The Bishop of Derby

Nine months after she has returned to ‘the place that holds my heart’ Bishop Libby Lane talks to Pat Ashworth

- Pat Ashworth

Bishop Libby Lane will go down in history as the first woman bishop in the Church of England. She’s very grounded and it’s a distinction she wears with humility, but she does admit that nobody quite grasped just how high profile that first female appointment would be and how people of all faiths and none would engage with it.

She was consecrated Bishop of Stockport in 2015, continuing to minister in the Diocese of Chester where she’d served as a parish priest for 12 years. Back now in the county that she loves, ‘the place that holds my heart’, she observes, ‘I thought like many people of my generation that I wasn’t really rooted anywhere, and I have quite enjoyed being nomadic. But I haven’t had to grow to love Derbyshire and Derby because it turns out that that love is very deeply ingrained in me. That’s been a lovely surprise.’

Keen observers will notice that her episcopal ring – a gift from her parents – has Blue John running through it rather than the conventional purple strains. ‘It’s uniquely Derbyshire and every time I put it on, it reminds me of what formed me,’ she says. She was born in Buckinghamshire in 1966 but moved as a small child to Glossop, which she describes as ‘a lovely, lovely place to grow up.’ Primary school, dance classes, Brownies and ‘all the other things people do when they’re growing up’ filled her life: she went on to Manchester High School but had Saturday jobs in a florist, a restaurant and behind a bar in Stalybridge.