Oswald Lambert, Fr Jerome, son of Paul Lambert, and nephew of Fr Sebastian, was born on 13 April 1912 in Norwich, in a house opposite the cathedral, where the family firm of tea and coffee merchants had long been established. After the war - about 1920 - they emigrated to Australia, first to Sydney and then in the bush, living in a large tent. During the four years there the children - Oswald was the second of five - used to go barefoot to school, riding in a buggy: 'Bossy' did all the driving. But Yorkshire (and Ampleforth, where his father's brother was Fr Sebastian) called, and they returned, first to Rievaulx, and then to Nawton. It was while they were in the Rievaulx cottage that an acquaintance was formed between Oswald, about 14, and one Harold Wilson, about 10, whose family used to come to Rievaulx for summer holidays. Bossiness extended to the future Prime Minister, it seems, and Ossie took a low view of the young Harold's predilection for playing in the mud. Once on a railway journey Fr Jerome was passing a first class compartment when he saw a familiar pipe and put his head in, and to the scandal of the entourage said, 'Hullo, Harold - do you remember me?' And after a barely perceptible pause, the PM replied, 'Why, it's Bossy Lambert!'
Clerical leadership showed early. Oswald would dress up in a sheet with a hole in it - displaying apparently advanced views on vestment design - assemble his brothers and sister as congregation for a 'mass' and insist on their sitting through his sermon. As a small boy in St Cuthbert's he was notable for having his head down a rabbit hole, or his feet in a trout stream. He was a knowledgable amateur naturalist and struck many obervers as peculiarly interested in birds and their ways, with a special interest in hawking. From school he joined the community immediately and was clothed on 21 September 1931 as Br Jerome, with Fr Cuthbert Rabnett, Fr Mark Haidy and Fr Sigebert D'Arcy. His simple Profession was delayed for six months, so he did not make his Solemn Profession till February 1936. Ordination followed in 1939, Deacon on 18 July, and Priest on 23 Ju1y.
In autumn 1934 he spent three months at Quarr Abbey, and then went for nine months to Paray-le-Monial to improve his French, which he did to such good purpose that he was an undaunted and effective teacher for 30 years, and the co-author of the famous Grammar, 'Cossart et Lambert' on which so many Amplefordians were reared - of its type, very good, but not equal to the age of Audio-Visual. Later (1962) there was Practice in French Grammar and Syntax, which was mainly 'OJL'. In 1935 he spent a year at Gilling Castle - during which he took solemn vows, and followed the usual theology course. From 1936 to 1953 he was at Ampleforth, committed to teaching and scouts. When he took over the sea scouts about 1935, said the Journal on his move to St Edwards in 1953, they were a small troop with one boat. He left them with a troop-room, eight boats on the lake, and an eighteen-footer at the Isle of Wight. Then followed thirteen years in St Edward's as Housemaster. He moved to St Benedict's, Warrington, as Assistant, in 1966, and finally was asked to take over Knaresborough when Fr Denis Marshall began to find it too much.
At Warrington he was noted for his enthusiastic support of Manchester United, and became a friend of Matt Busby and others, who could be relied on to get him and his 'boys' into matches and other functions at markedly less than the going rate; if they paid at all it was Fr Jerome - 'his Lorship' to his face, and 'Ossie' as soon as his back was turned - who found the money. If the match was close he would get through a good many cigarettes. He was a popular member of the Sandy Way Golf Club. The Youth Club which he took on at St Benedict's was reputed to be larger than any other, and the Social Services were persuaded to finance trips for those children who could not afford it to places like Redcar Farm. Jerome was a good hand at persuasion: if you hesitated a moment with your excuse, you were booked, and he rang off to capture his next helper.
