A Bevin Boy's Sketch Book

Keith J.I. Greenslade

Edited by Paul Stephens

Card covers, 40pp, illustrated throughout, A5

Price: £6

Keith Greenslade was born in 1927 in Eastville Bristol, the youngest of six brothers and sisters. His father was a teacher and later headmaster and his mother a pupil teacher before marriage.

A natural gift for art led him, at sixteen, to join the West of England Academy School of Architecture in Bristol.

However, at eighteen, coinciding with the end of the war, national service took him to the south Wales coalfield as a ‘Bevin Boy’. Keith describes some of his experiences. He left after one year on health grounds, going into the mines classified as health grade A1 and coming out classified grade B2. After this he was able to resume his architectural studies becoming an associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Positions followed in the private practices of A.J. Knott and then Kenneth Nealon before he took up a position with Bristol City Council. Solo commissions included a War Memorial screen for St Thomas Church, Eastville and a house at Redhill near Bristol.

Keith followed in his father’s footsteps as a Lay Reader which later led into him becoming an Anglican Priest. In 1959 he married Patricia Densley, followed by the birth of their children James and Clare. In 1961 he returned to south Wales to study at St Michael’s College, Llandaff and was ordained a Priest in 1963.

Following ordination Keith’s ministry commenced with two curacies, firstly at Bishopsworth, Bristol then St Paul’s, Chippenham with Langley Burrell. In 1968, he became Vicar of St Philip’s, Upper Stratton, Swindon. Alongside his pastoral work he designed many items and schemes for the church including innovative screens; a nave altar; a series of kneelers for the communion rail telling the story of St Philip the Deacon and a bell turret. The screen from St Thomas (following closure) was moved to St Philip’s in 1977.

Keith was involved in interdenominational relations; he was a director of Swindon Samaritans and, until recently, an architectural advisor on the Bristol Diocesan Advisory Committee. He retired from St Philip’s in 1995, continues to sketch and paint and has a wide ranging general knowledge and interest in family and church matters.

Most of the illustrations in the book created by Keith when he was experimenting with a number of different techniques. For example the first illustrations date from the first few days he was at Oakdale Training Centre. They were produced as pencil sketches. Later illustrations were produced in two distinct versions. A series of pen and ink sketches followed by a later series of sepia watercolour images based on the same drawings.