Father Brian Ralph, Vicar
Father Brian grew up in Up Hatherley, Gloucestershire, on the outskirts of Cheltenham.
FC Lakeside
As a nine-year-old, Brian was already a keen footballer, and in 1975 his father Fred started FC Lakeside, taking its name from Brian’s primary school and its prefix from FC Bruges. Fifty years later the club is FA-accredited and has more than 20 teams for boys and girls from Up Hatherley and the whole of Cheltenham.
Brian went on to keep goal for other teams in the area, including a few games with Cheltenham Town. Like his father before him, Brian supports Aston Villa.
St Philip & St James and Prinknash
Having left school ’by mutual consent’ and with no qualifications, Brian at 17 was a labourer by day, playing ‘in rubbish punk bands’ by night. At the youth club with the other punks and rockers, Brian found he and the local vicar shared an involvement in the movement against apartheid in South Africa.
He went along to Saint Philip & Saint James, Up Hatherley, a local church in the catholic tradition of the Church of England, with its roots in the nineteenth-century Oxford Movement. He had a hand in putting together the rock mass that became the mainstay of its Sunday service.
Taking part in youth weekends discussing what faith is and what they believed in at the Roman Catholic Prinknash Abbey, Brian met the Abbey’s Benedictine monks.
““I was a punk rocker at the time””
Aston and Oxford
Inspired by Prinknash at first to explore a monastic calling, Brian opted instead for the Anglican priesthood. He was one of four or five young people from the parish in Up Hatherley to do so. He caught up some O-levels at night school, some theology at the Gloucester School for Ministry, and on the Aston Training Scheme for clergy had placements at Bullingdon Prison, at Maltby Colliery with the industrial mission, at Gloucester Royal Hospital in its chaplaincy, and with Fr Derek White, in the Bishop of London’s chaplaincy to the homeless.
Brian went on to study theology at St Stephen’s House, Oxford, whose graduates have a strong tradition of work in urban priority areas and in parishes suffering poverty and deprivation.
Yeovil
From 1992 to 1994 Brian was a curate at the church of St Michael and All Angels in Yeovil, Somerset.
Shoreditch and Bethnal Green
Brian’s early experience as a chaplain to the homeless inspired him to come to London. He was at St Leonard’s Shoreditch for six months, and for seven years a team vicar at St John on Bethnal Green. With the Maze Project he was involved with drug education, and then because so many turned up in church looking for help, with street sex workers, for whom he and Rio Vella founded the U-Turn Project.
St Barnabas, Bow and Bowstock
Father Brian became vicar of St Barnabas in 2001, when Bow had a name for stabbings and shootings. The St Barnabas Community Fete (or Bowstock) was the parish’s response, bringing local people together for diverse music and young bands around a headline act (Ceynab Sige, The Beat, Finley Quaye, Chas & Dave and The Blockheads to name a few), and a marketplace for local voluntary groups to showcase their work.
Over its 10 years, Bowstock often featured Heavy Load, a punk band whose members were with and without learning difficulties. The worldwide charity Stay Up Late, enabling adults with learning disabilities and autistic people to lead active social lives and make decisions about how they want to live their lives, grew out of Heavy Load.
“I shouldn’t have a Bowstock favourite, but Charlie Harper and the UK Subs was quite a moment.”
Oaklands, Chisenhale and Raines
Brian has been chaplain of St Margaret’s House, Bethnal Green since 1995. From 2006 to 2018 he was chaplain of Raines Foundation School. He has been a governor of Oaklands School, St John’s School and Chisenhale School.
The Society of Catholic Priests and Pilates
Brian is the London rector of the Society of Catholic Priests, a fellowship of liberal minded Anglo-Catholic priests who support the ordination of women.
Following a back injury, Brian discovered Pilates. After two years’ study he qualified as a Body Control teacher in 2018, and now gives classes to local teachers, the clergy and people in the parish.
“I follow Aston Villa, I listen to The Damned and The Screaming Dead, and I teach people Pilates.”