Mexborough &Swinton Times, 7th February 1925
The Vicar of Conisborough
A Valedictory Strain.
Hint to Colliery Company And Officials.
At the annual parochial gathering in connection with the Conisborough Parish Church, held in the Church Hall last night, the Vicar of Conisborough, the Rev. W. A. Strawbridge, gave his annual review of the Church’s parochial year. He expressed disappointment at the attendance at the annual tea, which was well below the average, and added that he remembered only one other occasion when it was so poor, and then there was a foot of snow on the ground.
Mr. Strawbridge went on to say that he could look back upon 46 years’ work in the Don Valley. Except for a year and a half spent in London, all his ministerial work and been done in that district. He remembered the time when the site of the Cadeby Colliery was occupied by pleasant woodland. Conisborough had changed rapidly and was no longer a pleasant country resort, but a busy industrial township. He could not feel that the Colliery Company had dealt altogether as generously with Conisborough as with the neighbouring district of Denaby, and yet Conisborough had a strong claim on the interest and sympathy of the Company. Most of the colliery officials lived there, and a third of the population were colliery workers. He had been Vicar of Conisborough for 36 years, and was close on 70 years of age. He could not expect to go on forever. The population of Conisborough had nearly doubled since he came.
He hoped the colliery officials would come to regard Conisborough not only as a salubrious place to live in but a place to organise and lead and help. He wished they would enter more heartily into the social life of the place, for they had great influence. He was in his old parish at Mexborough a short time ago, taking the chair at a diamond jubilee celebration. They had had six vicars at Mexborough since 1864.
There had only been thirty-seven at Conisborough since 1200, an average incumbency of 20 years. They must not infer from all this that he was resigning straight away. He did not say it would be this year or next, but it must be soon. If the natural leaders of society in their midst did not come to their assistance he was bound to say that the working classes did, and if they did not reach the same degree of cooperation in Conisborough that he observed in some neighbouring parishes, they had solid achievements to their credit, not the least of them being the provision of the Church Hall in which they were gathered. He liked to think that he could look on that as one of the memorials of his incumbency. He found the care of the parish increasingly heavy, and arduous, as he advanced in years, but he was glad to have secured the assistance of Mr. R. Coleman, who came to them with the recommendation of 25 years’ service in the Church Army. He hoped that this would not be his (the Vicar’s) last appearance at their parochial gathering.