean and Chapter lacked the necessary resources.
In desperation, and with the backing of his chapter and the bishop, Haynes decided in 1988 to sell the cathedral’s copy of a Mappa Mundi. Dating from about 1300, this was the largest surviving version of a medieval map of the known world and for many years had been displayed in the cathedral unprotected.
When news of the proposed sale leaked there were worldwide protests, while questions were asked in Parliament about the freedom of deans and chapters to sell national treasures. Haynes was pilloried as an irresponsible vandal and strongly criticised by some of his fellow deans.
Eventually the National Heritage Fund and the American Paul Getty Foundation came to the rescue. The map (for which a broker coined the code name Madam Pin Up, an anagram of Mappa Mundi) was withdrawn from sale and it is now housed in a specially designed new building.
The government was also persuaded to make funds available to ensure that nothing of this sort should happen again, with deans and chapters subject to strict controls over the management of cathedral fabrics and precious contents.
Peter Haynes was born in Bristol on April 24 1925, the son of Francis and Winifred Haynes. As a small boy he visited Temple Meads station and was captivated by the railways. He left school at 16 to join Barclays Bank. Three years later he enlisted in the RAF, becoming a wireless operator and air gunner in Coastal Command.
Earlier he had met a retired Congregational minister. “He was a dear old clergyman,” Haynes told the Hereford Times in 2016. “I think talking to him gave me the first idea I might be drawn [to Holy Orders].” Demobilised in 1947, he went to Selwyn College, Cambridge, to read Theology, completing his training at Cuddesdon Theological College, near Oxford.
Like many of his generation, Haynes chose to serve in the North of England and, after ordination in York Minister in 1952, became curate at Stokesley, near Middlesbrough. Three years later he moved to a similar post at Hessle, near Hull, followed by five years as Vicar of St John’s Church, Drypool.
His pastoral gifts and open personality were greatly valued and his ability to relate to young people led, in 1963, to appointment as youth chaplain and assistant director of religious education in the diocese of Bath and Wells.
Return to parish work as Vicar of Glastonbury in 1970 coincided with the revival of the Glastonbury Festival in a hippy style. Fifteen hundred people attended the first year’s event, creating some unanticipated problems. The Bishop of Bath and Wells agreed to finance 100 sleeping blankets, while Haynes and his wife helped to transport to hospital a woman who was in labour. When Haynes later baptised the infant, one of the godparents arrived at church in a suit of armour. “When he had to make his promises, he lifted the visor and said ‘I do’, and then snapped it shut again,” Haynes recalled. The child’s chosen name was Amen because, according to the father: “He’s bloody well the last.”
After only four years Haynes was summoned back to Wells as Archdeacon and Canon Residentiary of the cathedral, where he enjoyed his duties and was popular with the diocesan clergy.
In 1982 he was appointed dean at Hereford. (“Another cider country,” he recalled approvingly.) Although Haynes’s time was remembered for the Mappa Mundi controversy, his broader contribution to the life of the cathedral in moderate reform of its worship, thoughtful preaching and sensitive pastoral care of its congregation made him a much-loved leader.
Accompanying this was a passion for fast cars. On his 90th birthday in 2015 seven classics were assembled in the Cathedral Close and he got behind the wheel of an Aston Martin. Family and friends were greatly relieved a year later, however, when he gave up driving his Mercedes convertible.
Another abiding interest was model railways. An impressive layout, including his own model of the “Mighty Mogul” engine from the Severn Valley Railway, attracted visitors to the Deanery garden, where they were invited to buy fudge to help the cathedral’s funds.
When Haynes’s grand-daughter married an Israeli chiropractor, he began brushing up his Hebrew for the service of blessing. He recalled the groom’s mother being reduced to tears by his prayers in her native tongue. “But later I was told she’d never heard such terrible Hebrew,” he recalled with laughter.
In 1952 Peter Haynes married Ruth Stainthorpe, a linguist whom he met while with the RAF. She died in 2004 and he is survived by their two sons.
The Very Rev Peter Haynes, born April 24 1925, died March 17 2018