Obituary: Minister, bus driver, and author Rev Jack Burton

Norwich's bus-driving Methodist minister and author the Rev Jack Burton has died at the age of 83. 

The father of three – who served as Sheriff of Norwich in 1988/89 – died at his city centre home on Tuesday, August 1 following a long struggle with Parkinson's Disease. 

Born on Marion Road, Thorpe Hamlet, in 1939, Mr Burton was the eldest in a large family – he had nine half-brothers and sisters. 

A pupil at the City of Norwich School, he was drawn to the church as a teenager by American evangelist Billy Graham, and studied theology at Handsworth College, Birmingham. 

By then, he had already spotted his future wife Molly from his pulpit while preaching at St Faith's Methodist Chapel, where they subsequently married in 1961.  

He relished a challenging start to his full-time ministry when posted to the tough Govan area of Glasgow in 1963. Two years later he moved to the small Fenland town of Littleport, near Ely.  

He became disillusioned with organised religion and pushed to become a 'worker-priest', eventually gaining permission from a highly reluctant Methodist Church to earn his living as an Eastern Counties bus driver whilst continuing his ministry.  

It was a decision which forced him and his young family to vacate their church-owned home and saw him move back to Norwich in 1969, living at Colegate for more than 50 years.  

He was a familiar figure not only in the pulpit but in his bus cab, his booming voice, toothy grin and impressive whiskers made him difficult to miss. 

In the early 1970s, he founded the Norwich Over the Water group, which sought to protect the city north of the Wensum from further over-development.  

The group's achievements included saving the Golden Star pub from demolition during the widening of Duke Street; this atoned for an earlier mishap when he clipped the pub with his bus while turning right out of Colegate. 

A talented writer, Mr Burton was the author of several books, the most notable being his prizewinning 'Transport of Delight' (1976), the diary of a year in his role as a worker-priest. The launch event involved him driving a double-decker through the Erpingham Gate into The Cathedral Close.  

Another volume was entitled 'The Wonder of Buses and Trams', while other works included poetry, a children's story, and an unpublished history of Norwich Over the Water. 

He was for many years a regular columnist for the Eastern Daily Press, and viewed these short pieces as some of his best work. 

He worshipped regularly at Norwich Cathedral, but his own ministry was based around three churches – all non-Methodist - on Colegate. These were St George's, the Old Meeting House, and, most notably, the redundant St Clement's, opposite his home.  

He leased St Clement's from the Norwich Historic Churches Trust in the mid-70s, raising funds to keep it open for around 25 years as a place for personal prayer and reflection. He frowned on the trend for gutting the interiors of the city's churches to find alternative uses, and St Clement's is today the only one of Norwich's redundant medieval churches to retain its interior furnishings. 

His Christmas Eve midnight masses at St Clement's achieved near legendary status as pub-goers filed in from the adjacent Mischief Tavern, often somewhat the worse for wear. He reciprocated by donning his cassock to conduct popular Christmas carol sing-a-longs at the Mischief and the Ribs of Beef.  

He was also a chaplain at Norwich School of Art. 

A lifelong Labour Party supporter and campaigner, Mr Burton courted controversy before one general election when he hung a large banner proclaiming 'Good Christians know where to put their cross' on the railings of St Clement's.  

A willing champion for the underdog, he worked tirelessly to help anyone whom he felt had been treated shabbily by authority. 

He was a dedicated trade unionist, and in 1972 and 1973 served as Transport and General Workers' Union branch chair. One dispute culminated in him reluctantly leading Norwich's busmen out on a one-day strike. Yet 20 years later he was elected on to the Eastern Counties Buses board. 

Mr Burton was proud to serve as Sheriff of Norwich in 1988/89, forming a notable double-act with Lord Mayor David Bradford.  

The year's packed programme of civic engagements led him and Molly to forge lifelong friendships with David and Thelma Bradford. One of Mr Burton's last public appearances was to deliver the address at Mr Bradford's funeral in 2021. 

He was fascinated by buses from an early age.  

He worked as an office boy for Eastern Counties after leaving school at 16, and boasted a large and carefully catalogued collection of rare bus photographs in red-bound albums.  

His many other interests included bird watching, butterflies and moths, and the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan.  

He took a close interest in the fortunes of Norwich City, and never quite forgave Luton Town for ending the club's fabled 1958/59 FA Cup run at the semi-final stage. Forty years on he drove surviving team members on an open-top bus tour of Norwich, and in 2004 he conducted the funeral of long-serving former club chairman Geoffrey Watling at the Old Meeting House. 

He retired after a stroke in 2002, and suffered a series of further health issues during his later years.  

He was due to receive the Maundy money from the Queen in 2020, but the ceremony at Windsor Castle was cancelled due to the pandemic. On a happier note, in 2021 he and Molly celebrated their diamond wedding. 

Mr Burton is survived by wife Molly; children Trevor, Linda and Jeanette; granddaughters Natasha and Serena; and three-month-old great-grandson Wesley. 

• The Rev Jack Robert Burton, born October 17, 1939, died August 1, 2023.