The Reverend Gordon Huelin, B.D., M.Th., Ph.D.

Gordon Huelin, whose grandparents were Channel Islanders, was born in Victoria, London, on 31 May 1919 and attended the old Westminster Grammar School. He had an early inclination towards Anglo-Catholicism and went to evening classes at King's College, London University, with a view to ordination. When war broke out the college was evacuated to Bristol and Huelin was obliged to continue his studies at the evangelical London College of Divinity. Ordained in 1942, his first curacy was at All Saints, Fulham, and two years later he moved to St Luke's, Battersea, living through the blitz in both parishes. His long association with the City, and great affection for it, began with his appointment to All Hallows, Barking-by the Tower, as curate to the Revd. Dr P. T. B. (`Tubby') Clayton, M.C., C.H., F.S.A., who first aroused Huelin's interest in ecclesiastical history. In 1952 he was appointed curate-in-charge of St Bartholomew's, Gray's Inn Road, where only the church hall had survived the bombing. With few parishioners requiring pastoral care and having completed his doctorate, Huelin joined the staff of King's College in 1959 as lecturer in church history and New Testament Greek and from 1962-7 he was also Professor of Divinity at Gresham College. His publication The Pre-Fire City Churches, a guide to the thirty-five churches that were not rebuilt after 1666, painstakingly compiled from records, burial-grounds, City corporation plaques and so on, appeared in 1968. He was for 20 years vicar of the Guild Church of St Margaret Pattens, a Wren church that originally served local clogmakers, and from 1966-87 chaplain to the Mercers' Company, unique among city livery companies in having its own chapel within Mercers' Hall. In recognition of his long service to the Mercers, and to the City generally, he was elected a Liveryman of the Company in 1988. In retirement he and his wife tried living in Thaxted, Essex, but London was his life and they soon returned, Huelin working as archivist to the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. His book, Think and Thank God: the Mercers' Company and its Contribution to the Church and Religious Life since the Reformation, was published in 1994 as part of the celebrations marking the 600th anniversary of the company's charter, and Vanished Churches of the City of London

followed in 1996. He died on 26 February 1997.