It is the merest detail of a giant of his time, a tall and slender figure dressed in black whose dynamism and personality cast their spell over a whole community. And of a woman whose influence on him was all-consuming.  It was a love and devotion that endured from the cradle to the grave.

Geoffrey had arrived on 5 March 1910, the second of four children born to John and his well-to-do wife Eileen (nee St Maur Shiel).  A live-in nanny, the diminutive Catherine Doherty, a Catholic, was employed to minister to three-year-old Nancye and baby Geoffrey. Twins Hilary and Joan would arrive six years later.

An idea as to the wealth and social standing of the family can be gleaned from the fact that Geoffrey’s maternal grandmother, Margaret Jane St Maur Shiel, was a daughter of Sir John Arnott, a major figure in the commercial and political spheres of late-19th century Ireland.

Sir John, the MP for Kinsale and thrice Mayor of Cork, owned The Irish Times newspaper and the Arnott’s department store chain which he had started with a solitary drapery shop in Cork. A plaque on St Patrick's Bridge in the city commemorates its opening by Sir John in December 1861.

Catherine, or ‘Katie’ as she was known, was 28 and of necessity would have had much experience in her field, coupled with impeccable references. Even so, she was an unlikely choice of nanny for the children of a family depicted by Nancye’s son Oliver Goulden, now in his seventies and based in France, as being ‘violently anti-Catholic.’

Katie took a shine to little Geoffrey from the start, even to the extent of secretly baptising him, although he would later be confirmed into the Church of Ireland.

Had the Crawfurd family been made aware of ‘what Katie did’, it doubtless would have been construed as an act of disloyalty or, worse, treachery and resulted in her instant dismissal;  but in essence, she had formed a deep and unbreakable bond with Geoffrey and felt it her duty, as she saw it, to save his soul.

not just any old boarding school but one of the great British educational institutions, Wellington College, the national monument to the Duke of Wellington in Crowthorne, Berkshire (fees currently in excess of £8,000 per term).

When home on holiday he would watch each morning from his bedroom window, as he had done since infancy, as Katie trudged off in all weathers to Mass.

Her devotion to her faith had made a lasting impression on him, to the extent that within two years he would risk the wrath of his family by becoming a Catholic. Predictably, the news of his impending conversion caused anguish and bitter resentment. His father John – who, despite his wealth, had a reputation for meanness (daughter Nancye’s fees to Oxford University were met by an aunt!) -- refused to pay any longer for Geoffrey’s education. According to members of the family, the already volatile situation was made the more acrimonious by Geoffrey’s “arrogance” and “rudeness to his parents” in an age when teenage angst was virtually unknown. 

On being forced to leave Wellington College at the age of 16, he indulged a boyhood fantasy to work on the railways while deciding his future. From an early age he had developed a fascination for trains and train-spotting that would never diminish. It was during this time – inspired no doubt by the zealous Katie -- that he made application to become a novice monk at Downside, the Benedictine abbey near Bath in Somerset.

So it was that he arrived there in 1928 at the age of 18 homeless and penniless but imbued with a burning monastic zeal.
The Abbot of Downside, the Right Rev John Chapman – “a very saintly man”, according to present-day  monks – admitted him to the Order and thus became his guardian.

Geoffrey, or Brother Paulinus as he was to be known, spent a year as a novitiate.

Being the possessor of such outstanding academic qualifications, he was free to enter the world of commerce and make for himself a considerable reputation and fortune; but money would never be his god – he had proved as much by turning his back on the wealth of his family; and the secular life held little appeal for a man intent solely on being of service to others.

Fortunately for future generations, he decided to join the priesthood, entering St Edmund’s seminary in Ware, Hertfordshire. According to records now held at Allen Hall in Chelsea, ‘Galfridus’ Crawfurd was ordained on 8 May 1938. 

