Later Years
For the fifteen years following his tenure as vicar at St Mary's, Dearmer served in no official ecclesiastical posts, preferring instead to focus on his writing, volunteerism and effecting social change. During World War I he served as chaplain to the British Red Cross ambulance unit in Serbia, where his wife died of enteric fever in 1915. In 1916 he worked with the Young Men's Christian Association in France and, in 1916 and 1917, with the Mission of Help in India. Dearmer married his second wife, Nancy Knowles, on August 19, 1916. They had two daughters and a son, Antony, who died in RAF service in 1943.
Politically, Dearmer was an avowed socialist, serving as secretary of the Christian Social Union from 1891 to 1912. He underscored these values by including a "Litany of Labour" in his 1930 manual for communicants, The Sanctuary. After being appointed a canon of Westminster Abbey in 1931 he ran a canteen for the unemployed out of it.
In addition to his writings, volunteer efforts and work with the church, Dearmer served as professor of ecclesiastical art at King's College London from 1919 until his sudden death of coronary thrombosis on May 29, 1936, aged sixty-nine. His ashes are interred in the Great Cloister at Westminster Abbey.
Read more about this topic: Percy Dearmer
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