Urquhart Percival Perring was born on 24 September 1899, in Highgate, London but from the age of ten, his parents being separated, he lived with a cousin at Stafford, who was the manager of the Siemens works which subsequently became English Electric. He went to school at Stafford Grammar School, where he was in the O.T.C. On leaving, his first job was in Admiralty intelligence under Cdr Beresford-White, tracking Russian convoys.
In September 1917 he joined the Royal Flying Corps (still then part of the Army): they did a good deal of drill, but also had lectures on morse and heliograph signalling. The first camp was at Halton, near Wendover (Bucks), where they lived in Army huts, sleeping on the floor in their own clothes because there was no equipment or uniform. Even knives and forks were in short supply: he used to say that it was not easy to eat rhubarb and custard with a penknife. They were moved to St Leonards, where they lived in empty houses (people moved out of seaside homes after the German shelling of places like Whitby and Scarborough). For beds they had boards on trestles, with sacks of straw. He enjoyed the next camp, at Bath, where they had their meals in the Assembly Rooms. The parson chaplain has a uniform, and when they met him they had to do Eyes Right: they were scared of him - he used to stamp his foot in rage. As a parade ground they used the recreation ground in front of Bath Abbey: there is a photograph of this in the Ampleforth archives. There were courses on engines, map-reading and bombing, but in general they were fed up at the delay in getting to France.
Then a Wing-Commander came and called for volunteers for submarine hunting - the submarine crisis was then at its height (1917-18). For this you got in a kite balloon - i.e. one which derived part of its lift from being towed - and were towed at 2000 feet behind a ship: you communicated by phone (unless the towing cable broke, in which case you could not make contact at all). Goggles, supplied by Brocks, the firework makers, were used for protection on the water suface. Sixty volunteered: Fr Aelred was one of twenty chosen.
They first went to Roehampton for a course in ship recognition, using magic lantern slides. It was a white house, near the golf-course, between Manresa (the Jesuit novitiate) and the Sacred Heart Convent. They had five or six balloon flights at the old racecourse at Hurlingham: each balloon needed 60,000 cubic feet of gas. The course was completed by solo flights, drifting from Hurlingham into Surrey: one such flight, a solo, took him to 9000 feet, above cloud, with a landing at Redhill. To go up, you threw out sand; to descend you pulled a cord which released gas: there was also a rip panel for emergencies. When you landed, you folded the balloon into the basket you had ridden in, and went home by train. When you landed, if lucky, the neighbouring household would ask the crew in to tea.
The base was at Sheerness -'a dreary place'. The 'ships' were yachts armed with a machine gun. It (Sheerness, or the yacht) was called HMS Mainbury. Two men at a time stayed up for two hours. They did have parachutes, to be uscd if the Germans attacked (because it took quite a long time to get the balloon down): they were not very reliable... But they were on active service, so tobacco was much cheaper. Then he got flu, and was in hospital at Roehampton: the treatment was pretty drastic - three glasses of milk a day, and nothing else. He was demobbed as a Second Lieutenant in March 1919. His logbook, written in a hand already clear and firm, gives his total time in the air as 33 hrs 45 mins.
He became a Catholic after leaving school - being received at St Raphael's, Kingston-on-Thames on 10 June 1916 - and decided to try his vocation at Ampleforth: it is not clear how he got in touch. He joined the novitiate in 1919: it was the first novitiate at Ampleforth for over fifty years (since the founding of the common novitiate at Belmont). His contemporaries were Laurence Bevenot, who died on 23 October aged 89, Martin Rochford, Philip Egerton and Oswald Vanheems. As a junior, he taught sonic history up to School Certificate Level. He was three years at St Benet's. Abbot Justin McCann expected too much: after war service the Honours course was too much for him, and he ploughed. But he played hockey for Isis.
He was ordained in August 1927, and sent to a parish in 1929, initially at Leyland, where Fr Anselm Wilson was a very elderly parish priest, helped by his brother Fr Wilfrid Wilson. It was only a village, though growing - they already had the big motor works - but the people did not live in Leyland, and cycled in from the surrounding area. There were four outlying Mass centres. After that he had three years in Warrington (St Benedict's) and six in Cardiff, then St Anne's, Edgehill in Liverpool.
This brought him to 1939, when he volunteered to serve in the RAF as a chaplain. His first posting was to the same Halton where he started in 1917, but it was now furnished with beds. The chaplaincy included the biggest RAF hospital: this was the point in his life when he learnt to drive. He lived in a farm, not the mess, but this was a mistake. The commanding officer at this time was the same Oliver Swan who was the first man to fly a seaplane catapulted off a ship. Nearby was an evacuated convent school, and one day he invited the nuns to Benediction in the camp: being nuns, they naturally came in full habits, whereupon the guard supposed that they were German paratroops - it was at this time a common supposition that the ordinary uniform for German paratroops was a nun's habit. A normal German spy could readily be identified by the wrinkles on the back of his neck, but in the case of nuns you could only tell by looking to see if they had army boots on. The late Dr Sidney Watson of Winchester and Christ Church actually tested this theory, and was caught out by the O.T.C.
