Will Hazelwood Dartmouth’s new vicar
caffolding poles and the noise of decorators belie the peace and harmony behind the door of Dartmouth’s new vicarage - where Father Will Hazlewood, his wife Sophie, young sonTheo and Benson the dog now reside. After more than a year with no captain at the helm, due to the traditional church custom of keeping a period of interregnum between clergy, Father Will is the new vicar of the Parish of Dartmouth and Dittisham and is now conducting services at St Clement’s, St Saviour’s, St Petrox and St George’s. The Dartmouth community has welcomed the family with open arms. Father Will said: “We’ve had a massively warm welcome and everyone’s been very friendly. We had a lovely hamper waiting for us in the kitchen when we arrived and baskets of veg from people’s allotments keep being left on our doorstep. It’s wonderful.”
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Remarking on the landscape, he commented: “We have never lived somewhere as beautiful as this.” Father Will and Sophie visited Dartmouth for the first time last summer, whilst young Theo stayed with his grandmother in Tavistock. He said: “We were sat in a café thinking how lovely it would be to live here. Then, just before Christmas, Bishop John from Plymouth rang me and suggested I look at the Dartmouth job and arranged an interview. And here we are!
“This feels like the right place to be. There’s been fantastically good work done in the past and everyone has worked hard to keep the parish community running smoothly during the interregnum period. “Dartmouth is a very united community and the parish has been together for a long time. I now need to take some time to get to know people in and out of the worshipping community and become part of it all. “I’m not the sort of person to come in with ideas to make big changes. I want to live here for a bit and get a sense of what needs doing first.”
The family appears to be settling in very well. There will be a further addition to the vicarage when Theo’s baby brother or sister arrives later in the year. Theo is attending a local nursery school in September and appeared really happy in his new environment. He’s especially enthusiastic
about the boats and going crabbing! Father Will has left a single church post at Ivor Heath, near Slough, to move to Dartmouth. He admits being vicar of four churches can be a “bit of a run-around on Sundays” but is very impressed by the organisation within the parish. He was vicar at Ivor Heath for seven years where he spent a lot of time putting the church back at the centre of its large commuter community, through events such as open-air jazz concerts etc. Excitingly, Pinewood Studios was part of the Ivor Heath parish and Father Will once met the Queen during a studio opening ceremony, and also caught a brief glimpse of Johnny Depp’s trailer! Father Will comes from a long line of priests. His father was a vicar and there are 13 generations of clergy on his mother’s side.
He said: “I swore blind I wouldn’t be a priest as a child but I believe it was always my calling and vocation. I just took a little time coming to it!”
As a child, he was not academic and had learning difficulties. His parents took the decision to send him to the alternative Rudolf Steiner School at the age of 13 where he said he had a “fantastic education” with a more holistic timetable of practical and academic work. He left at 16 with no qualifications and attended a Youth
Training Scheme as a motor mechanic, which led to a four- year engineering apprenticeship. At 21 he decided to try university, after hearing what a great time his friends were having, but after struggling with the maths decided that engineering should remain a hobby rather than a career. He finished Leicester De Montfort University with a degree in Marketing and HR.
He said: “After my degree I was still trying to ignore my calling to be a priest but went along to the church selection conference to place the decision in their hands. They said “yes” and sealed my fate!” Not wanting to return to university immediately he became a vicar’s assistant, and spent a year on a Leicester housing estate.
He said: “It was scary but fascinating and very outside my comfort zone. On my first night at the community centre there were kids outside shooting at the windows with air guns!
“However, I also met many amazing people, people really down on their luck like prostitutes and drug addicts. I found it so uplifting that they refused to let it beat them. It was often very tragic and very much where the church should be.” After Leicester, Father Will returned to university - to study Theology at the prestigious Oxford, a fact that he finds very amusing after his lack of formal education. Sophie, whom he met at Leicester De Montfort University, moved to Oxford to be with him and worked in educational publishing.
The couple married in Somerset, where Father Will’s brother and family still live.
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