Thread by @chinmj

Behold: The Twitter thread none of you have been waiting for. The ten top Consistory Court* cases of the decade.

(*For non-church-geeks, the Diocesan Courts of the Church of England, apart from the Diocese of Canterbury, just because.)

Some ground rules: This is a highly personal list, including some selfish inclusions due to my own involvement in a case. Chronological, rather than ranking, order. And I'll doubtless have forgotten a really good one. Ready? Here we go!

1) Tewkesbury Abbey, 2011 - A low key, but excellent introduction to Chancellor June Rodgers, who features heavily. A reminder for all incumbents not to p**s off the Flower Guild.

Once they had teamed up with the Mothers' Union, that's a formidable body of opposition to some minor reordering proposals.

The judgment also raises the amusing possibility of standing for election to the PCC on an alliterative "Anti-Apse Alteration" manifesto. ecclesiasticallawassociation.org.uk/index.php/judg…

2) St Mary Pulborough, 2012 - Consistory Courts often turn down designs of gravestones in churchyards. They sometimes order removal of gravestones erected without a Faculty (always pastorally very difficult).

What is more remarkable in this precise instance is that the son of the deceased then invited the local press over, and smashed the gravestone into oblivion with a sledgehammer: theargus.co.uk/news/9882656.g…

As one might imagine, the Chancellor was rather less than impressed with this, and equally unimpressed with the local media's coverage of it (unsurprisingly, local hacks tend not to understand the minutiae of ecclesiastical legal proceedings) cofechichester.contentfiles.net/media/document…

3) St Mary Bourne Street (2013). In which a parish spends many thousands of pounds on three High Mass sets and then decide they don't like them (they are 'gothic' [gasp], 'too yellow' and 'too dull' respectively).

In spite of the Deputy Chancellor finding that the vestments "to the untutored eye might be deemed sumptuous even to the most jaded of Spanish Cardinals", a faculty to sell them was granted. ecclesiasticallawassociation.org.uk/index.php/judg…

4) St Stephen Walbrook (2013). This was my first big case, and it was fascinating from start to finish. What to do with a 5m x 3m painting that doesn't really go with your new reordering?

Wait until you've knocked a massive hole in the wall, smuggle it out, wait 25 years, then get a Faculty to sell it for *lots* of money. Well played. ecclesiasticallawassociation.org.uk/index.php/judg…

5) St Giles Uley (2014).

Our hero Ms Rodgers returns, and is really rather unimpressed by a parish's failure to follow the correct procedures and processes: "there has been total failure to carry out clear rules and instructions to ensure that this procedure has been carried out properly...

"...This, notwithstanding the directions given with what I might describe as child-like clarity to the Petitioners by the Diocesan Registrar...This was a fiasco of the Petitioners' own making in defiance of the clearest advice." ecclesiasticallawassociation.org.uk/index.php/judg…

I hope to return tomorrow with numbers 6-10. Happy New Year when it arrives in your particular jurisdiction!

BONUS DVD EXTRA! - St Mary Ashford (2010). In the Diocese of Canterbury the court is known as the Commissary Court instead. A Mr Cooper is a regular correspondent with the Court office, famously becoming a temporary resident within the Court's jurisdiction telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/…

[tangent] Three years later the police were called to the same parish's Annual Parochial Church Meeting when Mr Cooper (it is reported) dressed as a Vicar, gatecrashed the meeting.

He proceeded to interrupt business by shouting the Commination Service from the Book of Common Prayer (the "denouncement of God’s anger against impenitent sinners") over those trying to speak kentonline.co.uk/ashford/news/p… [/tangent]

In the case at hand, despite Mr Cooper presenting his case "with vigour and clarity" permission was given for alterations to turn the church into a dual purpose building (incorporating an arts centre).

I don't believe his sit-in protest caused the Court, or the parties, to change their minds.

ecclesiasticallawassociation.org.uk/index.php/judg…

Anyway, that really is your lot for today. Tune in tomorrow!

A warm welcome to Part 2, especially to new followers and visitors. Coffee is served afterwards in the hall.

We start today with a stone cold banger. Re Emmanuel Leckhampton (2014). Chancellor Rodgers, naturally, in the chair. Nice, but perhaps unremarkable building...

At some point post-war they had been gifted a painting. It had happily hung in the Church, before being moved at some point to a side chapel, out of sight, as it was apparently "theologically inappropriate" for the (main) church.

Around 2013 it was moved to the "clutter gathering space" in the Vestry. Astonishingly, it was about to be chucked in the skip, when somebody suggested they might get some money for it. A local valuer suggested £1000, then revised upward to £3/4000.

It sold for £20,000, and it is generally thought that the purchaser got a bargain. The only issue is that at no point had any permissions been sought for selling the item. The legal position is clear - title to chattels does not pass without a Faculty.

Clergy should know this. Auctioneers should know this. Chancellor Rodgers is on a mission to make sure that everybody knows this. A few choice quotations from the judgment:

"This wretched and lamentable history is a textbook example of how not to do things, as I have sadly had to set out above. Monumental stupidity is involved, some degree of arrogance, and, even possibly [I make no finding as to the latter], a degree of evasiveness."

