CURATE FROM HOME

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 50, 1 March 1937, Page 4

CURATE FROM HOME

A FORMER NEW ZEALANDER

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

LONDON, February 3. "Passengers by the Remuera,' dtie to leave on April 1, will include /the Rev. J. H. Datson and his family with the exception of his eldest son, who is in the Royal Air Force and will remain in England until he is through his apprenticeship,. Mr. Datson is returning to New Zealand to become Vicar of Opunake, a locality which he knows, for. he was for three years vicar of Raetihi,- following eighteen months in the parish of St. Matthew, Masterton. Mr. Datson is proudof the fact that he was the first deacon ordained in the Wairarapa, district.

Soon after coming to England, Mr. Datson was appointed curate at .Holy Trinity, the parish church of Clapham, in South-West London. He remained there for over five years, as senior priest,- under Canon J. C. V. Durell, rector. Holy Trinity is full of historical associations, in that # Wilbefforce, Thornton, Venn, Lord Macaulay, and others worshipped there, and in their great and long fight for the emancipation of the slaves were-known as the Clapham Sect. In August, 1935, he was given the important duty of pioneering the w.ork . at St. James's, Merlon Park, South This district is part of the old Merton parish, and four years ago was an old golf course, with neighbouring farms circling it. Today it is a densely. populated area; streets have grown up like mushrooms, houses have been sold before they were built, and people living in them with the plaster still wet <jn the walls. When he went there there; was a population of 2000; now there' are nearly 11,000 souls in the district, and when the scheme is complete there will be over 15,000 inhabitants." Dr. Datson's job has been one of interest and real hard' work, in that he had to win the people over, get together a congregation, consolidate the position, and in spite of the tendency of the men to stay 'at home and dig their gardens and do all _the odds and ends incidental to a-new house, bring them into the Church.