Description

Time’s Winged Chariot

A backward glance through Ninety Years

Published 4th June 2023 to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Bishop Ronald’s Ordination

Ronald Milner draws a vivid picture as he looks back over his 90+ years of life, from childhood in the 1930’s,in that pre-television, pre-computer age, to the war years and battling his way through his bomb-shattered home town of Hull, before university and ordination training at Cambridge and Oxford respectively. Work as an Anglican priest took him from the steel foundries and pioneer days of industrial Mission in Sheffield to Coventry where he witnessed the building of it’s new cathedral and attended it’s consecration; then to the busy port of Southampton and the forging of a new city centre Team Ministry.

As archdeacon he experienced life in the rural fens of Lincolnshire, experimenting with Local Non-Stipendiary Ministry, before moving to Burnley as bishop and working in the Urban Priority Areas of east Lancashire. At each stage of his working life facing the challenges of change in Church and country.

Retirement years in Southwell saw him actively engaged with local church congregations in campaigning for issues of world debt, poverty, Fairtrade and the environment. Later years, too, saw him on travels as far flung as Canada, Italy, Russia, Crete, Yugoslavia and Malaysia – with some enthusiastic bird-watching along the way.