Fond farewell to Arundel church champion

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.

On home leave in 1944, he proposed to his beloved Mildred, marrying six weeks later.

The couple’s two sons, Howard and David, were both born in what was then called the Gold Coast.

In 1955, the Slaters become the first British family to live in Nepal after the borders were opened.

Arthur set up a hygiene training programme for the World Health Organisation.

In 1960, the family moved back to Arundel, although the boys were at school in Hoylake, and Arthur, having completed a teacher training course, started work at the Worthing Technical College.

In a tribute read at his father’s funeral, Howard said of his parents: “All the time they lived abroad, they found fellowship with an extraordinarily eclectic mixture of people with diverse denominational backgrounds and nationalities.

“No sooner had they started worshipping again in the Arun Street Chapel, than the immense personality Esther Warwick, the long-serving secretary, announced she was retiring and decreed that Arthur was her anointed successor.

“Thus began nearly 30 years of leading the small Arundel fellowship, as well as preaching throughout the local area.”