St James Devizes Vicar Keith Brindle Honoured as a Canon of Salisbury Cathedral

In recognition of his selfless ministry and leadership of St James Church, where the community and residents are at the core of everything, birthday boy Keith Brindle was honoured on Thursday as a Canon of Salisbury Cathedral, double whammy! I caught up with Keith to find out why, what it means for St James, and to unexpectedly throw down a gauntlet for a backgammon tournament….

I’ve been prewarned of Keith’s bashfulness by Councillor Jonathan Hunter, who told me, “In typical Keith style he has bestowed this honour on the church as opposed to himself.” As a team were tiding the church after a toddler group, Keith excused himself, and we trundled to the courtyard of this landmark church, and amidst the headstones of yore with the Crammer as a backdrop. I asked Keith about the honour and what it signifies for him and Saint James. The volunteers tiding would not be left out of his musings though.

“So it’s a kind of honour, thing, that the Church of England do,” the modest vicar explained. “A recognition of the work that… I mean, they say it’s for me, but actually in reality it’s for the church. We’ve got lots of volunteers. There’s a team of people involved in everything we do. So even though I’m the one that gets this, you know, acknowledgement and the Canon of the cathedral, it’s very much all the different things that the church does, and all the volunteers, a huge number of people.”

Referring to the toddler club, he continued, “all are volunteers and we’ve had about thirty families in there, and it’s one of the things that we do. So it’s that kind of thing. It’s about being a church involved in talking about, Christianity and faith. Talking about what it means to live as a follower of Jesus and being out there in the community, doing things like the youth action groups gig night, you know, and everything in between.”

One significant element which St James earned this honour for, was its welcoming of Ukraine families, but between the church and the St James Centre, there’s too much going on to cover in detail. Keith was keen to tell me about the Centre, across the road from the Church.

“This used to be the Saint James’s School,” he clarified, “which was owned by the diocese and for years and rented out to Wiltshire Council who used to do a lot of youth work out of there. And then it was empty.” Unable to gain permission to sell and renovate into flats, St James bought it from the diocese, “and we’ve turned it into our community centre,” Keith delightfully expressed. “It’s the focus of a lot of the youth work that we do, the Food Bank operate out of there, and our old parish is where OpenDoors operates out of, our CAP debt centre, the Money Debt Centre that supports people and helps them out of out of out of trouble financially. Citizens Advice operate out there too.”

My attention was recently drawn to the fact they had showers, aimed at boaters or rough sleepers unable to bathe.  

“Yeah,” Keith said, “all those sorts of things, the honour of being a cannon, it’s recognising all that sort of stuff. We have a shower Tuesday, a fully accessible shower downstairs on the ground floor, and we’ve got waterways, chaplains that operate along the Kennet & Avon, pastorally just checking in and supporting people. But it’s not just that, it’s an opportunity to meet up with other people.”

We spoke about the importance of community hubs, post lockdown; larger towns have great facilities, St James is ours.

“St James’s Church has always been a church, it’s part of its DNA, to get out there and be in the community. I’ve been here eight years and we’ve built on, getting the St James Centre has really, really helped. You know, we were involved in getting the COVID support grouped together quickly.  And that was like, three-hundred volunteers registered over a weekend before the first lockdown. And when the first lockdown came, Devizes was ready to go because of that. And that actually came from my son. That was Joseph’s idea. He said, why don’t we do something. And he set up the processes, the WhatsApp group, and how people could register. And then there’s loads of other people like at the town council; Simon Fisher is brilliant. St James has been really good at working with other partners and other people.”

Keith reeled off nearly every organisation doing good in Devizes, and St James’ connection to them, and through all this we can see why the honour was worthy. We spoke of DOCA, Sustainable Devizes, and he foretold of a second youth gig at the Corn Exchange after the success of the last one.  “We’re gonna have the whole of the downstairs this time. But, I think we’ll fill it. I mean, the first one sold out and that was good thing. We had so many young people say, oh, this is what Devizes needs.”

But what more will the honour of being a canon of Salisbury Cathedral mean for St James, what more can they possibly do to help in the community which they are not already doing so?!

“It’s a recognition of what Saint James has done,” Keith said, “an opportunity to see what the Cathedral has and how the Cathedral operates, and they do magnificent work in the community in Salisbury. They’re a massive tourist attraction, but they also try and do loads of outreach stuff to connect different kinds of groups. The kinds of groups that you wouldn’t always expect to relate to the Cathedral.”

“The nice thing about Devizes is there’s a lot of good people that want to see people flourish, but at the same time what you don’t see are levels of poverty and levels of isolation. We saw that a lot during COVID. Isolation still exists, and we’ve groups that come together to support that. So, we have a games night on the Thursday. It’s not a massive number of people, but for those that come it’s absolutely brilliant and great fun.” It was at this point, we found our mutual love of backgammon, and I laid my cards on the table. It serves to illustrate what a charismatic and approachable chap Keith is, and now I understand why he’s been so aptly honoured.

“My leadership of the church in doing what the church does but I do feel very much like a small part of it. This is what God’s love looks like, in real practical terms, there’s a group of this church that have been making meals for years before I came here. They’ll make homemade meals, stick them in the freezer and then and then distribute them to people. Like if you’ve just had a baby, they’ll go around and dump a load of really nice homemade meals, just so that you can cope. And they’ve been doing that for years, you know, quietly getting on with it. So, it’s in recognition for my leadership but it’s for the community.”

Well done to all St James. Keith’s support and practical help for marginalised communities in Devizes have inspired many people and continue to do the outstanding work they do; what a guy, still I reckon I could take him at backgammon!

---