Fred Pratt Green (1903-2000)
Born
1903 at Roby, near Liverpool, England, the third child of Charles Green,
a leather merchant, and Hannah, nèe Greenwood. The abbreviation Fred has
been used by the author for his hymnwriting: his close family, and in
particular his late wife Marjorie, used Derick. Pratt was the name of
a relative, who was a Methodist preacher. His father resigned from the
office of Wesleyan Local Preacher because he could not accept current
teaching about eternal damnation for unbelievers.
Beginnings
Green worshipped with his family at Childwall Parish Church: attended
Huyton High School. The family moved to Wallasey, Cheshire, England where
the young Green attended Claremount Road Wesleyan Church and Wallasey
Grammar School, before moving on to Rydal, a Methodist boarding school
at Colwyn Bay, North Wales. In his schooldays, he showed interest in becoming
an architect, but in fact took employment in his father's leather business.
During the pastorate of Rev William Rushby at Claremount Road, and after
hearing a sermon on John Masefield's The Everlasting Mercy, he offered
for the Wesleyan ministry about the time his friend Eric Thomas offered
for the Anglican priesthood. The key to Fred's eventual choice of Methodism
was its open welcome to Holy Communion.
Biographical Details
• Fred Pratt Green was sent to serve in 1924 in the Severn
Valley Circuit
• From 1925 to 1928, he attended Didsbury Theological College. Green
emerged from Didsbury convinced that fundamentalism is a grave misinterpretation
of the Bible, that Christian unity, though seemingly unattainable, is
an important goal, and that the Church must involve itself in social concerns.
• He served next in Filey Circuit and as chaplain to Hunmanby Hall
Boarding School for Girls: in 1931, he married Londoner, Marjorie Dowsett,
who taught French at the school.
• He moved on to Otley Circuit, living at Pool-in-Wharfdale.
• He was appointed to Bradford (Manningham) Circuit based at Girlington
where he began writing plays. In 1935 he attended the World Congress of
Faiths. Green later suffered a breakdown, leading to the need for three
months' rest.
• In 1939, as the Second World War broke out, he moved to the London
(Ilford) Circuit based at Gants Hill, combining his ministerial duties
with those of an air raid warden in an area about three miles from the
Thames with its heavily bombed docks and major industrial sites: later
the Greens became guardians to Elizabeth, the daughter of Revd Vincent
Shepherd, a missionary hospitalised with leprosy in India after fleeing
from the Japanese in Burma.
• In 1944, Green moved to London (Finsbury Park) Circuit, based at
Grange Hill: on a pastoral visit to a Sunday School member, he met Fallon
Webb, a gentle agnostic poet, to begin a friendship which encouraged Fred's
poetry writing and lasted until Webb's death.
• In 1947, he was appointed to the Dome, Brighton, in which concert
hall the evening congregation often exceeded two thousand souls.
• In 1952 he moved to Shirley at the Southern edge of London and
bordering Green Belt countryside.
• He was appointed in 1957 as Chairman of the York and Hull District
of the Methodist Church.
• In 1964, he returned to the Circuit ministry in the London (Sutton)
Circuit in charge of Trinity Church: in 1967 he was appointed to the working
party planning Hymns and Songs, a supplement to The Methodist Hymn Book,
a task which was to set-off his hymnwriting career coincident with his
retirement to Norwich at the end of his distinguished itinerant ministry.
• Over two decades Pratt Green wrote around 300 hymns and songs which
found their way across theological, denominational and national boundaries,
his work gaining particularly wide use in the USA.
• A phone call from Lambeth Palace in 1977 advised Pratt Green of
the inclusion of one of his hymns in the official order of service for
the nationwide celebrations of the Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.
• He was appointed in 1977 to co-edit an ecumenical collection for
all-age worship Partners in Praise (London: Stainer & Bell and Chester
House Publications, 1979)
• In 1982, Emory University (Atlanta) conferred upon Green an honorary
doctorate in Humane Letters
• In 1984, he set up The Pratt Green Trust, a charitable body for
the furtherance of hymnody and church music, principally funded by the
royalties from his hymnwriting.
• In 1990, the Greens moved to Cromwell House Methodist Home for
the Aged, Norwich, where Marjorie died in 1993. The empty chair was all
too poignant at low-key celebrations of Derick's ninetieth birthday.
• In 1995, Frederick Pratt Green was honoured by the Queen with the
award of an MBE for services to hymnwriting.
• Fred died quietly in his sleep at Cromwell House on Sunday 22nd
October 2000.
For a much fuller biography see pages 122 to 171 of Bernard Braley's Hymnwriters 3 (London, Stainer & Bell, 1991)
Publications available from Stainer & Bell
These titles can now be ordered in our online shop.
 |
The
Hymns and Ballads of Fred Pratt Green. |
 |
The
Last Lap. |
 |
Later
Hymns and Ballands and Fifty Poems |
 |
Partners
in Creation |
 |
Serving
God & God's Creatures |
