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JULY/AUGUST 2009 - HERITAGE

Charles Thornton Primrose Grierson, Dean of Belfast 1911 - 1919, Bishop of Down and Connor and Dromore 1919 - 1934

He made ecumenical history when in 1918 he invited the Moderator of the Church of Scotland to preach in Belfast Cathedral. Canterbury, St Paul’s and other cathedrals followed his example. The modern inter-church dialogue on unity commenced at a World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910 and its centenary will be celebrated next year.

Born in 1857, Charles Thornton Primrose Grierson was the youngest son of George Abraham Grierson, LLD of Rathfarnham House, Dublin and Isabella Ruxton of Ardee, Co Meath.  The Irish branch of the Grierson family from Scotland was founded by Sir James Grierson (d 1566) and held the office of King’s Printer for many years.  Sir George Grierson, KCIE, Charles’ brother, was an eminent philologist.  

Charles Grierson was educated at Rathmines School and Tipperary Grammar School.  He then had a distinguished career in Trinity College, Dublin, taking the degree of BA in 1879, MA in 1882 and BD, jure dignitatis, in 1896.  He also obtained a first-class Divinity Testimonium and Bishop Forster’s Divinity Prize.  In 1881 he was ordained for the curacy of Kells (Meath) and two years later was rector of Stradbally, Co Waterford.  He also held the position of Downes’ Lecturer in Waterford Cathedral from 1885 to 1888, when he was nominated to the important parish of Seapatrick (Banbridge).  Bishop Welland appointed him Treasurer of Dromore Cathedral in 1897 and he was selected in the following year to be chaplain to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

After 13 successful years in Banbridge he was elected Vicar of Belfast and at his institution on 8th October 1911, Archbishop d’Arcy appointed him to the Deanery of Belfast Cathedral.  Charles Grierson was an excellent preacher and got the best out of his many committees.  His great ambition was to draw together the various Protestant Churches and, with the approval of his close friend Archbishop d’Arcy, he made the Cathedral a centre where all could worship on special occasions without feeling they were deserting their own Churches.  And so, in 1918, the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Dr Cooper, preached in the Cathedral, this being the first occasion on which an interchange of pulpits took place.  The example was then followed by Canterbury, St. Paul’s and elsewhere.  Subsequently, the pulpits of Windsor, May Street and Cliftonpark Presbyterian Churches in Belfast were occupied by Dr Grierson.  Since then, leading ministers from most denominations have taken part in Cathedral services.  He had another notable ‘first’.  In 1924, those who had their crystal sets tuned in will have heard the inaugural Sunday broadcast of sacred music - and a Grierson sermon.

On 28 October 1919 he was consecrated as Bishop of Down and Connor and Dromore in Armagh Cathedral.  The offertory proceeds were devoted to the Building Fund of Belfast Cathedral!  In the previous December he had proposed that the Fund be used to build a Chapel in the south transept (then not yet built) which “would be set apart to be a complete church in itself for smaller services”.

Charles Grierson married, on 30 June 1879, Blanche Caldwell Bloomfield, the only daughter of John Caldwell Bloomfield, DL, of Castle Caldwell, a former High Sheriff of County Fermanagh.  She was also related to the Brookes of Colebrooke.  During the Great War Mrs Grierson was an active enthusiastic worker on behalf of the UVF Hospital where many beds were endowed through her efforts.  Like her husband, she also had a keen interest in the Unionist cause, working on propaganda in England and Scotland.  She died on 12 June 1920.  The Greirsons had a daughter, Ula, who married Henry Kinahan and died on 24 February 1949.  

In September 1934 Bishop Grierson accepted medical advice and decided to retire at 77 due to his failing eyesight.   He died at his home, Hughenden, 66 Somerton Road, Belfast on 9 July 1935, aged 78.  After a Service in the Cathedral, he was buried to be with his late wife in Belfast’s City Cemetery where later, in a double grave, were buried their daughter and son-in-law.  Sir Charles Nicholson designed a Bishop’s seat to stand in the Chancel as a memorial to him.  It was made in Belfast by Purdy & Milland and was dedicated on 6 November 1938.

