Clifford Martin

After service in the army in the First World War, Martin became a priest, serving in parishes in the south of England.

[1] At the age of 19 he enlisted in the army as a private soldier on the outbreak of the First World War, and rose through the ranks to become a commissioned officer in the Royal Sussex Regiment.

After four years he left to take up the post of secretary to the Young People's department of the Church Missionary Society.

[2] In a German air raid his church was gutted and his vicarage badly damaged, but, in the words of the historian Peter Kennerley, "his care for his people never faltered … his extraordinary pastoral skills were revealed.

[5] More senior clergy including an overseas bishop and four serving diocesan bishops in sees in England were considered for the post but Martin, who was an Evangelical and had gained fame when his parish church in Plymouth was destroyed and he had turned the site into a garden, was selected.

Martin was not, as was customary for a bishop, an academic; his appeal rested on the strength of his pastoral work.

Martin initiated the rebuilding work, and ensured that new housing estates were provided with churches and halls.

[5] In the view of The Times he made the cathedral "the mother church of the diocese in fact as well as in theory".