Noel Paddick

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The Revd Canon Noel John Paddick BA (Oxon) MA (Oxon) BTh (Oxon) MA (Liturgy) (Coll Resurrection Mirfield / Sheff) SSC, born 24 December 1985, is an English author, theologian, occasional recording artist, and Church of England priest. He is the Rector of the Combined Benefice of The Woolfonts, Somerfords, & Harstbournes (The Woolfonts (Woolfont Magna, Woolfont Crucis with Woolfont Parva, & Woolfont Abbas with Wolfdown) with The Somerfords (Somerford Mally with Somerford Canons alias Canonicorum, Somerford Tout Saints with Lamsford, Cliff Ambries with Shifford Ombres and Combe Woddley als Waddlycombe) and Harstbournes (Chalford Mallet with Hawksbourne, Harstbourne Fitzwarren with Harstbourne Sallis and Harstbourne Fratrum als Friars), in Wiltshire. He is a canon nonresidentiary of Salisbury.

Life
Born the second child and only son of three to Stephen and Mary Paddick, in Bilston, Wolverhampton, the young Noel Paddick was afflicted in his youth with recurrent bronchial difficulties. It was, however, when his elder sister Carola was in hospital for a youthful ailment that he was discovered singing to himself to keep his spirits up: by the Revd Matthew Pryor SSC of the Collegiate Church of S Peter’s, Wolverhampton, who was doing a round of hospital visitation.

Fr Pryor spoke with Mrs Paddick, and Mr Paddick accompanied his son to S Peter’s one day after school to meet with Fr Pryor; and Noel Paddick found himself in short order an enthusiastic chorister.

Fr Pryor and his wife Elizabeth steered Noel Paddick out of the state system and into S Peter’s Collegiate School, where his mild dyslexia was diagnosed and managed. At S Peter’s, Noel Paddick was encouraged to participate in athletics to improve his wind, and was a successful harrier, being scouted by Team GB; he was also on the 1st XI at cricket. His interests, however, were increasingly scholarly and increasingly focussed on the vocation he and his teachers and priests were discerning in him. In anticipation of his possibly taking parishes in difficult areas, Fr Pryor arranged that he be trained as a boxer, and Noel Paddick once defeated future Olympian Omair Khan of Birmingham (coincidentally, a second cousin to Sher Mirza) in a schools match (see below).

He also began at this time to date his classmate, Pauline Stamford, whom he was afterward to marry.

Fr Pryor and the Diocese managed to arrange a full bursary for Noel Paddick – helped by his eight A Levels – and he went up to Keble College, Oxford, where he took a First in Philosophy & Theology. At Keble, although his studies precluded play at University level, he was an active rower, cricketer, and rugby player. He then took his MA in Liturgy (Sheffield) through the College of the Resurrection (Mirfield), and, marrying Pauline Stamford, went on to obtain his MTh at S Stephen’s House (Oxon).

Very much to his own surprise, he found himself, upon taking up his living in the Woolfonts, capable, were it allowed, of reciprocating the affections of Sher Mirza, and has openly admitted that the two are deeply in love, whilst continuing to live chastely, separately, and as celibates out of consideration for the consciences and religious traditions of both. Having noted that Mr Mirza, who coincidentally greatly resembles the Canon's late wife in looks, mind, spirit, and humour, was and remains the only man he should ever look at twice, and that, were it allowed, they should have a great deal of fun in bed and a yet deeper relationship out of it, Noel Paddick promptly put the matter from his mind save to ask Grace for his friend and for himself in their renunciation of eros in favour of storge, philia, and agape. And has not been troubled by the matter since: hesychasts are in a class of their own.

Family
His parents are Stephen Paddick and Mary (née Timmins) Paddick. Mr Paddick, beginning in the coopering section of Banks’s Park Brewery, had left that trade for a post at Tarmac, finishing in their rail division before coming to the Woolfonts. Stephen Paddick holds a number of qualifications in his areas of interest, including the metallurgical. They have removed to the Woolfonts in recent years, where Mr Paddick is the Chief Operating Director and the Managing Director (Infrastructure and Permanent Way) of the W&C Railway and Mrs Paddick supervises the Railway Museum and Gift Shop.

Canon Paddick was married to Pauline (Stamford), who died of natural causes late in the term of her first pregnancy, their unborn daughter dying with her.

