Dear good folk of Tickhill and Stainton,

I am thrilled to be coming back up North and to your parishes, now within a new Mission Area. I am looking forward to sharing with you in all the challenges and opportunities of the coming months and years.

I was born and grew up in Northumberland. Our family lived in the small mining village of Holywell, not far from Whitley Bay. We then moved to Rothbury, Hexham and then to Chevington, back on the coast. I was ordained in 1984 and served in parishes and chaplaincies in the North-West of England, until moving to Wiltshire in 2000. I am currently serving in Oxford diocese in the rural benefice of Shrivenham and Ashbury. Married to Katriona, we share three grown up sons and a Jack Russell terrier.

I believe that my gifts, training, and experience will well equip me for the role of Interim Priest-in- Charge, and Oversight Minister. There is a real task to do in building up the life of the church in your parishes, working alongside others in growing God’s Kingdom, and developing the life and witness of the new Mission Area of which we are a part. This will be a new way of being, and of working together, for us all.

Katriona and I expect to move to Tickhill sometime in the second half of January, and then take a short break between my old and this new post, before being licenced to work among you.

Yours, with every blessing,

Paul

The Rev. Canon Paul Richardson

Interim Oversight Minister designate