Derek Eaton
New Zealand bishop
Derek Lionel Eaton (born 10 September 1941) is a retired New Zealand Anglican bishop. He was the 9th Anglican Bishop of Nelson, from 1990 to 2006.
Biography
He was educated at Christchurch Boys' High School and Auckland College of Education after which he worked as a teacher until studying for the Priesthood. He was ordained in 1971 and after a curacy at St Luke's, Bristol he was Vicar of Tunis. Later he was Provost of All Saint's Cathedral, Cairo and held incumbencies at Bishopdale and (his last appointment before ordination to the episcopate) Redcliffs. He is married to Alice Eaton. He was consecrated a bishop on 24 June 1990.
After 16 years as Bishop of Nelson, Eaton returned to Africa to become assistant bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Egypt. Since returning to New Zealand from Africa in January 2009, Eaton and his wife have been chaplains to Bishopdale Theological College.
In the 1985 New Year Honours, Eaton was awarded the Queen's Service Medal for community service.
“Derek Eaton” enters the record as new Zealand bishop. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Derek, Eaton and Zealand can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5261934. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1941, 1990, 2006 and 1971.
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This entry incorporates text from “Derek Eaton” 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.