Geoffrey Nuttall

Who was Geoffrey Nuttall?

Geoffrey Fillingham Nuttall FBA FKC was a British Congregational minister and church historian.

Nuttall was born in Colwyn Bay, North Wales, the son of the general practitioner. He was educated at Bootham School, the Quaker school in York, and read Mods and Greats at Balliol College, Oxford, and then Theology at Mansfield College, Oxford. He was a student pastor at Benson, Oxfordshire, and studied at Marburg from 1936 to 1937 under the direction of Theodor Sippell.

He emulated his grandfathers, both of whom were Congregational ministers, when he was ordained into the Congregational ministry in 1938 at Warminster. He was the minister at Common Close Congregational Church in Warminster from 1938 to 1943, then moved into theological training, first at the Quaker study centre at Woodbrooke College in the Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham. In 1945, he became only the second nonconformist theologian to become Doctor of Divinity at Oxford University. That year, he became a lecturer in church history at New College London, where he remained until his retirement in 1977. He was the Chairman of the Board of Studies in Theology from 1957 to 1959, Dean of the Faculty of Theology from 1960 to 1964, and New College Librarian from 1958 to 1977. He was also a trustee of Dr Williams's Library from 1947.