Hubbry Logo
logo
William Wand
Community hub

William Wand

logo
0 subscribers
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Contribute something to knowledge base
Hub AI

William Wand AI simulator

(@William Wand_simulator)

William Wand

John William Charles Wand, KCVO (25 January 1885 – 16 August 1977) was an English Anglican bishop. He was the Archbishop of Brisbane in Australia before returning to England to become the Bishop of Bath and Wells and, later, Bishop of London.

William Wand was born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, the son of Arthur James Henry Wand, a butcher, and his wife Elizabeth Ann Ovelin, née Turner. Despite Wand's father being a staunch Calvinist, his mother brought him up in the Church of England. Educated at The King's School, Grantham and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he took first-class honours in theology (BA, 1907; MA, 1911), he prepared for ordination at Bishop Jacob Hostel, Newcastle upon Tyne. He was ordained a deacon in 1908 and a priest in 1909. He served curacies at Benwell and Lancaster. On 11 October 1911 he married Amy Agnes Wiggins (1883–1966) at St Leonard's parish church in Watlington, Oxfordshire and they had two children. In 1914, he was appointed vicar-choral of Salisbury, and became part of a cathedral family centred on ‘the Close’.

Wand volunteered for the army chaplaincy in July, 1915. He was Anglo-Catholic in a chaplaincy in which ‘low church’ predominated. He was posted to Gallipoli, and would write vividly of his experience there. For example, his simile of Suvla Bay conveys the fearsome context of British positions on a narrow beach. "Our position on that beach was rather like that of a theatre orchestra as he turns his back on the stage and looks up at the tiers of boxes and galleries in front and on either hand. Only in this case they were not filled with an applauding audience but with the enemy and his guns".

Wand's autobiography is an evocative but rarely used source of first-hand experience of Gallipoli, and Wand also wrote letters published in the Salisbury Diocesan Chronicle, including a reflection on how the reputation of padres depended on their willingness to display bravery. "The soldier needs not only a man who can preach to him, however eloquently, or pray with him, however movingly, or arranges his recreation for him, however good humouredly, but one who will lay his remains to rest in his last resting place in spite of the terror by night or the arrow that flieth by day. And who can blame him?"

Wand was attached to Australian hospitals and hospital ships but caught paratyphoid and had to be evacuated to Malta and then to London. He had recovered by April, 1916, and was posted to Rouen and after the Armistice, to Cologne.[citation needed]

Demobilised in March 1919, Wand was made perpetual curate of St Mark's, Salisbury, where St Clair Donaldson was bishop. In 1925 Wand became a fellow and the dean of Oriel College, Oxford and university lecturer in church history. Eight years later Bishop St Clair Donaldson was asked by archbishop Cosmo Lang to nominate a candidate for the see of Brisbane as archbishop.[citation needed]

Wand was consecrated in St Paul's Cathedral, London, on 1 May 1934, by archbishop Lang, together with the new bishop of Johannesburg and the suffragan bishop of Plymouth. He was enthroned in St John's Cathedral, Brisbane on 5 September, after arriving in Brisbane on 30 August.

Wand's arrival in Queensland was almost immediately clouded by the death in a climbing accident, near Chamonix-Mont-Blanc on the France/Switzerland border, of his only son, Paul (1912–34). He had a difficult reception: those who had wanted a local dignitary as their new bishop united to oppose Wand. His attempts to eradicate slackness made him appear authoritarian to his clergy. Sturdy in appearance, shy and gracious, Wand was often seen as being aloof and something of an intellectual snob though this belied his natural humour and quick wit. The decision to move St Francis's Theological College from Nundah to the Bishopsbourne property was unpopular, although Wand's relations with its students won him their respect and affection and its proximity to the Archbishop's home improved the standards of training. His establishment of a property and finance board to handle the economic problems of the diocese also did not meet with general favour.[citation needed]

See all
Mid-twentieth century English-born, Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane, Australia; Bishop of Bath and Wells; Bishop of London
User Avatar
No comments yet.