The following address was given at Pat Lancaster's funeral

SERMON PREACHED AT THE FUNERAL OF PATRICIA MARGARET LANCASTER ST. MARY’S CHURCH ALVERSTOKE 8th April, 2004 by Canon Ted Goodyer, Rector of Alverstoke

“We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear our presence automatically liberates others.”

Nelson Mandela speaks out of the African experience of community, expressed in the word Ubuntu - having a place in society, but being open to and enriched by the diversity of gifts and experience around us. It seems appropriate to apply this to Pat,. She saw education not only in the curriculum and adequate facitilies, although she worked tirelessly to provide the best. She wrote: “Basically educationis not concerned with any of these, but with the “encounter between people”. The Head Mistress’s life is bound up with the human crises of personality and relationship in everyday affairs - and it is here that real education - or the reverse- takes place.” This was the wisdom teaching revealed to her in the four schools she was associated - St. Swithun’s Winchester, St, Mary’s Calne, but probably most notable in her years as a Head Mistress first at St. Michael’s Burton Park, Petworth and Wycombe Abbey. She was 32 when appointed to her first Headship and she retired on her 60th birthday.

The focus of her considerable energy both of body and of mind was on helping people - giving them a lift up on her shoulders so that they could see wider horizons - as Margaret Beckett (Deputy Head for all the years Pat was Head of Wycombe Abbey) said in her tribute to Pat on her retirement “Very few heads can have been as accessible to every member of a school the size of Wycombe Abbey or have brought more warmth and imagination to the task of creating a sense of community and common purpose.”

I remember her telling me once about a girl who appeared in school with her hair dyed green. Pat summoned her at once and told her that she would not appear in public again with her hair like that. But the miscreant was not simply dismissed - Pat worked at solving the problem to restore her to the normal routine as soon as possible and hit on the solution of getting a wig. It told me much - the need for firm discipline and holding the line when any wobble could be mercilessly exploited, but also helping the person to face the problem she had created and then looking for a way in which the matter could be resolved. It was typical of Pat’s pastoral care.

It requires huge resources not to fall back on ready made answers, not to insist that everyone should fit into the same mould - but throughout her life this is what Pat did, and she in working with her pupils she acquired those invaluable skills - the ability to listen and to ask the pertinent questions.

Pat’s own schooling was interrupted frequently and unsettled - the family seemed to have been constantly on the move in the years before and during the war and she and Joan went to numerous schools. Like so many of her experiences this adversity had positive outcomes for Pat, not least the strong bonds that developed between Pat and her sister, Joan. This experience fixed in Pat’s mind the importance of a rounded education, of friendship and of personal responsibility. She was never one to take these for granted and certainly at Wycombe but probably throughout her teaching career she was eager to nurture an awareness of the deprivation and insecurity by which many are afflicted in the wider world.

Her standing in the education world was unrivalled - The Chairman of Council at Wycombe Abbey paid tribute to her as “the finest Headmistress in the land”. Harpers & Queen wrote of her: “I found a concern for the ‘whole woman’ that made it easy to see why.....Patricia Lancaster is one of the most respected and loved figures in the field of women’s education”.

It would be difficult to list all the different ways in which she has served education in the country - as a Governor, a School Council Member, involved in educational schemes for banks, on the Executive Committees of the Girl’s Schools Association, President of the GSA, and on the Independent Schools Joint Committee - her contribution has been enormous.

And the church has much to be grateful for. In her time as Head she helped the Diocese of Oxford in the selection of candidates for the ministry and after her retirement she was able to devote more time to this as a member of the panel of assessors for ABM conferences. She was a church Commissioner for 10 years, appointed originally by Archbishop Robert Runcie who was a good friend and greatly admired her abilities. She visited parsonages up and down the land and made decisions about redundant churches. She served as a lay member on the Bishoprics committee. A fellow members of the committee wrote: “Hers was an influential role in such a politically sensitive arena, serving at one time alongside such synodical heavy weights as George Austin (then Archdeacon of York) as she was ideally placed to make judicious common sense contributions while being “above party”.

She always on being Anglican in the broadest sense, though she found it hard to endure the fundamentalist glib answers or determination of who was in and who was out of God’s Kingdom. Hers was an inclusive faith with the arms of God stretching to embrace as wide as possible a community. She disliked the word “mission” because it seemed to suggest telling others what was good for them, rather than listening to their grasp of the truth. I would have loved to have heard or read her termly sermons preached in the school chapel.

She once said to me that when she undertook a task “she tended to get quite involved”. It was her humble way of saying that her commitments received her full attention, benefited from her many gifts, her experience and particularly her passion.

Seldom has one known anyone who had such an unquenchable interest in people of all sorts, or the ability to make others feel that they were important. In the little ways she nurtured friendship here in the Alverstoke community in which she lived after she retired. She will always be remembered - doing the things which can make such a difference to lives, shopping for someone who was housebound, giving a lift, listening to or entertaining someone. There were innumerable acts of hidden kindness and the infection of her unbounded zest for living spilled over into other lives. And she was always ready to try something new. She was proud of a certificate awarded at the local FE college at the end of a course on “Computing for the Terrified”.

The Lancaster Arts Centre is a tangible sign of her love of beauty in many different forms. Her clothes, the rich colours, designs and fabrics, her great appreciation of art exhibitions and enjoyment of the theatre give us some insight into its value in her everyday life . She had a lovely collection of antique snuff bottles which hangs on her lounge wall. Both the valuable and beautiful have their place.

I can still see her striding out on Western Way being half pulled by a bouncing poodle. We have travelled more gently with her. For all her energy and sense of purpose, she had a remarkable gentleness. We have all benefited from our association with her. Since hearing of her illness we have been with her in that ultimate descent into death. But with us, as we read in John 14, has been the Christ himself, a fellow traveller, not just with us but as one who goes before us, preparing a place for us in the “undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns.”

And the passage tells us that the end of the journey will be a homecoming - a room in our Father’s house - where united with those we have loved, we shall enter life and find its fulfilment. At Pat’s final assembly at Wycombe Abbey she quoted from T S Elliott. I end with another passage from The Four Quartets:

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

Canon Ted Goodyer
Rector of Alverstoke