Canon Keith Farrow heads for pastures new after sterling service at Sheffield Cathedral

The Vice Dean and Canon Missioner arrived at Church Street in the city centre in March 2014 and has impressed ever since.

He’s also got some great Sheffield stories including meeting the Queen and Prince Philip; a book which was borrowed for 300 years and doing online services as the cooking Canon!

Everyone calls him Keith but how much do they actually know about him?

He’s 62, a father of three sons and married to Alison.

The new role is as Vicar of West Barnsley, a benefice of four rural churches, Dodworth, Silkstone with Stainborough, Hoylandswaine and Cawthorne.

“I will have to get a pair of green wellies,” he jokes.

“I return to my roots as I was born and bred in Barnsley so I suppose my end is my beginning. I will miss Sheffield and the cathedral terribly but it is time to move on.”

His Sheffield work as Canon Missioner was all about reaching out to people.

“It’s the shop window of the Cathedral, the face of the cathedral. With arms reaching out to the city’s people, for all people, we stand to that. We want people of all faiths and no faith to come to this place,” he adds.

“There are Christian acts of worship three times a day so it is a place of worship, but also a place where for nearly a thousand years people have gathered.”

Which makes it one of the oldest building of continuous use in the city.

He says: “There was evidence of the shaft of a Saxon cross going back to the 9th century dug up in Sheffield, and we have records in our archives that Queen Elizabeth I asked churchwardens to ‘pull down ye stone cross outside ye parish church.' This site was originally home to the Parish Church of Sheffield.”

The Cathedral has altered many times as the community has developed but Keith says it has always remained for the people, with warmth and a sense of holiness.

There are so many stories. One is how all the glass was removed from the cathedral before the start of World War Two and put in a mine in Rotherham so it would be protected from bomb blasts.

When the war finished, it was found submerged, brought back out and stained glass windows were put back piece by piece from the memory of experts.

Keith describes the building as ‘higgledy-piggledy’ in places, but ‘always telling a story.’

“It’s been redeveloped over the years, of course, but always in a very eco-friendly way, with a lot of reused materials, so there is Norman and Saxon stonework dotted around,” he says.

“I think it’s beautiful; as if the history of Sheffield is literally scratched into its walls.”

It serves many needs. “People just come and sit quietly, light a candle, say a prayer and now they can come to the coffee shop. A prayer and a cappuccino!”

Even the coffee fits the bill, made by The Heavenly Coffee Company from Dinnington.

“We had a taste test and I’m a bit of a coffee connoisseur - that was the best one,” he recalls.

He’s worked at Wakefield Prison.

“I was vicar in a village where no-one gets out except the staff. It was very interesting. People are people and we provided pastoral care in an interesting environment,” he says.

“People were in there who had done dreadful things and we were there to provide pastoral care. If I was having to say ‘Your mother has died’ they cried the same as anyone else.”

He trained as a psychiatric nurse and worked at Middlewood Hospital in Sheffield prior to being ordained. However, Keith wasn’t brought up in the church, his father was a miner and his mum ran pubs.

His religious journey started as a teenager when his best pal said he’d found Jesus.

“Through him I met people who had got something I hadn’t. They knew this person called Jesus which I thought was a bit freaky but I started reading the bible at 16 and it dawned on me to accept Christ,” he recalls.

Once ordained, he went on to work in Sheffield as the vicar of a parish in Wadsley Bridge and he returned to the city to join the Cathedral in 2014.

It had embarked on the Gateway Project, an ambitious programme of refurbishment and redevelopment, part of which was was described as a vigorous community engagement programme.

It has clearly made an impact. As we head for a room to talk in, Keith is stopped by all and sundry, wishing him well and saying they’ll miss him.

“I’m careful not to take credit, it is a team thing we’ve got here. The canon missioners’ role is to help the Cathedral reach out into the city, to communicate the message in a different way,” he states.

“I’m amazed how many people from Sheffield have never been here but when they do their eyes pop out of their head. It can look a bit grim from the outside, but inside it is light and bright.”

Covid brought challenges but services went online and Keith got one of his biggest audiences on Shrove Tuesday - Pancake Day.

“I was at home in my kitchen and did the service from the cooker, making pancakes. I was the cooking Canon,” he recalls.

Back to those memories of his time in the city. One was the visit of the Queen in 2015 to hand out Maundy money to 178 pensioners.

“After the service we went into the grand entrance where somebody had stuffed all the untidy bits into a cupboard which had been left open,” he recounts.

“I stood in front of it and tried to cover it with my robe. The Duke of Edinburgh watched me and said ’I saw that. We’ve got a cupboard like that at home’.

“Meeting the Queen was a highlight and so is meeting people who come with a need, a burden, a worry, who want help. That is the most amazing thing.”

There’s plenty who go to the Cathedral - 50,000 prayer candles are used a year.

“There was one woman who told me she didn’t know how to light a candle or pray. I said tell God what you are feeling. She did and that to me was an amazing thing. To remember all the people who have come here and found some peace, hope or help here,” he says.

The Cathedral is versatile, having held banquets, concerts, light shows and even Tramlines.

“I had dozens of conversations with people, sitting on the floor with a pint of beer who said ‘what a strange thing for a vicar to do. It shows we are ordinary people.”

Then there’s the Archer Project, which grew from 1989, when Sheffield Cathedral became a regular place of shelter for homeless people who had nowhere else to go and nothing to do. By 2007 it moved into its own purpose-built premises within the Cathedral.

“It has had real impact on the city and there are not many Cathedrals with that sort of monastery attached,“ he adds.

He’s referring to the dental and doctors surgeries which are part of the Cathedral Archer Project.

“It’s Kingdom of God stuff, allowing people to find a voice, that actually they do matter.

“At the end of the day, this is a community hub, and we want the community to use the space, either for a bit of peace and quiet, or to attend an event.

“We’re a bit like Arkwright’s shop - open all hours, every day of the year. Our strapline is ‘a place for all people,’ and that’s exactly what it is.”

He was chaplain to the Master Cutler and the High Sheriff but it is the congregation he’ll miss most.

“I’ll also miss the city centre,” he says.

And those stories. Another was when the Cathedral received a book that was apparently removed from the temple library more than 300 years ago.

It arrived in a package by first class mail along with a note written by a Welsh woman explaining that she had found it among the belongings of her deceased grandmother, who, in turn, had specified in his will that it should be returned to the Cathedral.

The 1704 copy of Faith and Practice of a Man of the Church of England was ‘beautifully written’ says Keith and ‘was obviously taken from the lending library and not returned at a time when the cathedral was still considered a simple church.

“We are not sure where in the building it was. We have some books from that period, from the early Georgian onwards, so we think the library books were probably dispersed during the first rearrangement of the church, in the late Georgian period,” he says.

He joked about the fine to pay for the delay of three centuries in returning the work. Of course, none was charged.

His last service is on Sunday, March 13, at 10.30am, where he will reside and preach his last sermon.

“I love the heritage, the number of stories in this building,” he says.

“The Bible talks about a spiritual house with spiritual stories and people are spiritual stories so I hope I’ve made a contribution to the building of the people.”