Neil Collings
British priest
Neil Collings (1946–2010) was an eminent Church of England priest who was Dean of St Edmundsbury.
Education and career
He was born on 26 August 1946 and educated at Torquay Boys' Grammar School and King's College London and ordained in 1970. After this he was Curate, then Vicar of Exmouth. Later he was Director of Ordinands for the Diocese of Hereford and then Rector of Harpenden. In 1999 he was made Canon Treasurer of Exeter Cathedral. In 2006 he became Dean of St Edmundsbury, retiring through ill health in 2009. While at St Edmundsbury Cathedral, he organised the 2009 Royal Maundy.
Freemasonry
Collings was one of the most prominent clerical Freemasons of his era. Initiated in the Earl of Mornington Lodge (London) in 1978, he went on to belong to more than a dozen lodges. He served as a Lodge Chaplain, and later as Provincial Grand Chaplain in both the Provinces of Hertfordshire and Devonshire, subsequently becoming Assistant Provincial Grand Master of Hertfordshire.
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This entry incorporates text from “Neil Collings” 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.