The Reverend Dr David Scott
Award-winning Anglican parson-poet praised by Rowan Williams for his engagingly low-key style
THE REVEREND DR DAVID SCOTT, who has died aged 75, was an Anglican priest whose literary talents, particularly as a poet but also as a playwright and an author of spiritual works, were widely recognised and highly regarded. He was a winner in the 1978 BBC Poetry Competition and was awarded the Faber Memorial Prize in 1986.
Priesthood and poetry are callings which have not always sat easily together, one coming to outweigh the other – as, for example, with Gerard Manley Hopkins. Scott, however, managed a quite brilliant balance between the two, each informing the other, as in the poetry of the early 17th-century country parson, George Herbert.
Scott’s first books of poetry, A Quiet Gathering, Playing for England and How Does It Feel?, were inspired and written while he was exercising a faithful, caring and effective ministry as a parish priest in rural north Cumbria, which has been described as “a zone of stripped fells and bare beauty, where the chief companion is the weather”. He was something of a leading light among the “New Lake Poets”, including Geoffrey Holloway, Christopher Pilling and William Scammell.
The engagingly subdued tone of Scott’s poetry reflected his own quiet and unassuming personality. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan (Lord) Williams, described it as “a low-key poetic voce, not formally experimental or in any way dramatic, but showing a level attentiveness, a willingness to walk quietly around objects and feelings several times, letting them display different and unexpected facets.
“Ordinary and domestic subjects like cycling and gardening, the experiences of priestly ministry, landscapes (small and local, sometimes urban, not large Romantic canvases), all are given this kind of expectant attention, with an impressive depth of metaphor and an unobtrusive metrical steadiness.”
As a dramatist, Scott penned six plays for the National Youth Music Theatre in collaboration with Jeremy James Taylor and the composer Peter Allwood. Scott and Allwood were later commissioned to write an opera to mark the 12th centenary of King Offa’s founding of St Albans Abbey in the year 793. Utilising the Anglo-saxon devotional poem, The Dream of the Rood, which Scott translated from the original, the libretto wove it into a story featuring St
Alban, Offa and the kingdom of Mercia.
David Victor Scott was born in Cambridge on January 13 1947 and was educated at Solihull School. After studying Theology at St Chad’s College, Durham, he trained for Holy Orders at Cuddesdon College, Oxford, and was ordained in 1971 to a curacy at St Mary-atlatton, Harlow. Two years later he was appointed school chaplain at Haberdashers’ Aske’s in Elstree. He remained there until 1980, when he moved to Cumbria to become vicar of Torpenhow and Allhallows.
After an 11-year incumbency in the north-west of England, Scott headed south in 1991 to become Rector of St Lawrence and St Swithun-upon-kingsgate in the centre of Winchester.
Both of these ancient churches are sited on the near-approaches to the cathedral, and their continued viability required a distinctive yet complementary ministry. Scott’s gentle persona and spiritual depth were well-suited for this role. His humble manner, appearing almost whimsical, rather vulnerable and slightly helpless, encouraged laity to rally round in support, resulting in active and flourishing congregations.
In conjunction with his parish duties, Scott was also Warden of the School of Spirituality in the diocese of Winchester. During his time in post he published a number of spiritual writings, including
Moments of Prayer; Building Common Faith; An Anglo-saxon Passion; Sacred Tongues; Lancelot Andrewes: The Private Prayers, and
The Mind of Christ.
His thinking was partly influenced by the Franciscans; he and his family used to attend the annual holiday camp at the Franciscan friary at Hilfield in Dorset, and while there it was not unknown for him to put pen to paper. His literary and didactic style, however, may have connected better with the middle classes than the less affluent church-goers of Hampshire.
In 2002 Scott was appointed an Honorary Canon of Winchester Cathedral, and three years later was made an Honorary Fellow of the University of Winchester. A rare honour came his way in 2008 when Archbishop Rowan Williams awarded him a Lambeth Doctorate of Letters (Dlitt).
Ill health brought about Scott’s early retirement in 2010. He returned to Cumbria, where he died as a consequence of Alzheimer’s disease. He is survived by his wife, Miggy, whom he married in 1978, and by their daughter and two sons.
David Scott, born January 13 1947, died October 21 2022