WATSON, Richard William 1865 - 1950

Obituary from the Minutes of the Methodist Conference 1950, page 142

Born at Torpenhow, Cumberland, in 1865. Converted in youth, he gave himself at once to the service of the Church, and soon heard the ‘ call to preach ‘. In 1887 he offered himself as a candidate for the Wesleyan Methodist Ministry, and on being accepted was sent for training to Didsbury College.

In 1890 he was sent to the Radcliffe Circuit, where he spent four successful years, and thereafter he exercised an effective ministry, chiefly in the Liverpool Area and Scotland.

He had distinct pulpit gifts, and while serving in Glasgow was on three occasions the special preacher at the great Sunday evening service in Glasgow Cathedral.

He was a man of solid worth and a minister of the finest type ; unsparing in his pastoral work and diligent as a leader and administrator.

Throughout his life he was a serious student, and few ministers had a larger, better-chosen, or better-read library. He often declared that a Methodist minister’s business was to preach Christ and His Gospel, to be a faithful pastor, and to mind every point, great and small, in the Methodist discipline ; and he practised what he preached.

He gave two sons to the Ministry of the Church—one to the Methodist Ministry and the other to the Church of England ; the death of the former, in the First World War, was a deep grief to him.

Retiring from the active work in 1931, he returned to his beloved Cumberland, and settled in Applethwaite, near Keswick, where he continued to the end to render fine service to his Church.

He passed on, I peacefully and triumphantly, on 14th February 1950, in the eighty-fifth year of his life and the sixtieth of his ministry.

©Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes 1950

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