Gerald Ellison

Ellison was the son of a chaplain to the king. He was educated at Westminster School and New College, Oxford. He rowed for Oxford University Boat Club in the Boat Race in 1932 and 1933 and was later a Boat Race umpire. He married Jane Gibbon and they had three children, two daughters and a son.

Ellison studied for ordination at Westcott House, Cambridge and was ordained deacon in 1935 and priest in 1936. His first position, from 1935, was as a curate at Sherborne. He then became the chaplain to Cyril Garbett, Bishop of Winchester, from 1937 to 1939. During World War II he was a chaplain in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and in 1943 the domestic chaplain to Cyril Garbett as Archbishop of York. From 1946 to 1950 he was vicar of St Mark's Portsea, Portsmouth, the largest parish of the city.

Episcopal ministry

In 1950, Ellison was consecrated to the episcopate as Bishop of Willesden, a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of London. In 1955 he became the Bishop of Chester, (in which capacity he blessed a nuclear submarine at Birkenhead) and then, in 1972, the Bishop of London, where he completed a move from Fulham Palace to a residence in Westminster. Another lasting legacy of his in the Diocese of London is the area scheme he began. He was appointed a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1981 and after retirement was for a short time vicar general in the extraprovincial Diocese of Bermuda.