"If this faculty is refused, the Priest in Charge and the Church
Wardens [sic] might expect to be sued personally by the auctioneers and the “buyer” for their losses, including the Priest in Charge facing a very unpleasant dispute as to what she did or did not say about…

…permission to sell to the auctioneers." ... "They have been really, really stupid. But they have not been
dishonest. In their misguided way, they supposed, albeit
erroneously, they were acting for the good of the Church."

But, really, a few quotations cannot do justice to the full 55-page tour de force that is this judgment. Read it in full here: ecclesiasticallawassociation.org.uk/index.php/judg…

And the painting looks like this. Some may disagree with the parish that this is theologically inappropriate for a church...

7) St Leonard Beoley (2015). I can summarize this one in a single tweet: "No, you can't borrow William Shakespeare's skull" (Spoiler alert - it almost certainly isn't actually Shakespeare's skull).

A similar case relating to King Harold was heard a decade or so earlier. Historical curiousity is not usually considered enough to disturb somebody's final resting place for DNA testing. ecclesiasticallawassociation.org.uk/index.php/judg…

8) St James Kidbrooke (2016) - Lots of churches have mobile phone masts in the tower. Nice little earner, out of sight, good tall place for them to be. They are occasionally controversial, either for heritage reasons, or for perceived risks to health.

This one attracted the attention of a local resident who has built a home-made Faraday Cage, and spends up to 15 hours a day in it dailymail.co.uk/health/article…

The Consistory Court rule is that churches should be held to no higher (or lower) standard than a civil building in relation to phones and health risks - masts must pass all the relevant emissions tests, but will then usually be permitted.

This judgment is a really good example of a Court doing its best to help a litigant in person, but exasperation does occasionally creep to the surface of the text...

I acted in this case, and have three abiding memories. First, I was accused of "dressing as a Barrister" by the objector. The indignity! (It was a solicitor's gown...)

Second, I showed up at the hearing involving sitting next to someone claiming acute electro-sensitivity, with most of my notes on my iPad rather than printed out, because I'm an idiot.

Finally, on my walk from the station to the Church through a council estate in South London, I saw a rusting speedboat in a parking bay. I assume one of the residents had won the grand prize on Bullseye in the 1980s.

Anyway, read the case in all its glory here (apologies, the scanning quality is not the best on this one) ecclesiasticallawassociation.org.uk/index.php/judg…

9) Christ Church Spitalfields (2017) Undoubtedly the longest-running and most expensive saga of the decade. It has resulted in 2 appeals, a legislative change, and at the end of it all, only an interim solution.

A 19th Century statute made it illegal to build on a disused burial ground (other than to build a church or an extension to a church). This had seemingly been ignored in the post-war years, when a building was erected in the Spitalfields Churchyard.

It was somewhat glossed over too when that building was replaced with a new building (slightly larger footprint). Until the thing had been largely, built. A Faculty had been granted for the building, but the application forms had suggested that the site was *not* a burial ground.

When objectors asked the Chancellor to rescind the Faculty and order the demolition of the building, he refused (rather bluntly). That decision was overturned on appeal.

The Court of Arches (appeal court) ordered that the case be reheard by the Consistory Court, but with a different Chancellor. Who to call upon for such a controversial situation? You may be able to guess.

Sadly, this was not Chancellor Rodgers' finest hour.

497 pages, only to be overturned on appeal (Consistory Court judgments are usually 2-20 pages!) And, given the hard time she gave to the parties in Uley and Leckhampton about following Faculty procedures, there's a couple of procedural howlers of her own in here.

Nevertheless, there is some characteristically brutal takedowns in this one, so if you have a spare few hours, it's a fun read. The current status is that the Court of Arches have ordered that the building be torn down, but suspended enforcement of the Order for several years.

This ensures that the huge amounts of money spent on it is not entirely wasted. The building itself has won a load of architecture awards - it's a desperately sad story, all told.

The law has now been changed, to allow buildings to be built on burial grounds, under certain conditions (as has been case for unconsecrated burial grounds for 40+ years), with a Faculty. But this does not, the Court of Arches found, apply retrospectively. ecclesiasticallawassociation.org.uk/index.php/judg…

All the various judgments, including the two appeals, can be found here, for those taking a really deep dive: ecclesiasticallawassociation.org.uk/index.php/comp…

And so, we reach the present day. 10) Filey St Oswald (2019). The case that inspired this thread. Unlawful Methodist burial in Church of England Churchyard, closed due to lack of space? Check. Threat that the coffin would be "left on top" of grave if permission not given? Check.

Detailed and forensic analysis of whether the key conversations between protagonists had, in fact, taken place "over a cup of tea"? Check. Funeral director hauled over the coals by deeply unimpressed Chancellor, and made to pay the costs of the case? Check.

The interred body has been allowed to rest in peace, which I think clearly was the right pastoral outcome. This one has all the makings of a West End farce. A masterpiece. ecclesiasticallawassociation.org.uk/index.php/judg…

And, so, we reach the end of our voyage of jurisprudential discovery. I've chosen some of the weirder ones, but there's dozens of cases every year.

They mostly deal with the humdrum of alterations, restoration etc to our church buildings, such a core part of the nation's built heritage.

Huge thanks to Ray Hemingray, who painstakingly receives, uploads and catalogues the judgments from all across the country, and to the Law & Religion UK blog, who do a digest each month of the new cases.

Ecclesiastical law is great fun, and (frankly) we could do with a few more people of my age and younger taking an interest in it. ecclawsoc.org.uk is a fine place to start.