About: Samuel Crooks

Samuel Bennett Crooks OBE TD was Dean of Belfast in the last third of the 20th century. He was born on 20 January 1920 into an ecclesiastical family (his father was the Rev. S. B. Crooks, Rector of Killough, Co. Down and then St Stephen’s, Belfast) and educated at Down High School and Trinity College, Dublin. He was ordained in 1944 and became Dean's Vicar and then Vicar Choral at St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast, until 1949, when he was appointed Rector of St John’s, Orangefield. Later he became Rector of Christ Church Lurgan, then the largest parish in the Church of Ireland, Rural Dean of Hillsborough and Archdeacon of Dromore. In 1970 he became Dean of Belfast, a post he held for 15 years. While at the Cathedral he launched the annual Christmas "sit out" to raise funds for local charities f