Episode 2. Red Vicars of Thaxted: Conrad Noel and Jack Putterill

SYNOPSIS

The interview provides an insight into the impact of the Christian Socialist ‘dynasty’ at Thaxted Church upon the life of the town in rural Essex. Conrad Noel, later popularised as the ‘Red Vicar of Thaxted’, was offered the living of the beautiful Parish Church by ‘Daisy’ Greville, Countess of Warwick, and arrived with his wife Miriam in the town in 1910. Immediately they started to enrich the church with ‘English Use’ ritual which Conrad had imbibed from the liturgist Percy Dearmer while acting as his part-time curate at St Mary’s, Primrose Hill, London. Folk dancing, as practised by Mary Neal and her Espérance Club dancers, soon spread to the children and adults of Thaxted when one of Mary’s instructors, Blanche Payling, visited Thaxted in 1911. Noel notoriously put up the Red Flag in the chancel of his church. The tradition of ecclesial left-wing politics was continued by Conrad’s son-in-law and former curate Father Jack Putterill, who took on the living on Conrad Noel’s death in 1942 and remained priest for over thirty years. 

GUEST

Bruce Munro has a lifelong association with the area of rural Essex encompassing Thaxted and nearby Saffron Walden. He has childhood memories of the aged Conrad Noel and of being part of the commemorative ritual at his funeral in 1942, and later of the Noels’ daughter, Barbara and of Father Jack Putterill.   Bruce Munro took part in Tony Palmer’s documentary about Gustav Holst, In The Bleak Midwinter.  

Simon Machin’s interview with Bruce Munro was recorded at his Thaxted home on 27 April 2019.