Record

Repository	Archives of the Archbishop of Westminster
Ref No	AAW/DC/CP/LJS
Title	Lionel John Swain
Date	2015
Level	Fonds
Description	An unpublished autobiographical article entitled 'Out of My Mind' by Lionel John Swain (1933-2020), a former priest of the Diocese of Westminster. It was intended as a means to explain to family and friends why he had ceased to teach at Allen Hall and to minister as a priest in the Diocese 30 years earlier, and to describe his"continuing faith journey". The article describes his family background, his upbringing and schooling, and his decision to enter the priesthood in the 1950s. He eventually left the priesthood in 1975 to marry Barbara Hulme. (Barbara was the widow of PC Frank Edwin Hulme, a police officer who had been killed while on duty in 1958). The article describes the difficulties he subsequently experienced in obtaining a dispensation from the law of celibacy, and his efforts to find a new career, which eventually led to him becoming Head of Religious Education at The Saint Philip Howard High School, Barnham, West Sussex. The file includes an epilogue supplied by Barbara Hulme's daughter, Patricia Brooking, describing the death of both her mother and her stepfather, Lionel, within a month of each other in 2020. 28pp

Album amicorum of George Strachan

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