Soon after this Fr Aelred wangled a posting to Insworth Lane near Cheltenham, where his parents, by now reconciled, were living. Here there was a gymnasium partitioned into two halves: one end was the C-of-E, the other the RCs. He had to build his own altar, and lived in the two adjacent storerooms, under strict instructions from the Wing-Commander not to touch anything, but no one noticed. After a short spell at Wilmslow near Manchester - where their messmates were astonished when Fr Michael Sandeman turned up dressed as a priest, to collect Fr Aelred's car - he was sent to the Middle East.
They went in a convoy of twenty ships from the Clyde via Freetown, where the natives sold them coins wrapped in silver paper, and Durban, to Port Tewfik, a six-week voyage. Pastoral work was a problem, because all the chaplains were in the same ship. At Cairo they were (of course) put up at Shepherd's Hotel while awaiting a posting. Fr Aelred was sent to HQ RAF Desert Command, and joined 45 Squadron who were flying Blenheim bombers ('flying coffins'). He acquired a Dodge l5cwt truck. If possible he would phone the squadrons and get a list of the RCs, then visit each one in turn. Sometimes he simply found people by word of mouth or rumour: the Desert Air Force was pretty dispersed. He was always on the move, and simply carried his own tent, living on sandwiches made whenever he got the chance. It was very cold at night under the truck. Numerous scorpions lived in the sandbags. and the spiders were enormous - in the morning it was wise to inspect one's boots with some care. If two spiders got into the same pail a nasty fight would ensue.
One base shared the airfield with the Free French, which led to a nasty accident - two planes started off from opposite ends of the same runway. On one occasion he was for a time lost while driving his vehicle in the desert, but incidents like this merely served to illustrate his physique, his strong will and his resourcefulness. Then the USAAF gave him a lift via Syria and he spent three weeks in Jerusalem, staying in a hostel: here he met Fr Chad Bourke's brother, who was an interpreter working with Italian prisoners. In Egypt he was able to see Luxor, but all the treasures had been buried for the duration of the war: when he was demobbed at the end he was able to see Tutankhamen, having stayed in Cairo until the middle of 1945, ending his service with the rank of Squadron-Leader.
On his return to England he became the parish priest of Easingwold in January 1946, and subsequently of St Anne's, Liverpool (where he presided calmly over the crisis arising out of our withdrawal from that parish in 1950), of Maryport, and then after a brief spell as assistant at Leyland, of Parbold from 1957 to 1970. After that he served as assistant at Richmond, North Yorkshire, Warwick Bridge and Goosnargh.
Most of those who knew him best have gone before us, but his brethren still recall his intelligence, his charm (even his occasional rudeness), and his ability to get on well with ordinary people: his experience of the Desert Air Force must have been a helpful development. He was a good preacher with a strong voice and clear expression: with his fellow priests he could be chatty and easy. And he was a keen golfer.
In 1984 it was necessary for him to go to hospital for some fairly prolonged treatment, and he returned to the monastery later that year. He was not able, to his regret, to return to any pastoral work: it was a source of puzzlement to him to reconcile the idea of the monk going on, and on, with whatever work he had been given - an idea he shared with, and partly perhaps derived from, Abbot Byrne - and the apparent idleness which increasing weekness brought upon him. He had been accustomed, for instance, to much visiting, and his notes show the degree of care he gave to the preparation of his regular sermons: in the end, even his beloved golf-clubs had to put aside (but woe betide the infirmarian who allowed them to recede from ready access). For as long as he could he travelled twice daily to the refectory, and was saddened by the need for his last few months to be moved to the St John of God Hospital at Scorton: he could not be present as the brethren celebrated his (and Fr Laurence's) seventy years in the habit in September 1989, but he did enjoy a ninetieth birthday, and died peacefully on 21 November 1989, the feast of Our Lady's Presentation, and the Dies Memorabilis of the English Benedictines.
If one looks over the whole period of the renewed Congregation, from the early seventeenth century, it is striking how typical Fr Aelred's life was, though its details were unique. From an unexpected background he was called to the monastic life at St Laurence's, was formed in the strengths and traditions which have made us what we are, and then devoted the remaining sixty years of his life to following his vows wherever they took him in deep and constant commitment to the mission to the English.
DOM URQUART AELRED PERRING 21 Nov 1989
1899 24 Sept born London
ed Stafford Grammar School
1916 10 Jun Received in Church St. Raphael's Kingston
1918 Joined Royal Flying Corps 2nd Lieut
1919 29 Sept Habit Abbot Smith
1920 30 Sept Simple Vows " "
1923 1 Oct Solemn Vows " "
1925 4 Oct Sub-Deacon Bishop Shine
1926 13 May Deacon " "
1927 10 Aug Priest " "
1922-24 St. Benet's Hall History no exam
1927 Sept Leyland - Assistant
1930 Warrington St. Benedict's - Assistant
1931 June Cardiff - Assistant
1937 Feb Liverpool St. Anne's - Assistant
1939 Sept RAF Chaplain
1946 Jan Easingwold - PP
1948 Sept Liverpool St. Anne's - PP
1950 Jun Maryport - PP
1951 Sept Leyland - Assistant
1957 Oct Parbold - PP
1970 Mar Liverpool St. Peter's - Assistant
1972 Lent to Richmond (Yorks: Reeth) - Assistant
1975 Sept Warwick Bridge - Assistant
1979 Sept Goosnargh - Assistant
1984 John of God Hospital Scorton
1985 Cardiff
1986 Ampleforth - retired
1989 21 Nov died St. John of God Hospital Scorton
Buried at Ampleforth