Fr Raymund was born on 18 January 1911 in Hereford, and went to Hereford Cathedral School when he was thirteen. He was perhaps not one of the leading singers: if he had such a talent, he seems to have concealed it as much then (otherwise he would surely have joined the school at a younger age) as he did in more recent years. His previous school was no more than a village school, and it seems to have taken some effort (and perhaps ambition) on the part of his parents, or at least of his mother, for they became separated, to get him into the city school. His family were all half-brothers and sisters, since both his parents married again, and he seems to have been close to his mother, so that it came fairly easily to him to follow suit, at the age of sixteen, when she was converted to the Catholic church.
By a kind of prophetic instinct, it seems, when he was only eight, he is said to have responded to the question of a Schools Inspector, 'What was the most important event of the sixteenth century?' by saying, 'Oh, the dissolution of the monasteries'. If the story is true, it suggests that his mother's path to conversion, and perhaps her observation either of ruins, or of the nearby buildings of Belmont Abbey, had in fact begun many years before it was actually brought to conclusion. It does seem that the human foundation for his faith owes much to his mother.
The priest who received the young Geoffrey was Fr Wilfrid de Normanville, a monk of Belmont. It is not at this distance clear how this link arose, but it was plain to Fr Wilfrid that his new convert could scarcely be expected to remain in the Cathedral school. Since he made arrangements for Geoffrey to transfer to Osterley, the Jesuit establishment for those, perhaps without Latin, wishing to raise their education to seminary levels, we may suppose that the question of a vocation was already visible. He was there for two years, passing the London Matriculation in six subjects in 1929. It was through Fr Wilfrid too that he came to Ampleforth, since Belmont was obviously too near old haunts, and possibly hostile relations, and Fr Wilfrid had himself been at school there, and his brother Fr Hugh was in the community, head of Science and housemaster of St Bede's. Abbot Matthews clothed him in May 1930, but when the time for Simple Profession came he first postponed it, and then decided to return to lay life on 22 June 1931.
It was necessary to look round to find some employment, and Geoffrey finished up in the RAF as an accounting clerk. He was sufficiently good at this for the RAF to be reluctant to part with his services in 1938. It was not a good time to be leaving the forces, for even the immortal Few needed someone to count their pay, and it is related that someone knew an old Amplefordian in some high place who was able to do some leaning. Geoffrey's sense of vocation was growing, and he was already discovering himself the need for withdrawal for the purposes of prayer, for he afterwards related that he used to shut himself into the lavatory as a way of escaping from barrack-room noise and profanity, and to make possible the reading of his favourite spiritual source, The Practice of the Presence of God, the classic written by Br Laurence. He also acquired an understanding of book-keeping which was later to be of great help to the Procurator, and some source of irritation to an Economus of the Mission Fund whose upbringing in accounting was possibly more amateur, but whom Fr Raymund used to call, openly, and in letters to Abbot Byrne, the lion lurking in his den. On one occasion, Abbot Byrne urged him not to worry about possible errors in his parish returns, writing 'There may well be an error in your accounts. If there is, the Economus will take delight in pointing it out. Do not deny him his innocent pleasures.'
He was again clothed, as Br Raymund, on 30 January 1939, so he must have been the last novice clothed by Abbot Matthews. It is said that Abbot Matthews spoke on this occasion (or perhaps it was in 1930) to the text Haec est victoria quae vincit mundum, fides nostra. It would not have been his way to do so on purpose, but it caused a good deal of mirth among the younger men (novices are prone to mirth: even St Benedict noticed this), because Raymund was considered to have a strong likeness to some of the portraits of Queen Victoria. From time to time his attention would be drawn to this parallel in some indirect way, but Raymund always endured with the same exceptional patience and good humour which was still plain to view sixty years later.
Simple vows followed (31 January 1940), and solemn profession (31 January 1942) after only two years, where three is the norm. Ordination came soon, reflecting the pressures of the war years, with no new entrants between 1941 (Basil Hume, Luke Rigby, Ian Petit, for example) and 1946 (like Timothy Horner, Gervase Knowles and Benedict Webb). Raymund was made deacon (20 June 1943) and priest a month later (18 July). He then worked with the Procurator for three years, before embarking on the main work of his life, fifty-three years of parish life.
In May 1946 he moved to St Alban's, Warrington, and three years later to Brownedge, as an assistant priest. In 1962 he moved to a more distant location, and became parish priest at Abergavenny. He was happier, perhaps, here, since he had a taste for being on his own, not so much because he was not a social person - he could be good and entertaining company, even if he never set the table in a roar - but because he valued the monastic values implicit in solitude. One could tell also, from the fewness of the possessions he had in his room at any time, that he had a deeply rooted disposition towards the desert. It was indeed probably this very spirit which had led him to monastic life in the first place, and perhaps found its human roots in the relative solitude of his childhood in a separated family of half-brothers and sisters on the borders of the Welsh hills.
