Archdeacon of Rochester

The Archdeacon of Rochester is a senior office-holder in the Diocese of Rochester (a division of the Church of England Province of Canterbury.) Like other archdeacons, they are administrators in the diocese at large (having oversight of parishes in roughly one-third of the diocese). The present incumbent is the Venereable Simon Burton-Jones.

The first Archdeacon of Rochester is recorded c. 1096, at approximately the same sort of time as archdeacons were being appointed across the country. At this point, this archdeacon was the sole archdeacon in the diocese, functioning as an assistant to the bishop. The archidiaconal and diocesan boundaries remained similar for almost 750 years until 1 January 1846 when the three archdeaconries of Colchester, Essex and St Albans from the Diocese of London were added to the diocese while all of west Kent but the Deanery of Rochester was given to the Diocese of Canterbury – at this point, the diocese covered all of Essex. The archdeaconry of Rochester, having been reduced severely, was first suppressed at the next vacancy (Walter King's death in 1859) then held by the Archdeacon of St Albans. The archdeaconry was then given to Canon Cheetham, a residentiary canon of Rochester Cathedral and the bishop's examining chaplain, who held it until after the Kentish territory was returned.

Those three archdeaconries created the new Diocese of St Albans in 1877, but the diocese received part of Surrey (which part was constituted into the Southwark archdeaconry the next year) a few months later: in 1879 the Kingston archdeaconry was split off from Southwark; those two archdeaconries were erected into the Diocese of Southwark in 1905 while west Kent was returned to the Rochester diocese – immediately prior to that date the Diocese of Rochester covered a large portion of Surrey (now southern Greater London) immediately south of the Thames. Once again, Rochester was the sole archdeaconry of the diocese until it was split to create the Archdeaconry of Tonbridge in 1906; it was further split in 1955 to create the Archdeaconry of Bromley, so that there are today three archdeaconries in the present diocese, covering West Kent plus the two London boroughs of Bromley and Bexley – an area broadly similar to that covered until 1846.

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