Although the Canon’s Paddick and Timmins forebears have for some generations been members of the working class and tradesmen’s class in the Black Country, Dudley, and Wolverhampton, genealogical research (commissioned by the Duke of Taunton as a treat for Stephen and Mary Paddick) has established their descent from Edward 3d, and common ancestry from the families of Cantilupe (Cantlow), Fairfax, Villiers, Pelham, Fenton, Methwold, Daubeny, Scudamore, and Hyde. Mary Paddick, born a Timmins, is a connexion of the Manders’, from the Seventeenth Century; Stephen Paddick, of the Jenyns family which produced a Lord Mayor of London under the first Tudors. The Canon’s cousin, Robert Timmins, who now lives in the Woolfonts as Curator of a Gardening Museum, and the Canon’s father, Stephen Paddick, have both been granted arms accordingly.

Canon Paddick’s sisters, Carola and Joan, likewise now live in the Woolfonts; as do the Canon’s late wife’s family. Her parents, Jack and Betty Stamford (of whom Jack Stamford is an experienced brewer trained at Banks’s, with Betty, prior to her marriage, having worked at Beatties), are senior staff at the Woolfont Brewery, Jack as brewmaster and MD and Betty as managing the Gift Shop, at which Joan (Mrs Simon) Longmore, née Paddick, works. Simon Longmore, late of Chubb Locks, directs physical security operations for the Railway, with George Stamford, his sister’s husband and elder brother to the Canon’s late wife.

Carola is married to Gerry Fullwood, formerly of Carillion’s rail sector, is in charge of the W&CR’s locomotives, lines, and rolling stock, and its shops, with (until 2016) Will Stamford, younger brother of the Canon’s late wife and also late of Carillion.

In 2016, Will Stamford was permanently crippled, and his wife Meg, killed in a road smash. Their daughter Margaret Elizabeth Stamford, god-daughter to the Duke of Taunton, at Will’s and the family’s request, became the ward of Canon Paddick through a Special Guardianship proceeding, and lives with him at the Rectory.

Career
Noel Paddick was ordained deacon and admitted thereafter to priest’s orders by the Bishop of Lichfield, and served his title at S Martin Rough Hill. He was curate at S Martin Rough Hill and S Stephen Wolverhampton, and at S James the Great Lower Gornall in Dudley.

<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0in;font-style:normal">Subsequent to his wife’s death, he was encouraged by Fr Pryor, who had been instrumental in his formation, to take up the living offered by the Duke of Taunton in Wiltshire: an offer almost certainly orchestrated by Fr Pryor, a contemporary and friend of the Duke’s: who, at Eton, had hit the future Fr Pryor, who was bowling for Harrow, all around the wicket in the Schools Match at Lord’s.

<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0in;font-style:normal">Canon Paddick has been Rector of the Combined Benefice since 2013. In 2015, the Combined Benefice was expanded by the inclusion of the Downland parishes of All Saints & S Mary Somerford Tout Saints; S Thomas of Canterbury & S George Somerford Mally; S John ante Portam Latinam Cliff Ambries; S Peter ad Vincula Chalford Mallet; and S Saviour Harstbourne Fitzwarren. Canon Paddick now supervises a team of three curates in the Combined Benefice. He was made a Canon Nonresidentiary in 2015.

Controversies
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0in;font-weight:normal">Canon Paddick, in his first months as Rector in the Woolfonts, intervened when three League One footballers were harassing a waitress and two guests at The Woolford House Hotel, breaking (with one punch) the nose of one of the footballers, who had become physically violent and was attempting an assault.

<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0in;font-weight:normal">The Church and the law supported Canon Paddick, as did popular opinion.

Publications
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0in">Canon Paddick is a published theologian and an expert, celebrated equally by the Anglican Communion and the Methodist Church, on the liturgy and theology of John and Charles Wesley.

Select Bibliography
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0in;font-weight:normal">The Depth of Love Divine: John Wesley, the Caroline Divines, and the Oxford Movement  (var. title,  The Depth of Love Divine: John Wesley & the Anglo-Catholic Tradition )  

The Beauty of Holiness and the Poetry of Grace: Andrewes, Donne, Ken, and Ferrar

All Evil and Mischief: essays in theodicy, free will, & the problem of evil

Herbert Thorndike: a reappraisal (forthcoming)

Conscience, Law, and Reason: Anglican Thomism, from Hooker to the Caroline Divines to the Tractarians (forthcoming)

Discography
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0in;font-weight:normal">(as tenor, The Fonts) (see article, The Fonts)

Marriage
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0in">To Pauline Stamford (d. 2012).

Titles and styles from birth
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0in;font-weight:normal">Mr Noel John Paddick (1985 – 2006)

<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0in;font-weight:normal">The Revd Noel John Paddick (2009 – 2010)

<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0in;font-weight:normal">The Revd Noel John Paddick SSC (2010 – 2015)

<p class="western" style="margin-bottom:0in;font-weight:normal">The Revd Canon Noel John Paddick SSC (2015 – )