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Alan Harper (bishop)

Anglican Archbishop of Armagh

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 31, 2026
Entity authorityQ4355110
Source-derived summary

Alan Edwin Thomas Harper, (born 20 March 1944) is a retired Anglican bishop. He served in the Church of Ireland as Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland from 2007 to 2012.

He was the second English-born primate since the Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869; the last before him was John Gregg. He and his wife Helen have four children.

Education and employment

Born in Tamworth, Staffordshire on 20 March 1944, Harper was educated at Moorgate County Primary School, Tamworth, Staffordshire, The Grammar School of Elizabeth, Queen of England in Tamworth. He studied geography at Leeds University.

Following graduation (BA), he worked as university map curator and departmental librarian in the Department of Geography. He moved to Northern Ireland in July 1966 when he was appointed a member of the Archaeological Survey of Northern Ireland. He married in 1967; he and his wife Helen have four children; Catherine, Richard and twins Emma and Anne.

In 1974 he returned to England as principal assistant planning officer with the Staffordshire County Council.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Alan Harper (bishop)” is anglican Archbishop of Armagh. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Alan, Harper and bishop, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1944, 2007, 2012, 1869—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1944-03-20. For this dossier, Alan, Harper and bishop is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “anglican Archbishop of Armagh” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4355110. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1944, 2007, 2012 and 1869.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Alan Harper (bishop)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.