This boat takes you back

This is the next boat

St Peter & St Paul

Now actively retired in Aldeburgh, married to Jill, with four children.  Apart from the local church, present interests focus on Jubilee Opera (local children working with adult professional musicians), music and sailing.

The Giles’ were drawn here not least by the association with Benjamin Britten and the Festival.

Following National Service and Cambridge (reading History and Theology, and rowing in two Boat Races) John was ordained in 1961 to a curacy at St. Margaret’s, Lowestoft, before (1965) becoming the first Anglican Chaplain to the new University of East Anglia.

In 1972 the family moved to Kidbrooke, a huge parish in SE London, where John was Rector, and later Sub-Dean of Greenwich. The call of molten steel took them on to Sheffield in 1979, to a busy central parish linked to the University and the Royal Hallamshire Hospital. In 1987 John joined the Sheffield Cathedral staff as a residentiary canon, and in 1992 returned as Vicar to another large parish in Lee, southeast London.

John gives an important place in faith to the Liberal Anglican tradition – not in the sense that “Anything Goes”, but in the freedom to pursue biblical and spiritual truth in partnership with other experiences and disciplines, guided but not straight-jacketed by the church.