- Betty Ridley
Dame Mildred Betty Ridley,
DBE (1909 - 2005) was a leading figure in the life of the Church of England from the 1960s into the 1980s, serving as Third Church Estates Commissioner from 1972 until 1981, the first woman to hold the post. She is also remembered her role in the very successful and moving television programme "Evensong", shown in theBBC 's "Everyman " series in December 1992.Her father, Henry Mosley, was then Rector of
Poplar, London . He was later appointedBishop of Stepney and, after nine years,Bishop of Southwell . She was educated at the independentNorth London Collegiate School and atCheltenham Ladies' College . Aged 19, she married Michael Ridley, her father's chaplain, and that determined the course of her life for the next 25 years. Michael Ridley became incumbent of parishes inPimlico andFinchley , then died at an early age in 1953, leaving his widow with four children.Ridley had always had a strong belief that women should not be excluded from those whom the Church would accept as candidates for Holy Orders. (Her father was at one time chairman of a central Council for Women's Church Work). She took many opportunities to forward this cause. She was, for example, in 1979 a founding member of the Movement for the Ordination of Women.
As a widow Ridley recognised periodic bereavements as a fact of life. Her only brother had been killed on the last day of the battle of
El Alamein . Yet it was not long before new doors were opened. Her experience as a mother, a bishop's daughter and a parson's wife soon found various new outlets. And there was music. She was a member of the Bach Choir for the greater part of her adult life, singing under Reginald Jacques and David Willcocks. Music had always featured largely in the life of the family.Before her husband died, she was elected to the [Anglican] Church Assembly and joined the Council for Woman's Work. She played a major part in settling the structures of the Assembly's successor body, the General Synod. For the first decade of its life, she was at the heart of the new Synod. She served for 25 years on the Central Board of Finance and she was a member "the first woman to be appointed" of the Advisory Council for the Training of the Ministry. In 1982 she chaired the Crown Appointments Commission that led to the appointment of
John Habgood as Archbishop of York.But there was not only Church House, the headquarters of the Synod, there was also Millbank, the home of the Church Commissioners. From 1959 to 1981 she was herself a Commissioner, and active on various committees. In 1972 Archbishop
Michael Ramsey appointed her to succeed SirHubert Ashton as Third Church Estates Commissioner, the first woman to hold the post, one which she held until 1981.Links
* [http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr5805.html]
* [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20050810/ai_n14857339]
* [http://www.bopcris.ac.uk/bopall/ref24784.html]
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