Tonbridge welcomes Fergus Butler-Gallie as Assistant Chaplain

Former Tonbridge pupil Fergus Butler-Gallie has returned to the School in the role of Assistant Chaplain.

Fergus, pictured, who boarded at Parkside between 2005 and 2010, will be engaged with the life of the School, working alongside Senior Chaplain The Revd David Peters. His duties will include leading Chapel services and School worship, as well as providing pastoral support to boys and staff.

Fergus will have a teaching role in the Divinity Department, and even hopes to have enough hours left in the day to do some U16s rugby coaching.

Following his time at Tonbridge, Fergus studied History and Czech-Slovak at St John’s College, Oxford, and then Theology at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. His first teaching role was at the College of the Transfiguration, part of Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, following which he was ordained as Curate of Liverpool Parish Church, spending three years there before ministering for a year and a half in London.

“I’m delighted to be returning to Tonbridge and am looking forward to engaging fully with what, from first impressions, seems to be an energetic and thriving School community,” Fergus said. “I’m excited to be back in the classroom too, to see what’s changed and what remains the same since I was here, and I’m looking forward to plenty of stimulating conversations and debate.”

The Licensing of Fergus as Assistant Chaplain took place in the Chapel of St Augustine on Sunday 4 September, during School Matins, in a service attended by The Rt Revd Simon Burton-Jones, Bishop of Tonbridge, as well as by Tonbridge boys, staff and parents.

Fergus is also a published author. His two books to date are A Field Guide to the English Clergy, which tells the stories of eccentric and interesting clerics of the past, and Priests de la Resistance, which is about clerical resistance to fascism in the Second World War and its aftermath. His third book, a memoir of his first year as a priest in Liverpool, will be published by Penguin in the spring of next year.