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MARY BICKERSTETH 1918-2005

Greatly loving, and greatly loved

Mary Bickersteth

Mary Bickersteth, who died in June, after a stroke, was the unmarried daughter of Canon Monier Bickersteth. ‘Bick’, as he was widely known within the Mission, was Secretary of the Jerusalem and the East Mission from 1916 to 1935, and then Commissary to successive bishops in the Jerusalem Archbishopric for the next thirty or more years.

After her mother had died young, Mary began immediately after leaving school to run a Rectory household, care for her younger brother John, and help her father to lead a very full life. She worked hard for the village church, formed Brownie and Cub packs, did six years of war work from home for the combined St John/Red Cross, and started giving young parents of relations or friends short breaks from their young children. She loved children of all ages, and was brilliant with them; stayed in touch with them as they grew up and got married and had children of their own, and they all came in for her love and care. She sent 150 picture postcards a year to ‘her’ children and godchildren for their birthdays, or it might be for beginning in a new school or later a fresh job, and she would drive hundreds of miles to see them.

Mary and Bick had a very affectionate relationship; he never took his devoted daughter for granted, they laughed and cried together, and he was always deeply solicitous for her welfare. For her part she kept him happy and motivated for the best part of forty years. On a London day she would always see that he caught the train with the right papers for his engagements, which kept coming his way for more than three decades after the end of his full-time service to the Mission. This was because his experience and wisdom on so many matters of missionary concern continued to be drawn upon well into his old age; but it is fair to say that without her he would never have gone on for so long being in good enough shape to give his much-sought-after advice on Middle Eastern church affairs to Archbishops of Canterbury and to successive church leaders in that part of the Anglican Communion.

Mary was an immensely generous person, totally unselfish, a wonderful listener, a tireless ‘doer’ for the Kingdom of God. She felt ill one Sunday during the 8 o’clock Communion, and died three days later. Three hundred people came to her funeral in that same parish church at Potterne, near Devizes, to which she had moved in 1976 shortly after Bick died. Greatly loving, she was greatly loved.

John Bickersteth