His life now unalterably set in a new direction, ‘Fr Crawfurd’ had a short spell as curate at Northampton Cathedral before, at the age of 29, being assigned to Slough as chaplain to St Bernard’s Convent.

The following year, in addition to his duties at St Bernard’s, he was appointed  curate at St Ethelbert’s with responsibility for Langley and Colnbrook.

He served in both capacities for fifteen years. In 1955, the parish of Holy Family was formed and he undertook the task of raising money for the building of a Church.

The years to 1957 and the eventual opening of the Church have been  chronicled in the 2005 Holy Family brochure commemorating the founding of the parish and do not bear repeating here.

Suffice to say that without Fr Crawfurd’s steely determination and unswerving optimism, the Holy Family Church as we know it today would not exist.

Fr Kevin’s Golden Jubilee re-opening in February 2007 after six months of extensive and exquisite refurbishment was as much as anything a celebration of that achievement and a tribute to his memory.

Fr Crawfurd and his adoring Katie had kept in constant touch over the years.

She would often intone that, “Nanny betrayed us,” a sentiment that echoed
the feelings of every member of the family.

The visit did underline, however, the great regard and affection she held still for the woman who had been such an important figure in her own childhood.

The breast cancer which caused the death of Fr Crawfurd’s  mother Eileen was brought on, it was said, by the shock of him turning Catholic, about which she had been extremely bitter, although, according to Oliver Goulden, she died “very much in the hope of meeting Jesus.”

The modest £25 left him by his mother was spent not on himself but a pair of silver candlesticks for the Church. Shortly after being put on display, they were stolen. Fr Crawfurd would occasionally visit sister Nancye at her homes in Hammersmith and Reading. “If you must,” she would say on the rare occasions he asked to come and see her. On such visits she would never fail to impress on him that, “you killed your mother.”

Parishioner Rita Shay remembers:
“She was a little old white-haired lady. She used to sit there in her shawl patching Fr Crawfurd’s clothes and darning his socks till they nearly fell apart. She really mothered him – I used to say smothered him.”

Mary Gatward would clean the presbytery twice a week – “Upstairs Tuesdays, downstairs Fridays” – for which she received the princely sum of three shillings. “

Katie adored Fr Crawfurd,” she says. “Her whole life was centred around him. 
By this time he had an enlarged heart. When he was in hospital I saw Katie sitting there in the kitchen with an apron over her head, crying.

Predictably, perhaps, he bemoaned the passing of the Latin Mass. Says Rita Shay. “One of his proudest moments was when he was chosen to translate a Latin encyclical from Pope Paul V1 into English. It was a great honour. He spoke of the joy of being chosen.”  The Peterhouse College archives reveal also that he represented the Holy See at the International Congress of Classical Studies in London in 1959.

These extraordinary occurrences signified recognition and respect: they underlined the fact that Fr Crawfurd’s pre-eminence as a Greek and Latin scholar was well known to the Church hierarchy here in the UK and also in Rome. It begs the question as to why the Archbishops of Westminster of the day, Cardinal William Godfrey and, for a time, Cardinal John Carmel Heenan, were content to let him continue as a humble parish priest rather than, as on these two occasions, make wider use of his undoubted talents?

Nonetheless, it is intriguing to imagine him engaged in the vital work of translating an encyclical from the Pope not in some grand and opulent office in Westminster or Rome but the uncongenial surroundings of his bare-floored, sparsely-furnished presbytery in Trelawney Avenue.

Fr Bernard Hughes came to Holy Family shortly after Katie’s demise and it was apparent to him that a huge part of Fr Crawfurd had died with her.
He went quickly downhill and just a few months later, on 27 September 1969, announced he was retiring as parish priest owing to “my rapidly deteriorating health.” 

He openly confessed in his letter of resignation his failings “in meekness, in kindness and in charity,” adding: “But I have always preached to you the full Catholic faith of Jesus Christ without any watering-down, compromise or minimising.”

liill