Ian Watson (priest)

Ian Leslie Stewart Watson (born Carlton, Nottinghamshire 17 September 1950) was Archdeacon of Coventry from 2007 until 2012.^[1] He married Denise (née Macpherson) in 1972 and has two children, Hannah (1974) and Adam (1975).

He was an Officer in the Royal Marines^[2] from 1969 to 1979 serving in 41, 42 and 40 Commandos, BRNC Dartmouth, HMS Nubian and with the MOD in London and Glasgow. He also served with the Army at its Staff College and Templar Barracks, Ashford, and, briefly, in Berlin. Resigning his Commission he then studied for ordination at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford and was ordained in1981.^[3] After a curacy at St Andrew, Plymouth, where he had oversight of the daughter church of St George-with-St Paul, Stonehouse, he was Chaplain to the Freedom Fields' Hospital and Actors' Christian Union, and also presented religious programmes on Westward Television and Television South West. He was Vicar of Matchborough from 1985 to 1989 and led the building of the new church, Christ Church, Matchborough in 1987. At this time, together with Michael Mitton, he founded the Worcester Anglican Renewal Movement (WARM). He was Team Rector of Woodley, Berkshire, from 1989 to 1995 and was then appointed as the Anglican Chaplain in Amsterdam from 1995 to 2001 where he was also the Director of Ordinands for the Benelux countries. He then became the Chief Executive of the Intercontinental Church Society and a member of the Archbishops' Council from 2001 until his appointment as Archdeacon of Coventry. He was made Archdeacon Emeritus of Coventry in 2012 and Canon Emeritus of Gibraltar in 2007.

A keen cricketer,^[4] he now plays and coaches wheelchair basketball at National League level (after the amputation of his left leg in 2014 as the result of a war injury incurred in Northern Ireland in 1973). He is currently the Chairman of the Society for the Relief of Poor Clergy ^[5] and the Steelers Wheelers Sports ' Club. Additionally, he is the President of the Welton British Legion. A former member of the Plymouth Lifeboat Crew he received an award for his part in the rescue of the crew of the Saint Simeon trawler in 1985.

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