Celebrating Caroline’s love for me

Next Sunday 26 January 2026 Caroline, my wife, will be celebrating a special birthday. This day is also Robert Burns’ birthday, and in the church calendar it marks the conversion of St Paul. So it seems appropriate to write about Caroline. In 1964 she went up to Girton College, the first established women’s college in Cambridge. I had gone up to Jesus College the previous year. I first set eyes on Caroline, who eventually became my wife, on Sunday afternoon 4 October 1964 at a freshers’ tea held in St Andrew’s Baptist Church, Cambridge. She stood out because with her blonde hair she was beautiful. “That’s the girl I want to get to know”, I said to myself. I was secretary of the Robert Hall Society (RHS), the Baptist students society in Cambridge, and so I ensured that Caroline was allocated to the weekly RHS Bible study group which met in my room. As term went on I became increasingly convinced that she was the girl for me. At the end of the Michaelmas (autumn) term I ‘just happened’ to discover the time of her train for returning home to North Wales via London, ensuring in this way that I was on the same train too! The day came at the beginning of May 1965 when Caroline gave in to my charm! I wrote to her father, seeking permission to marry his daughter. We got engaged. We decided to get married the summer after she had graduated and we married on 26 August 1967.

In September 1967 we moved to Manchester. While I began to train for Baptist ministry at Northern Baptist College, Caroline enrolled for a one-year Manchester University course leading to a Post Graduate Certificate in Education. Caroline gained a position at Bury Grammar School for Girls, where she taught history. By then she was expecting our first child, who on 6 August 1969 we called Jonathan Paul.

From Manchester we moved to the International Baptist Theological Seminary in Rüschlikon, a village on the shores of Lake Zurich. During that year both of us did a number of courses with ministry in mind. From Switzerland we moved to what today is known as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the former Belgian Congo. We lived in Kisangani (formerly known as Stanleyville), one thousand miles up the river from Kinshasa, the capital of DRC. During that time Caroline looked after Jonathan as also Timothy Mark, who was born in DRC on 19 November 1971.

Two years later we returned to England and the following year I became the minister of Altrincham Baptist Church, a town which is on the edge of South Manchester. There in late 1973 Caroline started up a ladies coffee evening for young women, and the following year formed two Bible study groups for young women. She was involved not just in the church, but also in the wider community. In 1980 she became the youngest lay magistrate (otherwise known as a Justice of the Peace) in the borough of Trafford. It was during this time that Susannah Caroline Louise and Benjamin James were born on 21 September 1973 and 6 March 1976 respectively. In September 1985 Caroline studied Law at Manchester Polytechnic, and successfully gained the Common Professional Examination with a view to becoming a barrister.

From Altrincham we moved to South London, where I became the Principal of Spurgeon’s College. For Caroline moving to London was the time when her legal career took off. At the same time as being a lay magistrate on the Croydon Bench, she joined the Inner Temple and in the summer of 1988 was called to the Bar. She began to specialise in crime. All this was in addition to running the college wives’ group with thirty to forty student wives in our home. On a number of occasions she spoke at Spring Harvest.

In 1993 we moved to Chelmsford, where I became the minister of Central Baptist Church. Caroline switched from crime to family law. From 1995 to 2000 she was a part-time mental health tribunal judge. In autumn 2000 she was appointed to the full-time position of HM (Her Majesty’s) Coroner for Essex and Thurrock. In 2013 she took over Southend and became HM Senior Coroner for Essex with over seven thousand reported deaths and eight hundred inquests a year. She was the busiest coroner in England and Wales. A past president of both the South East England Coroners Society and of the East Anglian Coroners Society, Caroline became the president of the Coroners Society of England and Wales in September 2018. With her colleague, Veronica Keene, Caroline set up training courses for coroners, and as a result Caroline was awarded an OBE. In that regard Caroline is the only woman coroner to have been honoured by our late Queen. In addition to her exceedingly busy life as coroner, Caroline was involved in Central Baptist Church. Her major contribution in the church was the founding of the Chelmsford contact centre for separated families to have contact with their children in a neutral setting, which up to autumn 2013 she served as chairman of its management committee.

In 2021 Caroline retired. Immediately she was elected one of the governors of the Mid-Essex Hospital Foundation Trust, which consists of three acute hospitals in Broomfield (Chelmsford), Basildon, and Southend, and is the ninth largest hospital trust in the United Kingdom. Within a year Caroline became the lead governor of the Trust, a role which involved holding the Board to account. Most days she had two or three Zoom (or Team) meetings; and most weeks she spent a day in either Broomfield, Basildon or Southend hospitals. In July 2025 Caroline gave up her position as lead governor.

Since then Caroline has been able to enjoy being a Needlemaker, one of the City livery companies. On the last Sunday of September 2025 Caroline exercised her right as a Freeman of the City of London to drive nine sheep across Southwark Bridge!

As you will realise, I am very proud of what Caroline has achieved. However, I am more than just proud of Caroline. I am grateful for all the support she has given me over the years. As I wrote in my latest book, New Vistas, “What a wonderful companion she has been!”