In earlier days some of his own trips were to further places: as a boy he went out to Australia, and spent some time - it is not clear when - in the Alps: a prisoner of war who got to know the tracks on the Italian side was amazed to find an assistant priest in Warrington well able to discuss them in detail. This was not his only contact with Italy: he got to know Fr Borelli who worked with homeless boys in Naples, and took parties out to help; he introduced Fr Borelli to Ampleforth, where he commented favourably on the boys' strength of character. He became an experienced potholer - he was still taking young people down Windypits in 1978 - but arthritis in his shoulder compelled him to give up canoeing two years earlier. Skiing trips marked his time as scoutmaster at Ampleforth, as well as expeditions guaranteed to be eventful or experiences which it was (and is) so imprudent to disbelieve: it was Abbot Byrne who remarked, 'The trouble with Fr Jerome's lies is that they are usually true'. One of the Community once greeted the story of the whale, shot with a .22, with the exclamation, 'Jerome, you shouldn't', only to be faced with two old boy listeners who said, 'But we were there, and he did.' The whale - stranded on a Hebridean beach - was not at its best, and after the sea scouts had failed to tow it back into deep water, Jerome shot it in the eye. And there was the matter of the German submarine (U570): captured in 1941, it was lost while on tow in a storm in March 1944 - in Jerome's photograph it looks rather sorry for itself - and went ashore on the coast of Islay, where Jerome and the scouts discovered it, swam out to it and climbed aboard, but could not open it, for it had been a wreck for four months. Not knowing that it had been RN for some time (as HMS Graf), they perhaps identified it as German, for it was a standard type VIIc - hence the legend. Both incidents occurred at the scout camp on Islay in July 1944. Anyone who set out with Fr Jerome ran the risk of involvement in something unexpected if not startling, like the Teddy-boy who blew smoke-rings into his face on a train. Fr Jerome asked him not to: when this had no effect, he said, 'If you go on doing that, I will hit you.' He did; so he did. The rest of the gang were much impressed with this deterrent, and Jerome was left in peace.
His enthusiasm gave him great influence over the young, both in many school retreats, particularly in Warrington, and as he led them into a whole new world of prayer, lakes, canoes, potholes, and fishing, a bigger world than any Warrington school could offer. But everyone felt his warmth: 'Few people (wrote a Knaresborough Anglican) have the capacity to implant their personality upon a community without domination - perhaps it is a monastic gift: certainly Fr Jerome had just this capacity. A man of depth and sure faith, he stood by his creed, but finding others shared it he responded liberally.'
The kind of young man he was, and the sort of things that he liked doing, set beside the substance of his monastic observance (but not perhaps at all times the surface) later in life, and the sustained witness of his work together form a very remarkable testimony to the power of the vows to convert a man, to keep him stable in a particular course, and to hold him freely acquiescent in the frame of obedience to a Rule and an Abbot. And the experience of those who met him as pastor in thirty years of school or seventeen years of parish is further testimony to the rich and unforeseeable effects of grace. As a man of strong opinion and immediate reaction, of keen and vigorous enjoyment of people, of experiences, of the sea, one might at a particular time find him in indignation or other powerful feeling: but afterwards the strong, stable and sure progress in the way of God becomes as clear to the more distant observer as the course of one of Jerome's voyages across the North sea in a gale: being Jerome, he reached Holland. Being Jerome still, he has reached the Kingdom and the Lord to whom he was always ready to respond, as he did when he awaited the last operation.
DOM OSWALD JEROME LAMBERT 9 Sep 1983
1912 13 Apr born Norwich
edc Ampleforth
1931 21 Sept Habit at Ampleforth Abbot Matthews
1933 27 Feb Simple Vows " "
1936 27 Feb Solemn Vows " "
1937 19 Jul Subdeacon
1938 18 Jul Deacon Bishop Shine
1939 23 Jul Priest " "
1934 Sep-Dec Quarr Abbey - for French Language
1934-5 Dec-Jun Paray-le-Monial
1935-6 Gilling Castle Staff
1936-53 Taught French at Ampleforth - Scoutmaster
1953-66 Housemaster - St.Edward's House
1966-71 Warrington St.Benedict's - Assistant
1971-83 Knaresborough St.Mary's PP
1983 9 Sept died in York District Hospital
1983 15 Sept buried at Ampleforth