George Kitchin

Who was George Kitchin?

George William Kitchin was the first Chancellor of the University of Durham, from the institution of the role in 1908 till his death in 1912. He was also the last Dean of Durham Cathedral to govern the university.

Kitchin was born to a minister in the Rectory at Naughton, Suffolk, England. He attended King's College School and King's College London. Later, he attended Christ Church, Oxford where he took a Double First in Classics and Mathematics in 1850 and gained his MA in 1852. In 1854 Kitchin was an examiner in Mathematics at Christ Church. Kitchin left Oxford to become Headmaster of Twyford Preparatory School in Hampshire but returned to residence at Oxford as Censor in 1861. While at Christ Church he was partly responsible for the end in late 1861 of the Latin Prayer, conducted there since time immemorial, and for which special provision had been given in the Act of Uniformity 1662.

Kitchin married in 1863, and served as Oxford's first Junior Censor of non-collegiate students from 1868 to 1883. He was Select Preacher at Oxford from 1863–64, Whitehall Preacher from 1866–67. Resided at Brantwood, in the Lake District from 1869-71, the property later purchased by John Ruskin. Here he untook assignments for Clarendon Press, including working on the proofs of Richard Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson's Icelandic-English Dictionary.