Father David Houlding from All Hallows Church

ONE of Camden’s longest-serving parish priests said he was feeling “awful” about being forced to retire and leave his church and home after 38 years. In an interview ahead of his departure in the summer,

Father David Houlding spoke to the New Journal this week about how changing demographics were affecting life at All Hallows Church in Gospel Oak – and how he feared society was more divided than ever.

Fr Holding said: “The Bishop of London has a new rule that nobody may stay in their parish beyond 70. You can go and help in other churches, but you can’t stay in your parish. Some people aren’t very well after 70. Some people have gone eccentric and senile. But I feel like I could stay. This is my home as well as my place of work.”

But he added: “I was told by the bishop that I wouldn’t get permission to stay, and if I asked I’d only get upset. I took that advice, because I was just getting so stressed out about it. I feel awful. I’m going to miss the people here terribly.

“I have known many of them for 40 years. But I want to have a clean break, and it is expensive in London. Priests in retirement don’t have a lot of money. You are given a home with your job so your pay is not high, it’s about £25,000. And you have to pay your bills. Pensions are small, but you have to manage somehow.”

Fr Houlding – who lives in the Hallows House vicarage in Courthope Road, which predates the main church – spoke about how families were getting pushed out of Camden because of house prices too.

“The families and children I have are completely different from what they were when I started,” he said. “The families here will now send their children to St Paul’s, UCL, Highgate and Haberdashers. They all go to private school now. That is a real social change.”

The New Journal revealed last year how 40 per cent of children in Camden now go to private schools.

“That feeds in exactly with my experience,” said Fr Houlding. “Church schools are closing because families are moving further out of London. It is a bad thing because on the lower end, people are left out. It is more division, again.”

He also warned there was often only a veneer of tolerance between faiths and cultures in society, adding: “On the surface there is a lot of tolerance but and, you are not allowed to talk about it really, underneath there is still a lot of division. We are a less cohesive society than we once were.”

It will take nine months to appoint a new priest that Fr Houlding said would be a man due to an agreement reached after a “political battle” erupted about women priests.

Fr Houlding was part of a high-level archbishop committee that thrashed out a “settlement” he said had allowed warring church factions to co-exist, adding: “There are now churches where you have women clergy and those that you don’t.”

He said the reforms were “inevitable” but that without the settlement “the church would have torn itself apart”, adding: “We don’t have women clergy here. There will be a man appointed here after I leave. That’s fine. That’s what the people want.”

Looking back on his early years at the church, Fr Houlding said: “When you are young you think you know everything. You think it will all be wonderful and I’ll put everything wrong right and flourish.”

He added: “The church was derelict when I started. It was locked up most of the time. We changed all that.”

He said the future of the church would be helped by concerts and events, adding: “There are a lot more people coming through the doors than ever before.”

Fr Houlding will leave his home in June for a new life in Kent.

Asked what he would do in retirement, he said he was not interested in gardening or writing a book but said he was looking forward to going travelling more often to Europe’s capital cities to see art galleries and music.