GAINFORD and Winston’s priest in charge, Revd Eileen Harrop, is to be installed as a non-residential canon of Durham Cathedral in March.
The honour has been made in recognition of service to her parishes, as well as her work with the Bishop Auckland Project and helping to set up the Saint Trails which lead to the cathedral.
Her new role will see her combine her work as a vicar in Teesdale with helping to establish and promote pilgrimage walks with Durham Cathedral.
Ms Harrop described her entry into the ministry as a “very strange thing”.
It began in 2000 when she was living in Oxfordshire, working as a management consultant and flying around the world helping multi-national conglomerates.
She said: “At the weekend I would be very tired [from work] so I would go to church for some peace.
“People couldn’t tell if I was praying or sleeping. But they must have thought I was very devout because they asked me to be a church warden.”
At the time the parish was in crisis as it had no full-time priest.
Later the newly installed Bishop of Reading invited church wardens to meet him, and impressed by the new church warden, asked her to think about becoming a priest. Ms Harrop said: “I prayed and God said you need to change your job and give up your globe-trotting days and ground yourself.
“I never thought of myself as a Chinese person, coming from Singapore, becoming a priest.
“I thought of that as for wise and elderly people.”
Later she took up a role as one of four governors of a prison in Leicestershire after which she returned to a consultancy role in Kent.
She said: “While I was doing that God said it is time and the church said it is time.”
Thereafter she spent two years training at Cambridge and was appointed as a curate at Canterbury.
She was initially ordained as a deacon by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rt Revd Rowan Williams, and finally ordained as a priest by the current archbishop, the Most Revd Justin Welby.
Ms Harrop said: “I was four years in Canterbury and then God called me here. I came up here never having heard of Gainford and Winston, never even having heard of Bishop Auckland.”
She arrived in June 2016 to take up the role of priest in charge of the two churches.
She believes this was God’s plan for her because she had read Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse when she came to England to study her first degree – useful knowledge when working in the ancient churches of Gainford and Winston.
She described her imminent installation as a canon as humbling.
The canon chancellor of Durham Cathedral, Revd Charlie Allen, said: “We are delighted that Revd Eileen Harrop is to become an honorary canon of Durham Cathedral. This deepens the cathedral’s relationship with the communities of Gainford and Winston and the wider region, whilst also drawing on Eileen’s wisdom and experience.
“Eileen will have a particular role in working with the cathedral on the theme of pilgrimage, helping to establish this ancient tradition within the contemporary landscape of our time.”
Revd Harrop will be installed during Evensong at the Cathedral on Sunday, March 6, 2022.
