BARRATT, Thomas Hugh B.A. 1870 - 1951

Obituary from the Minutes of the Methodist Conference 1952, page 122

Born at St. Austell on 29th March 1870. He was the son of the Rev. Robert C. Barratt, and was educated at Kingswood School.

From school he took his Arts degree, and became a master at Woodhouse Grove, leaving in 1894 to enter the Wesleyan Methodist Ministry.
He was a student and sub-tutor at Handsworth College. From there he went to circuit work, where he found a vocation to which he eagerly responded.

In 1909 he was appointed Governor and Tutor in Pastoral Theology at Richmond College, where he remained until 1915.
During the first world war he returned to circuit work, in which he brought comfort and inspiration to many.

In 1919 he was appointed to Didsbury College, Manchester, and in 1925 became Principal—a post he held until he retired in 1939.
During this period he was for a few years Chairman of the Manchester First District.

In 1939 he became a Supernumerary, and took charge of a church at Brighton.

Later he retired to Leamington Spa where he died on 5th September 1951.

For twenty-six years he was a tutor—and for a large part of the time Principal—in a Theological College.

He was appointed House Governor at the early age of thirty-nine. He was a triumphant pioneer of a new order, and was singularly gifted for this work.

Believing that the primary need of the Church was the creation of a well-trained and devoted ministry—and that buildings were secondary, he devoted his life to this crusade.

He was a dynamic teacher, and taught his fellow-students to be ever true to their high calling—to love learning, to value humour, to be tolerant, to love all sorts and conditions of men, and above all to love their Lord and Master.

He knew that love is the golden key. He was a man of a rich culture—with a passionate love for, and intimate knowledge of, the ancient classics.
He was a Celt, proud of his Cornish ancestry, and had the Celtic fire and vision. He saw rather than argued.

The Eternal was ever near to him, and was the daily air he breathed.
He had been schooled in tragedy, and had turned his necessity to glorious gain.

The sudden death at Richmond of his wife never took her from him. She remained through the years at the centre of his life, and his passing consummates a long- desired reunion.

He was a powerful preacher, and to this task he brought vision, lucidity, a sense of the Eternal, and a faith which was truly catholic.

He loved his students; and how delicate were his sympathies. They told him of their sorrows, and he guarded their confidences.

The students were his children, and to them he gave his love, his wise counsel—and was to them a true father-in-God.

He loved his Lord ; he loved men, women, and children.

He spelt out rightly life’s meaning, and proclaimed by life and word that it was, and is for ever—Love.

His fifty-seven years of ministry were finished on 5th September 1951 in the eighty-first year of his age.

©Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes 1952

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