Eternal Memory: Canon Donald Allchin

In Chrysostom for Pascha 2011, Fr John Salter writes:


It was in 1957 that I first met Donald Allchin. He had been ordained the year before to a title at St. Mary Abbots, Kensington, and at the age of twenty six looked ten years younger. He never lost, even in his late seventies, that boyish appearance and a certain innocence of manner.

Donald was an important figure in the life of the Church of England, but he never sought to climb the greasy pole of preferment. He had private means and could afford to be somewhat of a freelance. This enabled him to write, to lecture, to make ecumenical friendships and to travel. His magnum opus among his writings was the work which secured his B.Litt., The Silent Rebellion, the history of the formation of the Religious Communities of monks and nuns in the Church of England.

He had a great love for the Orthodox Church and studied at the Ecumenical Patriarch’s seminary on Halki, one of the Princes Islands in the Sea of Marmora, off Istanbul. In Romania he befriended the Romanian Orthodox theologian, Father Staniloae, who had fallen foul of the Communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu; and while there received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bucharest.

He will always be associated with the work of our sister society, the Fellowship of SS. Alban and Sergius, whose journal Sobornost he edited for some years. Having been educated at Christ Church, Oxford, he returned to that city to be Librarian of Pusey House. In Oxfordshire he became chaplain to the enclosed convent of the Sisters of the Love of God, an Anglican Carmelite community with strong links with the convents of the Romanian Orthodox Church.

Donald held various lecturing posts during the 1980s at both Catholic institutions and Anglican until 1994, when he returned yet again to Oxford to be programme director of the St. Theosevia Centre for Christian Spirituality. He had been from 1973-1994 a residentiary canon of Canterbury Cathedral. Having suffered a stroke, he retired to Bangor, Wales, and became the honorary professor of spirituality in the university. Whilst in Wales he ministered to another Religious Community, that of the Anglican Cistercians at Tymawr convent. Despite his stroke, Donald retained his charm and gracious and generous manner till the end, having reached his eightieth year, but still looking much younger!