Papers of the first Bishop of Down and Dromore, Archive of the Month
The papers of the Rt Revd William Shaw Kerr (1897–1960) feature as April’s Archive of the Month. Kerr was the first bishop of Down and Dromore, as opposed to Down, Connor, and Dromore – Connor becoming a diocese in its own right at the time of his consecration in 1945.
This important collection of materials provide a relatively rare detailed insight into clerical life in the northern part of the island, during the first half of the 20th century, particularly the period between the two World Wars.
Kerr had a strongly Unionist political outlook and these papers reveal that he was the anonymous writer who penned a column for the Church of Ireland Gazette under the nom de plume ‘Shebna the Scribe. Writing from the ‘Cave Hill’ Belfast on virtually a weekly basis between 1910 and 1916, the column terminated quite suddenly after a particularly hard–hitting piece on the Irish Rebellion. In this regard, Kerr’s related papers, and the insight they reveal from the perspective of a northern cleric about the rapidly–evolving Ireland at this period, are likely to become important sources for researchers.
Although Kerr served his entire clerical career in the north east of the island through the Partition era, he was actually born in the south. He was ordained deacon in 1897 and served two curacies in Shankill, Lurgan (Dromore) 1897–99; and St James Belfast (Connor) 1899–1901. In 1900, he married Amy Smith, daughter of Thomas Smith in All Saints Coxley Green in Hertfordshire, and they shared 58 years together before her death on 27 January 1958.
The year after their marriage, he was appointed to his first incumbency in the parish of Ballywalter (Down) where he stayed ten years (1901–10), followed by a further five–year incumbency in the parish of St Paul’s Belfast (Connor) between 1910 and 1915; and then a longer 17–year stint in the parish of Seapatrick (Dromore) from 1915 to 1932. During his time at Banbridge he rose through the senior clerical ranks serving as chancellor of Dromore 1920–29; and also archdeacon of Dromore for a further two years 1930–32.
Kerr’s papers reveal he was in the running to become bishop of Tuam in 1932, which might have taken him over the border for the first time in his clerical service, but he lost out in the final votes to William Hardy Holmes, and soon after was appointed dean and vicar of Belfast (Connor) in 1932, where he would continue through the war years until his election as the first bishop of Down and Dromore in 1945. After ten and a half years in this post, he retired on 31 July 1955. Two years after his beloved wife Amy, he died on 2 February 1960, at the age of 87.