Dunstan Adams

THE death at the age of 87 of Father Dunstan Adams OSB, a Benedictine monk of Ampleforth Abbey, was marked with the traditional tolling of the bell in the abbey church tower, with one toll for each year of Fr Dunstan’s life.

He was born in Barnet in March 1926 and received into the Catholic Church just over twenty years later. From 1947-1950 he taught at the All Hallows Catholic prep school in Cranmore, Somerset. After a brief period as a novice at Downside he spent two years working in merchant banking and as a voluntary teacher at the Working Men’s College in Camden Town.

However, he still felt called to be a monk and so in September 1953 he joined the monastic community at Ampleforth Abbey and was solemnly professed as a monk on 27 September 1957.

Fr Dunstan began teaching in Ampleforth College two years later and in September 1968 was appointed Housemaster of St Dunstan’s House. Four years later, he retired as Housemaster due to ill health but continued to teach and also work as School Guestmaster and then Monastic Guestmaster. Fr Dunstan than spent some time working in the Scilly Isles and South Africa, living almost as a hermit, before taking up teaching once again at Ampleforth in September 1981.

Four years later he retired from teaching and focussed on retreat work, a task which was to occupy Fr Dunstan for over 10 years. In that time he wrote two popular books, What is Prayer? (1988) and Me Accuse Myself? (2003). In recent years, the deterioration in Fr Dunstan’s health meant he was unable to continue work as a spiritual guide and retreat giver.

Always a shy and very private man, Fr Dunstan had a quick wit. Flashes of his wit were evident right to the last week of his life. His body has been laid to rest in the Monks’ Wood.