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ReV N J WOODHALL
Norman John Woodhall was born in Handsworth, Staffordshire, in 1910. He was educated at Birmingham and worked for the General Electric Company before entering the church. He prepared for ordination at Ripon Hall, a liberal Anglican theological college, after studying at Magdalen College, Oxford. He began his first curacy in 1935 at St Michael's, Boldmere in Sutton Coldfield, where he married Mary Poynton in 1938.
In May 1940, Rev Woodhall joined the Royal Army Chaplains' Department and served as a Temporary Chaplain to the Forces in several units and was senior chaplain to the 11th Armoured Division in the Invasion of Europe. At the end of World War 2, he was appointed Rector of Gate Burton & Knaith, Lincolnshire, where he served until 1950, and afterwards (from January 1951) was Rector of Chelsfield in Kent until 1958. In August 1958, following the death of the Ven A W Chute, it was announced that he would be leaving Kent to become Vicar of Basingstoke "...a parish of about 20,000 people, with three curates".
Rev Woodhall was instituted as Vicar of Basingstoke on October 21st 1958. Initially, he continued his predecessor's role with responsibility for All Saints', while no designated curate was available. Within the year, however, a new curate, Rev C R Johnson, was assigned the position of Priest-in-Charge for the church at "the Top of Town".
During his time in Basingstoke, Rev Woodhall gained publicity in the press on a number of occasions. In 1960. The Birmingham Post reported the recently deceased Canon E W Brow of Sutton Coldfield had left, in his will, £50 to each of the five curates who had served under him at St Michael's, Boldmere, "...in the hope that they will spend the money on a holiday." Rev Woodhall was one of the recipients.
The next newspaper article referencing Rev Woodhall was not as light-hearted, emanating from an incident at All Saints' Church. The January 19th 1961, edition of the Daily Express carried an article:
CHURCH SPLITS OVER DISCORD AT EVENSONG
The curate was upset when the organist, young Ernest Warberton, 'signed off' at the end of Evensong with a flourish which rang loudly through the church.
He decided that it was a 'a show of irreverent defiance' after Ernest had played an unknown tune to a well-known hymn.
So he asked the Rev Norman Woodhall, Vicar of All Saints, Basingstoke, to give Ernest the sack. Mr Woodhall did so, then withdrew it,
The curate, the Rev Christopher Johnson, resigned - and split the congregation into anti-curate and anti-Ernest sections with discord all around.
Last night, 23-year old Ernest, a music teacher trained at Oxford, banged out a few bars of jazz on a piano and said: "I am keen on all music, and that includes modern jazz."
Then was that flourish a bit of jazz?
"No", said Ernest. "Nothing like it. I made it up as I went along and it certainly was not irreverent."
"The unknown hymn tune was simply the tune the choir said it knew best."
The situation was followed up in the January 27th edition of the same newspaper with:
VICAR: STOP BEING 'ANTI'
The curate at All Saints, Basingstoke, the Rev. Christopher Johnson, who resigned after a dispute over church music, is to return.
He had complained of a “signing-off” flourish by the organist, 23-year-old Ernest Warburton. Said the vicar, the Rev. Norman Woodhall, yesterday: “Now let’s all carry on being pro-Church and not anti-curate or anti-organist.”
A new curate became responsible for All Saints' later in 1961.
The Sunday Pictorial of July 22nd 1961, reported on remarks made by Rev Woodhall at a meeting discussing the development of the town at that time, specifically the South Ham estate:
STORM OVER THE WORDS OF A DEAN..
REMARKS made at a meeting by a Dean have caused a storm of protest to break among people living on an estate at Basingstoke, Hants.
Asking questions about the type of people who could be coming to the new estate - under the London County Council's South Ham Development Scheme - the Rev N J Woodhall, Dean of Basingstoke, said:
"We don't want ALL working-class people here, we want leaders for our future Youth Clubs, and other activities."
He suggested some of the house should be for private development.
"Only then could we get the right type of person," he added.
Said Mr Emrhy Harris, chairman of the South Ham Residents' Association:
"The first job of any minister should be to get people into church - not discriminate who they are. You can't start hanging pedigree tags on people like you do animals. Are people living in council houses not good enough as leaders for our organisations? May I point out that there are local councillors living in council houses, and even one of the clergy. I have always been led to believe that in God's eyes all men are equal."
Said Mr Woodhall: "I don't want to say any more on the matter."
Like his predecessors as Parish Vicar, Rev Woodhall lived in the (old) Rectory (now Chute House). However, in 1967, he decided that the old Rectory (built in 1773) was too expensive to maintain. Documents in the Hampshire Records Office confirm that 66 Bounty Road was leased as a temporary rectory until 1969 while a new Rectory was built on land between St Michael's Church and the old Rectory. The closure of the old building in 1967 meant that the previous year's annual parish party in the grounds, with a pageant in the evening during the mid-summer period, was the last event of its kind to be held, having been introduced by Rev Chute when he arrived in the Parish thirty years before.
Rev Woodhall did not reside at the temporary Rectory for the whole time, as a Reading Post article of October 1968 reported that he would be spending a three month sabbatical in America and for part of that time be in charge of "...a little country parish in Florida... near Jacksonville...", described as "...being in a very wealthy executive belt where are fabulous country estates". He would also be travelling through the states of New York, Maine, and New Hampshire, as well as visiting Los Angles, San Francisco and Salt Lake City. Rev Woodhall had first visited Jacksonville about 4 years earlier at the invitation of the dean of the city's cathedral, to whom he had been introduced to by the daughter of Basingstoke's former rating officer who lived in Fairfields Road. The priest notes in the article that "In Basingstoke I might take as many as six services on a Sunday while in Florida I gather it is one a fortnight".
It is unlikely that Rev Woodhall lived in the new Rectory for any length of time, as he moved from Basingstoke to be inducted as Vicar of St Andrew the Apostle, Hamble-le-Rice village parish in 1969. [Rev Simon Ridley was announced as the new Rector of Basingstoke in November 1969, and was inducted to the post in April 1970.]
Rev Woodhall retired as Vicar of Hamble in 1975, and continued to reside in the village until his death in 1991.
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