the Door

TEACHER, environmentalist and magistrate Dr Carolyn Boulter wove spiritual elements of her life with academic ones as she took on the 1,000 year old role in the county where she grew up and has lived for most of her life. She was made High Sheriff in April 2008.
She carried on despite the death of her biochemist son, Jonathan, from a brain tumour just one month later. ‘It’s been incredibly painful. A very precious part of my life has been taken in a very difficult way but I have felt held spiritually,’ she says. ‘Three days before he died I was at the end of our garden, in the green house. It was one of the last places I’d been with him and I was very distressed. In the sky was a terrible black cloud and across it a complete double rainbow. God was telling me he was riding a rainbow to Heaven. It was God speaking to me, telling me “It’s going to be all right.”’

Carolyn, a magistrate on the Reading Bench, says she never expected to become High Sheriff. ‘When I was asked, it just felt right. I felt comfortable about it,’ she says. ‘I used some of the lessons God has taught me. My research work taught me how to pay attention to people. God to me is an attentive God who is suddenly and inexplicably there for me.

‘One of the boys in the school where I did my research was a statemented child. I asked him why his teacher was so important. He took a deep breath and said: “Because she cares more about us than she does about the school.” I have talked to a lot of people and given them my attention during this year. It’s important to do that for people, it’s a discipline.

‘My spirituality is experiential and academic. I want to find new metaphors for describing our experience and to include the sound of voices that haven’t been heard.’

A large part of a modern day High Sheriff’s role is to sustain the morale of people working in the criminal justice system, from volunteers, court staff and Police Community Support Officers through to top police inspectors, barristers and judges.
That includes providing hospitality to visiting judges and Carolyn and her husband Hugh’s home in Theale is perfect for that. She says: ‘We both feel deeply blessed by God, we’ve been given a huge amount and our response to that is hospitality. It’s a lovely thing to be able to give to other people and to throw a party.’

During her career Carolyn has taught every age group possible apart from nursery school children. (She has trained nursery teachers.) She studied for her PhD at Reading University graduating in 1992, when she became a lecturer and researcher. Although she has now retired she still works as a consultant for the Charles Darwin Trust.
Her role as a champion of women’s issues began in the 1980s when she began campaigning for the ordination of women in the Diocese of Oxford.

‘That transformed my thinking about women’s issues. I have been very interested in getting women’s voices into liturgical space,’ she says.

As High Sheriff one of her focuses has been on women defendants in the criminal justice system. ‘We visited Bronzefield Prison, a women’s prison near Heathrow Airport,’ she says. ‘Action for Prisoners’ Families commissioned a play about the problems women face coming out of prison,’ she says. ‘It was produced by a quite remarkable theatre company of ex-drug addicts and ex-prisoners. The whole thing is therapeutic.

‘In April we organised a day for girls from local sixth forms to meet some of the people involved and to discuss the issues that women face. We also involved CHASTE (Churches Alert to Sex Trafficking across Europe) and the experience of refugee women.’
Hugh’s work on the Diocesan Interfaith Committee was woven into into the High Sheriff’s role by the couple putting their weight behind the Festival of Dialogue, organised by Art Beyond Belief at St Mary’s Church, Slough. Art Beyond Belief is an inter-faith, multi media arts project based in Berkshire. ‘I didn’t initiate that but I did help by promoting it,’ says Carolyn.

Environmental organisations, teachers and funders from across Berkshire were brought together for an ‘education for sustainable living’ event at Upton Court. ‘It was opened by Randal Keynes, Darwin’s great, great grandson, who works for the Charles Darwin Trust on the Galapagos Island,’ she said. ‘This year has been a gift. Before I was appointed we held a service at St Mary’s, Reading, where the team of myself and Hugh, my chaplain, the Revd Hilary Benson, Carol Jackson my media organiser and Penny Savage my PA were dedicated into the service of the county. Carolyn and Hugh attend St Mark’s Church, Englefield. Their surviving son, Adam, is a curate at St Mary’s, Battersea, London.