Kent, Walter Harold (1889-1951)
Transcription of Obituary in Minutes of Methodist Conference
Born at Stoke-on-Trent in 1889. He spent some years in business, and after a term as Lay Pastor he offered for the Ministry.
He was trained at Hartley College, and served at Cheltenham, Coleford, Swindon, Pontefract, Luton, Oldham and Norwich.
Of a finely tempered and sensitive spirit he had gifts of passion and thought which were revealed in his sermons, prayers, and private interviews. He had hammered out on the anvil of his mind a faith which was always being exposed to and tested by the challenge of wide reading and the spirit of the age.
It was a stimulus to those who listened to him to feel that nothing was being taken for granted, nothing being prayed for or spoken about, which did not come from a deep yet humble conviction of his heart. To that inner loyalty he would yield to no outward temptation to trim or compromise. His passion was the truth as it is in Christ Jesus.
His sensitive nature and real humility of spirit brought to him a heavy cross. Yet this very cross made him a sympathetic and effective pastor to his people, and to many who were outside the Church.
After struggling for months against failing health, and even recovering sufficiently to preach on the last Sunday of his life, he passed away on 8th August 1951, in the thirty-fifth year of his ministry and the sixty-second of his age.
©Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes 1952
Family
Walter was born on 28 May 1889 at Hanley, Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire, to parents Henry, a writing clerk, and Pheobe.
The 1901 census describes Walter as a machine clerk.
He married Dora Christabel Burndred (1898-1990) in the spring of 1920 at Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire.
Walter died on 8 August 1951 at Norwich, Norfolk.
Circuits
- Hartley
- 1916 Supply
- 1920 E Dereham
- 1921 Coleford
- 1923 Swindon I
- 1928 Pontefract
- 1932 Swindon I
- 1937 Luton
- 1944 Oldham Middleton Rd
- 1947 Norwich
References
Methodist Minutes1952/120
W Leary, Directory of Primitive Methodist Ministers and their Circuits, 1990
Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers
Comments about this page
I am one of Walter Kent’s grand daughters and am delighted to find this profile. Although l had some of the information, I didn’t have the list of his Circuit appointments. Thank you! I do have a picture l could scan if you tell me where to send it.
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