Episode 22. Revd Nick Flint: A Life in Sussex

SYNOPSIS

The interview is a celebration of the sense of place and interconnection which is still possible in twenty-first century Britain, in this instance within the county of Sussex. Nick Flint grew up in the country town of Lewes in East Sussex (famous for its association with the revolutionary Thomas Paine and its Bonfire Societies) and can trace his family ancestry in the town back through at least five generations. The interview covers his growing interest in Anglo-Catholicism, as practiced at St Michael’s in Lewes, a church with a tradition of radical priests, and his theological training in Chichester. Following a brief sojourn in London when connected as a priest to a housing project (during which time he met the exuberant, Morris-dancing priest, Kenneth Loveless) Nick’s parish ministry has been rooted in Sussex.  The interview explores the six degrees of separation by which Nick found himself related to the Broadwood family of Rusper, and his own sense of connection to the Sussex countryside through the work of the local writer, Hilaire Belloc. These interests culminated in the Belloc, Broadwood and Beyond Project at Rusper. The interview also covers the troubled relationship that an earlier vicar of Rusper, Edward Fitzgerald Synnott, had with his parishioners, as outlined in unsparing detail in his book Five Years’ Hell in a Country Parish, first published in 1920..

GUEST

Since 1996 Reverend Nick Flint has been the incumbent of the Parish Church, Rusper, at a geographical high point of West Sussex where it meets the Surrey border. He is also a cartoonist and writer. Nick’s Cautionary Pilgrim, published in 2014, is a homage and response to the Sussex writer, Hilaire Belloc’s The Four Men, the story of a walking pilgrimage across the landscape of Sussex and a book that Nick remembers being given pride of place in his childhood home in Lewes, East Sussex. Nick has continued the tradition - established by the Red Vicar of Thaxted, Conrad Noel - of allowing Morris Men to dance in his church. Whenever May 1st falls on a Sunday, the Broadwood Morris team dance in Rusper Parish Church in commemoration of the folk song collector, Lucy Broadwood, who is buried in the churchyard,  

The Belloc, Broadwood and Beyond Project has its own online website.

Nick’s interview with Simon Machin was recorded online on 9 February 2023.