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INTRODUCING ...
Please tell us a bit about yourself.
I am Sandi Burley. I come from Kent
and trained as a primary teacher at a
college in Bishops Stortford. One
evening we went into Cambridge for a
party at St John’s college but were side-
tracked to a different party whose host
rushed out to find some more men.
One of those dragged away from their
revision was ...
John: Although born in Gloucester I was
brought up in Hereford, went to the
Cathedral School as a county scholar
and studied mineralogy, petrology and
geology at St John’s, Cambridge.
After Cambridge, we spent two years
teaching in Buckinghamshire (Sandi in a
village primary school and John at
Stowe) then emigrated to South Africa
on a £10 one-way ticket. John had a
good job in the mines research lab of
Anglo American but we were
uncomfortable under apartheid so we
saved up to come back. Sandi taught in
south London while John had a
postgraduate post at Imperial College –
until he was head-hunted by the UN to
work in the Chilean copper industry. It
was there that our first son was born
and we became Christians. In the street,
on the way to a cocktail party, John, a
declared atheist, heard a very clear voice
say, “I’m going to make you a priest in
my church”, a message repeated twice
more that week.
Soon afterwards we were invited to sing
in a choir at the local ‘community
church’, shared by Anglicans and
Presbyterians. That led to a bible study
group, the decision to invite Jesus into
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our lives and eventually three years in
Pennsylvania where John was part of the
first cohort to train for the ministry at
the new Trinity seminary, and our first
daughter was born. We returned to
Chile when John was appointed priest of
the Anglican Church in Chile, later
becoming Director of Theological
Education for Chile. Our second
daughter was born in Chile but our
fourth child, Tom, was born in England
while John was doing a brief curacy.
Sadly Tom died 14 months later, back in
Chile, as a result of Crouzon syndrome.
In 1989 we came back to the UK for
good. After learning the liturgy in
English (all his ministry up to then had
been in Spanish) John served in the
Southgate team ministry in Crawley, as
team vicar at nearby Holy Trinity, Tilgate
and finally as Rector of Alfold and
Loxwood in Surrey.
What brought you to Ludlow?
We had intended to settle in Hereford
but there was too much traffic and
bustle. John had cycled to Ludlow from
Hereford as a boy so we took a look. It
had all we wanted – a smaller town with
lots of facilities, beautiful buildings and
pavement cafés. We bought a house in
2006 which we used as a ‘bolt-hole’