THE new rector of Bury Parish Church has been announced as the Reverend Julian Heaton.

He will leave his position as Vicar of St Anne’s, Sale with St Francis, Sale Moor, in Chester Diocese, to take up the role later this year.

He will be instituted by the Bishop of Manchester and inducted by the Archdeacon of Bolton at a ceremony at the Parish Church on Sunday November 19.

He succeeds Dr John Findon, who retired in January after 18-and-a-half years as vicar at the town centre church.

The Rev Julian Heaton told the Bury Times he was delighted to be taking up the position.

He said: "I am very much looking forward to being part of what I hear is a great and thriving church community and learning from the people of Bury, as well as sharing with them some of the things I have learnt about the life of being a Christian over the past few years.

“I am both delighted and humbled to be appointed."

Born in Sale in 1962, the Rev Julian Heaton attended William Hulme’s Grammar School in Manchester, before studying history at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

He then trained at St Stephen’s House, an Anglican theological college in Oxford, and has more recently obtained an MA in Ecclesiastical History from Liverpool Hope University.

He has ministered in parishes in the Chester Diocese for almost thirty years, including Stockport, Knutsford and Altrincham, as well as undertaking a hospital chaplaincy in Nottingham, and is currently the rural Dean of Bowden.