Stuart Blanch

Stuart Yarworth Blanch, Baron Blanch, (2 February 1918 – 3 June 1994) was an Anglican clergyman. Little interested in religion in his youth, he became a committed Christian at the age of 21, while serving in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.

He was ordained as a priest in 1949, and spent three years as a curate and five years as a vicar in and around Oxford where he had studied for the priesthood. He was vice principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford from 1957 to 1960, the founding head of Rochester Theological College from 1960 to 1966, Bishop of Liverpool from 1966 to 1975, and Archbishop of York from 1975 to 1983.

Blanch was evangelical in outlook, but gained the trust of high church Anglicans, and also of Roman Catholics and nonconformists. He was well known as a lecturer and published ten books, most of them scholarly and theological.

Life and career

Early years Blanch was born at Viney Hill Farm, Blakeney, Gloucestershire in the Forest of Dean, the youngest of three sons of a farmer, William Edwin Blanch, and his wife, Elizabeth, née Yarworth. William Blanch was killed in a shooting accident in 1923 and his widow and youngest child moved to London, where the two older sons were already living. Blanch attended Alleyn's School, Dulwich, winning a scholarship after the first year. His mother could not afford to pay for him to go to a university, and after leaving school at the age of 18 he started work. He would have preferred to become a journalist, but found that "journalism in particular was hard to get into without contacts." He gained employment in the office of the Law Fire Insurance Society Ltd in Chancery Lane at a salary of £90 a year. He said later, "The job taught me a great deal, not just about administration – how to write letters and so on – but how to deal with people from all walks of life." and for lack of anything else to read he read the New Testament thoroughly for the first time in his life, and his hitherto mild adherence to Christianity was turned into firm evangelical faith. "This strange book spoke, its words glowed on the page, and I knew that from that moment my life was bound up for better or worse with the Man who is described there."

In the RAF he served as a corporal in the force's police, and then volunteered for aircrew duties. After training as a navigator, he was commissioned as a flight lieutenant. He flew reconnaissance missions over Burma from Calcutta. During this period he became an Anglican lay reader and sought ordination as a priest. After three years as a curate in the Oxford parish of Highfield, he was appointed vicar of Eynsham a few miles out of the city. While he was at Eynsham three of the Blanches' five children were born, all daughters.

In the 1960s Liverpool underwent large-scale rehousing, with residents of inner city slums being moved to new housing estates on greenfield sites outside the city. Blanch supervised the resulting reorganisation of parishes and construction of new churches. The diocese was predominantly evangelical, but there was a substantial high church minority whose relations with some previous Bishops of Liverpool had been difficult. The Guardian said that one of Blanch's greatest achievements during his years in Liverpool (and later at York) was reconciling evangelical and high church Anglicans: "it was universally acknowledged that he left behind him a peaceful and reconciled diocese." The Times comments that Blanch and his wife "threw themselves into the richness of Liverpool life. He grew to love Scouse humour and resilience. He bicycled to work … he played squash most Saturday mornings … whenever he could, he went to listen to the Philharmonic concerts (Sir Charles Groves, the then conductor, becoming a firm friend)." There was a long delay in making the appointment, and it was rumoured that at least three bishops had declined the post. The Times later named one of them as Runcie.

Blanch was enthroned as ninety-fourth archbishop of York on 25 February 1975. Of his years as archbishop, Williams writes, "A superb pastor, he presided over a happy diocese and travelled widely in his province. … No lover of bureaucracy, he was described as the most unecclesiastical of archbishops." One admirer, noting his common touch, said that he wore a flat cap underneath his mitre.

Last years Blanch retired to Oxfordshire, living first in Bloxham and then in Shenington. He conducted services at Shenington parish church, and continued to lecture and write. He made four more lecture trips abroad after retiring from York, and wrote two more books.

Blanch died of cancer at a hospice in Banbury, Oxfordshire at the age of 76, and was buried in Shenington churchyard. He was survived by his wife, son, and three of the four daughters, the eldest predeceasing him.