Rev Hawkes, Rector of Johannesburg

February 1914

Mexborough Times, February 28th 1914

DENABY MAIN VICARS PREFERMENT.

Important appointment at Johannesburg

 

During the course of last week it was persistently rumoured in Denaby Main that the vicar (the reverent S.F.Hawkes) was about to leave, and in his sermon on Sunday night. Mr Hawkes set all doubts at rest by announcing that the rumour was founded on fact. He has been invited by the Bishop of Pretoria to take up the position of Rector of St Mary’s Church, Johannesburg, and after much deliberation, he has decided to accept this call to South Africa. He will leave Denaby to take up his new work shortly after Easter.

It would be hard to estimate the importance of Mr Hawkes new position. Johannesburg is a town of 350,000 inhabitants, half of them white and half of them black; and St Mary’s is the oldest and most important of the 18 English churches in the place. 28 years ago the site now occupied by the city was a tree less and deserted plain – nothing but a bare ridge of granite. In 1886 gold was discovered along the whole course of this ridge, and the rush from all parts of the world began. The earliest inhabitants lived in tents and wagons. Then buildings of corrugated iron, and later of brick and stone, were erected; and today the city is one of the finest in the Empire. In its earliest days, a church was built to provide for the needs of the people, and was called St Mary’s. It was not a beautiful building, and was only meant for temporary use, but it held 1000 people, and for 20 years supplied their needs.

In 1906, it was pulled down and the new St Mary’s was built, of nearly double the size. It is of this huge church that Mr Hawkes is to be Vicar; but the present building is not, as a matter of fact, the church at all, but the parish room; and one of Mr Hawkes first duties and reaching Johannesburg will be to build the church itself and an adjoining site.

It is rumoured that this new church will cost not less than £150,000 if it is to be adequate to the needs of the congregation; from this, the size of the undertaking committed to Mr Hawkes charge can easily be estimated.

St Mary’s is the mother church, not only of the 18 other churches in Johannesburg (including the one specially devoted to work amongst the natives), but of those in all the mining towns scattered for 60 miles along the land east and west of Johannesburg. St Mary’s parish, men and women are constantly going to these towns to try their fortune there; and it rests with the rector of St Mary and its clergy to see that, before they go, they shall receive such Christian instruction as will help them in their life in the wilder parts of the Transvaal. This fact in itself is enough to make St Mary’s the most important church in the whole of a vast mining population, numbered over 1 million souls, apart altogether from the enormous congregation which worships in the church, Sunday by Sunday.

But the rector’s duties do not stop here. The gaol and the hospital are both in his parish. For the prisoners of the former, there is a Prisoners Aid Society, which aims at giving a new start in life and their release from prison. In addition to this, the church has control of an orphanage of about 80 children, a House of Mercy, and innumerable clubs and institutes for the men and lads of the city.

The late director of St Mary’s said in public that Johannesburg has, as a city, the worst name of any in South Africa. The teams, he says, with difficulties and problems.

It is a far cry from the South Yorkshire coalfield to the South African gold field, but in selecting Mr Hawkes to fill the position of rector of St Mary’s, the Bishop of Pretoria has found a priest, who has had experience of mining communities in England, and has always shown the deepest interest in their problems.

It would not be right to elude further to the work. Mr Hawkes as done at Denaby Main until the date of his departure grows closer; but all were no name will part with him with the deepest regrets, I will wish him well in his new and heroic undertaking.