George Anselm Bennett was ordained in 1904 and subsequently held curacies at Redenhall, St Peter’s, Paddington and Eastwood before being appointed Curate-in-charge of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Ealing, in 1912.
In the First World War he served as a chaplain to the forces and afterwards arrived in James Street, Devonport, to become vicar of St Mary’s Church. That was in 1918 and until his retirement in 1951 that is where he stayed. Indeed beyond that even he was well remembered (latterly in a wheel chair – he was a victim of poliomyelitis) attending evensong and campaigning hard to save the church that the Diocesan Reorganisation Committee were proposing to demolish. In the event St Mary’s was pulled down, in February 1959, a year or so after the white-haired “saint of Devonport” sadly died. But thanks to the efforts of one of his parishioners, Lilian Hooper, his name has been preserved in the naming of Bennett Street, laid out at the back of Ker Street, Devonport, in the early 1960s
