George Kitchin

George Kitchin

George William Kitchin (7 December 1827 – 13 October 1912) was the first Chancellor of the University of Durham, from the institution of the role in 1908 till his death in 1912. He was also the last Dean of Durham Cathedral to govern the university.

Kitchin was born to a minister in the Rectory at Naughton, Suffolk, England. He attended King's College School and King's College, London. Later, he attended Christ Church College in Oxford, England, where he took a Double First in Classics and Mathematics in 1850 and gained his MA in 1852. In 1854 Kitchin was an examiner in Mathematics at Christ Church College. Kitchin left Oxford to become Headmaster of Twyford Preparatory School in Hampshire but returned to residence at Oxford as Censor in 1861. While at Christ Church he was partly responsible for the end in late 1861 of the Latin Prayer, conducted there since time immemorial, and for which special provision had been given in the Act of Uniformity 1662. He married in 1863, and served as Oxford's first Junior Censor of non-collegiate students from 1868 to 1883. Kitchin was Select Preacher at Oxford from 1863–64, Whitehall Preacher from 1866–67, Chaplain to the Bishop of Chester from 1871–72, tutor of the Crown Prince of Denmark and lecturer and tutor in History in Christ Church from 1870-83. He was also Commissary to the Bishop of Gibraltar from 1874–1904, and was an Honorary Fellow of King's College, London, and an honorary student of Christ Church. In Theology he was a moderate liberal.

In 1883 he became Dean of Winchester and in 1894 became the Dean of Durham Cathedral. At Oxford his friends included John Ruskin and Lewis Carroll. Kitchin's daughter Alexandra ('Xie', 1864–1925) was Carroll's favourite photographic subject.

He wrote the hymn 'Lift High the Cross' in 1887. Kitchin described several biblical manuscripts: Uncial 0132, minuscule 73, Minuscule 506, Minuscule 507, and Minuscule 639.