Fond farewell to Arundel church champion

DEDICATED, dependable, and the driving force behind the building of Arundel Baptist Church, Arthur Slater, who has died, aged 84, is mourned by friends, family and the community alike.

Arthur was secretary at the church for more than 30 years, and a former teacher at Worthing Technical High School, now Durrington School.

Former minister at the church, the Rev Philip Tout, said: “He was a delightful man, really committed, and he just worked so hard.”

He added in the 1970s, the church had bought a plot of land from the Norfolk Estate, and it was on this land, in late 1970s and early 1980s, that Warwick Court sheltered housing scheme and the Baptist church were built.

“Arthur was the backbone of it all,” he said.

“He was church secretary and he was church organist, and he was the one who got the church into a position to be built.

“None of it would have happened without him.”

Arthur was born in December, 1916, in Tunbridge Wells, and his family moved to Littlehampton, and shortly after to Crossbush, when he was young.

It was then that his 67-year association with the Arundel Baptists began.

After leaving Chichester High School, to which he had won a scholarship, he joined Worthing Borough Council as an public health inspector.

The skills he learnt here took him to modern-day Ghana, as a sanitary inspector for the Colonial Service, in 1939.