Abergavenny found him shy and reserved at first, but they were comparing him with that cheerful man Fr Anthony Spiller. They discovered that in debate he could be very forceful, and considered his mind to be both deep and clever: this view one might support from his continued taste for reading right to the end of his life, even when his increasing, and finally complete, blindness made him dependent on others for his reading. Yet he did not shrink from the battleground of Catholic schools, particularly since his five years in Abergavenny corresponded with the transition there from all-age to primary and secondary voluntary schools. Leading parishioners who worked with him found him a very private person, as we did, and sometimes this led to people not understanding his meaning or purpose, or perhaps he did not express himself in the way he intended. This did not prevent deep affection from growing, especially with those, lay and religious, who worked in and about the schools. Others in the parish speak highly of their memories of his fidelity to visiting, and of his kindly understanding as a confessor. He was still regularly in the Abbey confessional until his stroke, a week before his death. Later, in Brindle, he was reckoned to cover the entire parish in his visiting twice every year. People there found him gentle, humble, interesting: these are precisely the qualities that struck the new generation of monks in the Abbey who guided him about the passages, to and from the refectory and in and out of the choir, during the last six months of his life when he had returned to the Abbey, bowing finally to his blindness.
Fr Raymund moved from Abergavenny with regret, and only because in the necessary regrouping of parishes as ideas and conditions developed after the Council, the care of Abergavenny was handed over to much nearer neighbours at Belmont. Raymund took over Goosnargh, a small and lonely parish which perhaps suited him. It had however a number of distinctive features, including a long and honourable recusant history, the then largest mental hospital in the country, and (as many believe) a resident ghost. None of these discomposed Fr Raymund, and he put into practice methods he had adopted in Abergavenny. There were other difficulties: he followed a short-term locum who had stood in at short notice after the previous incumbent had departed without notice: the man before him had grown old in he parish and a little fixed in older ways. Moreover, successive housekeepers were not disposed to take so detached a view of the ghost, or the general remoteness, and there were problems. However, a strong bond grew up with the parish, for Raymund was priest for much longer - sixteen years - in Goosnargh, and it was a source of considerable sadness to him that he had to be the last of the line in both his parishes, since Goosnargh was handed over to the diocese in 1983, and he moved to be assistant to Fr Thomas Loughlin at Brindle, and then, as his sight grew worse, to the larger house at Brownedge ten years later. It was from here that he returned to the Abbey in the spring of 1999.
One of the Community who knew him well found him 'gentle in everything, but strong under that gentle exterior. His calm manner hid a very lively sense of humour which could flash out unexpectedly'. It showed, for example, in a discussion of one of the younger brethren, of whom it was said that he was a great collector of news. Fr Raymund at once wanted to know if he had heard correctly? Was it being said that this monks was a collector of nudes? When order had been restored, it was emphasised - for the story is not an invention - that the speaker had indeed been misheard.
'He had all the most enviable qualities of a monk', writes a contemporary, 'faith, patience, perseverance, calm in the face of storms, ready obedience, gentle approachability - everything, in fact, on which so much depends, but which draws so little attention to itself and leaves no glowing record behind, except with the Lord.' May he enter into the joy of the Kingdom.
Geoffrey Raymund Mitchell DAVIES
1911 Jan 18 born
1924 -1927 Hereford Cathedral School
1927 May 20 received into Church by Fr Wifrid de Normanville,
who introduced him to Ampleforth.
1927 -1929 Campion House Osterley - London Matric 6 subjects.
1930 May 12 Habit Ampleforth - Abbot Matthews
1931 Jun 22 Sponte Habitum dimisit
1931 -1938 Service in RAF (Accounts Section)
1939 Jan 30 Received Habit again - Abbot Matthews
1940 Jan 31 Simple Vows - Abbot Byrne
1941 Feb Tonsure and Minor Orders - Abbot Byrne
1942 Jan 31 Solemn Vows - Abbot Byrne
Jly 19 Subdeacon - Bishop Shine
1943 Jun 20 Deacon (at Middlesbrough)
Jly 18 Priest (at Ampleforth Abbey)
1946 May 3 St Alban's Warrington Assistant
1949 Sept 21 Bamber Bridge assistant
1962 Sept 12 Abergavenny PP
1967 Sept Goosnargh PP
1983 Sept 19 Brindle Assistant
1993 Sept 24 Bamber Bridge (Assist.)
1999 Return to Abbey - Infirmary
Loss of sight after long deterioration, total
1999 Aug 31 Death following stroke