Capt the Rev Cuthbert Scott

Cuthbert Le Messurier Scott, naval officer and priest: born London 13 May 1913; ordained deacon 1961, priest 1962; Vicar, St John's, Hyde Park Crescent and St Michael and All Angels, Paddington 1964-72; Vicar, Shamley Green 1972-83; married 1942 Peggie Helmore (died 2003; two sons, one daughter); died Hindhead, Surrey 31 December 2006.

Horseman's Sunday began as a day of London parish activism and is now an "event" on the international tourist calendar. On the penultimate Sunday in September, the Vicar of St John's, Hyde Park, mounted on horseback outside his church, blesses a cavalcade of up to 100 horses and riders in a celebration of London's equestrian community. The vicar who introduced this ceremony, 40 years ago next year, when the stables north of Hyde Park were threatened with closure, was Captain the Rev Cuthbert Scott.

He had been appointed to the parish of St John's, Hyde Park Crescent, with St Michael and All Angels, Paddington, four years earlier. One of his churches, St Michael's, had been bombed in 1941. It was closed in 1964 and demolished in 1967. The other, St John's, built in 1829-32, was in a poor way but in the centre of the one of most expensive new housing developments in the capital, the Church Commissioners' Hyde Park Estate including the Water Gardens. Beyond stretched the poorer reaches of Paddington.

Scott had been in the Navy; with his ginger beard, he looked the part - like the picture on a packet of Player's Navy Cut. A gunnery officer, a veteran of Russian convoys (on which he famously took his dog Peter), the Normandy landings and the Korean War, he had, in his forties, followed his vocation and trained to be a priest at Wells Theological College.

The Bishop of London's gamble in appointing him paid off, and the church became part of swinging London. Scott had the ability to draw on the hugely diverse talents in the parish. He persuaded George Martin to sort out the eccentric acoustics in the vast Gothic church. Walter Graebner, London MD of Time-Life, launched the parish magazine, Saints & Angels News, produced by a leading graphic designer, and made it the ecclesiastical answer to Private Eye. The cover price was 6d but it went free to 3,000 homes, subsidised by real advertising. Rolex watches took a full page, as did Benson & Hedges. Mike d'Abo of Manfred Mann fame posed on one front cover, and wrote a hymn.

Cicely Saunders was planning the first hospice. Richard Branson launched his empire from the crypt of the church and great artists and musicians competed to exhibit and perform there, including Marian Bohusz-Szyszko (later Saunders's husband), Halima Nalecz and Joseph Cooper.

It wasn't easy, and it couldn't have happened without the core of loyal locals, determined to keep the church alive in the early days, and Cuthbert Scott's wife, Peggie, who ran the show from the vicarage. The third vital ingredient was the talented curate, Peter Murphy, who never seemed to run out of energy and ideas.

Horseman's Sunday, initiated by Cuthbert Scott and Ross Nye in 1968, still makes the newspapers, with the brewers' drays, police and army horses, beasts from the pony club and local stables, all forming up in the crescent for their blessing. On bonfire night a great firework display was held, sponsored by Schweppes, with the church façade as backdrop .

In 1972 the Scotts moved to Shamley Green in Surrey, where they thoroughly enjoyed the contrast of a village parish. The artist Thetis Blacker, a friend there, featured Cuthbert as a bearded disciple in one of her Winchester Cathedral banners. After 12 years they finally retired to Brighton. Cuthbert became the chaplain of St. Dunstan's, the centre for service men and women blinded in the course of duty, whom he called his "blind heroes", and ad hoc chaplain to the Brighton lifeboat crew, allowing himself to be strapped into their vessel for practice runs.

Peggie and Cuthbert Scott spent their last years at Manormead, a retirement home for clergy. Peggie died in 2003, and Cuthbert moved into a single room, like a ship's cabin, where he painted the most exquisite watercolours for his friends.

Joe Parham