Obituary Rev. F. W. Wilkes Served In Many Parishes

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30959, 15 January 1966, Page 14

Obituary Rev. F. W. Wilkes Served In Many Parishes

The Rev. Frank Walton Wilkes died in Christchurch on Wednesday after a short illness. He was 86. Born in Cornwall, Mr Wilkes was the son of the Rev. Samuel W. Wilkes and Mary Wilkes. After theological training he went to South India as a Methodist missionary in 1902. During the First World War, he served in France with the 59th Division, was mentioned in dispatches, and was demobilised with the rank of lieutenant-colonel in 1920. Mr Wilkes then studied at the Lichfield Theological College and was ordained priest in the Episcopalian Church of Scotland by the Bishop of Glasgow in 1924.

He was curate of Greenoch from 1923 to 1925, and from 1925 to 1928 was rector of St. Columba, at Largs, on the west coast of Scotland. In 1928, Mr Wilkes came to New Zealand, and was vicar of Morrinsville, Northcote, and the Bay of Islands before he returned to England in 1937. He was rector of Elkstone, Gloucestershire, from 1937 to 1941 and vicar of St. Stephen’s, Cinderford, Gloucestershire, from 1941 to 1944. He returned to New Zealand in 1945, and served in the parishes of Lyttelton, Phillipstown, Burwood, Westport, Fendalton, Sumner, and Gore.

Mr Wilkes was intensely interested in missionary work and held offices in many missionary organisations, as well as being prominent on other church committees.

He held chaplaincies in the Home Guard, the British Legion in Gloucestershire, the Returned Services’ Association in the Waikato and Auckland, and his Masonic lodge in Scotland.

In Glasgow and in Gloucestershire he was a member of the executive of the British Legion, and an executive member of the R.S.A. in Auckland and in the Waikato. He was also a member of the Morrinsville Borough Council. During the war he was chief air raid warden for his area in Gloucestershire, and he served as a special constable from 1939 to 1944.

As a young man he played representative Rugby for his home county in England, and when he was 58 he played for the Gloucestershire second XI. In Christchurch he played grade cricket until he was 73. He was an executive member of the Auckland Badminton Association and the New Zealand Badminton Association, and he helped to establish badminton in the Waikato when he was vicar of Morrinsville.

He is survived by a son Senior-Sergeant O. D. Wilkes, and a daughter, Mrs D. Sergei.