Robert Cyril Hamilton Glover Elliott, Dean of Belfast 1945-1956 and Bishop of Connor 1956 - 1969

Robert Cyril Hamilton Glover Elliott was born in November 1890, the son of Canon Anthony Lewis Elliott, Rector of Killiney, County Dublin.  He was educated at Aravon School, Bray, Trent College, Derbyshire and Trinity, Dublin.

His first preferment was at Whitehouse where he was ordained as curate in 1914.  He was appointed Chaplain to the Forces in 1917, served through the war and was twice mentioned in despatches for performing duties under heavy shellfire.  Dr. Elliott was with the Ulster Division at the Somme and was holder of the Somme Medal.  He returned there in 1967 with other veterans for a commemoration service.

After Whitehouse he moved to Bangor and then was appointed Rector of All Saints’, Belfast.  For eight years, from 1930, he was vicar of St Patrick’s, Ballymacarret, Belfast.  Known affectionately as “The Big Vicar” – he was a slim 6’9”- his time there coincided with the thirties depression, a difficult period for the many unemployed shipyard workers in his congregation.  In 1931 the big debate on the proposal to divide the Diocese of Down and Connor and Dromore, which would have meant one more bishop, was defeated.  Speaking against, Cyril Elliott said that “without the clergy and the halls, then twelve more bishops would be of no use to me in Ballymacarret”.

In 1938 he left Belfast for Downpatrick to become Dean of Down.  But he was on the move again when, in 1945, he came back to Belfast as Dean of its Cathedral.  Here he was confronted with the enormous task of resuming the building work while at the same time enhancing St. Anne’s position as the spiritual and ceremonial centre of the community.  At his installation, the then Bishop of Connor, Rt Rev Dr Charles King Irwin preached that “the Deanery of Belfast may be a modern creation but it has been adorned with very gifted men, and the present Dean is the eighth of a very remarkable list” and he hoped that “under his charge the cathedral would reach the full glory of its completion”.  The Dean gave unstinting support to a £100,000 Building and Appeal Fund, expressing the hope that people of all denominations would find a spiritual home in the cathedral.

In 1956, Dean Elliott became Bishop Cyril when, on 4th October 1956, he was enthroned in Lisburn Cathedral as Bishop of Connor.  He was chairman of a committee dealing with Diocesan Ordination Bursaries Fund which ensured that no one with qualifications and the vocation was debarred from the ministry for want of money.  Post-ordination training of young ministers also occupied his attention.  Like his father, he avoided committee meetings when he could.  He quoted his father as saying they were “a place where minutes are kept and hours wasted”!

As Bishop, he was present at the Consecration of the Cathedral’s Apse and Ambulatory on 17th April 1959.  At the Lambeth Conference in 1958 he accepted the Coventry Cross from the Provost of Coventry which hangs in a frame in the Ambulatory of the Cathedral.  The cross was fashioned from 600-year-old nails from the roof timbers of the Cathedral which was destroyed in 1940 during an air raid.

Cyril resigned in 1969 after 13 years as Bishop.  He might have gone on had it not been compulsory in the Church of Ireland to retire on reaching 78.  He continued to keep himself busy, saying that his engagement book was “just as full as ever”.  A bachelor, he had a keen interest in sport and was a life member of Belfast Boat Club.  Golf was a favourite recreation.  He was a member of the Masonic Order and was a champion of the Orange Order.  He was a conspicuous figure each year on the walk to Finaghy, where he lived in retirement.

He died, aged 86, in 1977 and was cremated at Roselawn on the outskirts of Belfast after a funeral service in St. Polycarp’s, Finaghy.  The Rector, Rev James Hall, officiated at the service with the Primate, Dr Simms, Bishop Arthur Butler of Connor and Bishop George Quin of Down.  Archbishop Simms mentioned that Cyril Elliott had followed the great and highly valued tradition of a person-to-person ministry and lived, to a remarkable degree, in the lives of others.

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