Australian Dictionary of Biography

The Very Reverend William Pye Baddeley, Dean of Brisbane, 1966

National Archives of Australia, A12111, 1/1966/9/11

William Pye Baddeley (1914–1998), Anglican priest, was born on 20 March 1914 at Fulham, London, fifth child of Louise Baddeley (sometimes Clinton-Baddeley), née Bourdin, the daughter of a French army captain who came to London to study at the Royal College of Music, and the separated wife of William Herman Clinton Baddeley. Bill’s father was William Pye, a chartered accountant, with whom his mother had a long-standing relationship. Two of Baddeley’s four elder half-sisters, Angela and Hermione Baddeley, became well-known stage and screen actors. Baddeley was fostered aged three or four, then adopted, by a family called Frost at Fulham. Adoption was legally formalised in England in 1927 and he used the surname Frost from that year until October 1941 when he abandoned it and reverted to Baddeley, by notice in the London Gazette.

According to Baddeley’s obituarist James Fergusson, he ‘attended the local school [at Fulham], and might have become a pharmacist’ (1998). There is no other reference to pharmacy as a career; his university studies were to be in Classics. Encouraged by the Reverend Cyril Eastaugh (later bishop of Kensington), he attended Canon William Hand’s school for prospective ordinands at Tatterford, Norfolk, from which he entered St Chad’s College, University of Durham (BA, 1940). He completed his theological studies at Cuddesdon College, near Oxford. In 1941 he was made deacon and the next year ordained priest.

During World War II Baddeley served in two curacies in South London: St Luke’s, Camberwell (1941–44); and St Anne’s, Wandsworth (1944–46). To help him recover from the stress of these inner urban parishes, his doctor prescribed country rest, and he moved to Suffolk. There he met Mary Frances Shirley Wyatt; they were married on 24 April 1947 at St Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge, London. After a curacy (from 1946) at St Stephen’s, Bournemouth, he was appointed in 1949 to be vicar of the London parish of St Pancras. The large Greek Revival church, built between 1819 and 1822, was in serious disrepair. Obliged to close it for a time to effect repairs, he raised some £60,000 to fund the project. Frequent appearances on television made him widely known.

In 1958 Baddeley was invited to become the dean of Brisbane by Archbishop (Sir) Reginald Halse, on the recommendation of William Wand, bishop of London and Halse’s predecessor in Brisbane. Baddeley made a powerful impression on the church and the city, and his profile as a celebrity grew rapidly. He was a natural actor, and this quality enhanced his ability to engage with a wide spectrum of audiences both church and non-church. His physical presence increased his impact; he was a tall, well-built man with a full head of wavy black hair (only slightly greying), an expressive face, and a magnetic capacity, aided by strong eye contact, to communicate at a personal level.

Baddeley’s time in Brisbane coincided with the introduction of television in that city and he was quick to use the medium to engage with the public on religious subjects. On 30 August 1959, two weeks after the first station (Channel 9) began scheduled transmissions, he initiated a Sunday afternoon program, broadcast once a month, called What Do YOU Think?, in which he moderated a panel of clergy and lay leaders who discussed and answered questions provided by his congregation and later sent in by viewers. He also participated in a variety of national and local religious telecasts. One of these was a panel show called Round Table, which he chaired from 1962 to 1964. His relaxed manner and ability to combine serious subject matter with entertaining television ensured a wide audience.

While Baddeley’s television appearances contributed to his celebrity, so did ‘his penchant for saying and doing things considered unconventional for churchmen’ (Rayner, pers. comm.). The most obvious example was a visit he made in July 1960 to the races at the invitation of the Queensland governor, Sir Henry Abel Smith, and the small bets, mostly successful, he placed that day on the horses. He rejected criticism from some clergymen and others, arguing that disciplined gambling by people who could afford it was harmless. To emphasise his point, he accepted a second invitation to the track in December, this time wearing his clerical collar. The previous year he had controversially defended the opening of cinemas on Sundays, declaring: ‘This business of inflicting gloom on a Sunday is a “hang-over” from Sabbatarianism, and it is not a very good advertisement for Christianity’ (Sunday Mail 1959, 5). His other newsworthy excursions into the limelight included his criticism in 1961 of the Federal government for banning Lady Chatterley’s Lover, an action he saw as belittling the intelligence of Australians. The public generally responded positively to his broad-minded ideas and attitudes.

During his term as dean, Baddeley was a strong advocate for the completion of St John’s Cathedral, and he worked hard towards this end. Though the construction was not to be finished until long after his incumbency, he was influential in progressing it. His wife, Shirley, helped to produce and distribute a vinyl record created to assist fund-raising for the cathedral. She supported him throughout his ministry. In Queensland she drove him to engagements and took the lead in family projects, such as the design and building of their beach house at Alexandra Headland. A keen gardener, she transformed the grounds of the deanery in Brisbane.

Baddeley had a lifelong interest in the arts, especially drama. He was president of the Brisbane Repertory Theatre (1961–63), a patron of the University of Queensland Dramatic Society (1963–66), and a director of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust (1965–66). His sense of theatre informed his preaching; he was a lively and colourful orator but always with a profound spiritual content. He had a dramatic and dignified liturgical presence enhanced by a splendid bass voice and he made cathedral services aesthetically pleasing. The cathedral congregation grew substantially during his incumbency. He was an enthusiastic proponent of retreats as a spiritual exercise and was himself a good retreat conductor. Following his return to England in 1967, he chaired (1967–80) the standing committee of the Association for Promoting Retreats.

In 1967 Baddeley took up the appointment as rector of St James’s, Piccadilly, London. The church, built in 1676 by Christopher Wren, had been damaged during the war and it was only during Baddeley’s incumbency that repairs were completed with the replacement of the spire. His work was not all related to church fabric. He made a strong contribution to the spiritual life of London, not only through his own preaching and liturgy but also through popular initiatives such as his Lent Lectures, to speak at which he invited a variety of distinguished people, some of whom he selected to give the series a pioneering ecumenical flavour.

Baddeley retired in 1980 and went with Shirley to live at Woodbridge, where they had met. Survived by her and their daughter, Frances, he died on 31 May 1998 at Ipswich and was cremated. He left an indelible mark on the church and civic life of both Brisbane and London. His ministries in these two cities were characterised by a deep spiritual faith and an ebullient, perhaps eccentric, personality which he used to good effect in communicating his faith and the message of his church.