MORE than a million people from the UK are likely to visit Cyprus this summer, for a sunshine holiday in a country where people drive on the left and speak English. These are the rem­nants of almost 80 years of British occupation and administra­tion of Cyprus, which came to an end on 16 August 1960.

As it was one of many British Crown colonies, officials sent to Cyprus were often confounded by the fact that Cyprus differed fundamentally from almost all other imperial possessions in one respect: the island’s Greek Cypriot majority was already Christian.

Greek Orthodox Christianity may have been very different from the muscular Protestantism of the Em­pire — its incense, icons, and ritual were the object of some suspicion — but its presence on the island denied British colonists in Cyprus the chance to engage in missionary work.

The process of redeeming the heathen, and of establishing schools, hospitals, and orphanages, not only provided the moral bedrock of the entire imperial project but also energised the Christian communities of Britain’s colonies, providing them with a sense of drive and spiritual purpose.

The British arrived in Cyprus in 1878, after a secret deal between Disraeli and the Ottoman Sultan, Abdulhamid II.

ORGANISED Anglican wor­ship in Cyprus got off to a shaky start. Early plans to restore an impressive 12th-century Gothic church in Nicosia (it is known today as the Bedestan, and lies in the northern part of the divided capital) proved too expen­sive. Some years later, the island’s first purpose-built Anglican church, St Paul’s, had to be abandoned, when it was discovered that the building was balancing precariously above a series of prehistoric (seventh-century BC) stone pits containing devotional offerings.

Eventually, the sinking church was carefully dismantled, and rebuilt on a more appropriate site to the north-west, where it is still in use today. The foundation stone was laid on a sunny March day in 1893, in the presence of “a great many of the fashionable world of Nicosia”, and to the ac­com-paniment of “tasteful and refresh­ing” hymn singing by the church choir.

With the construction of its own place of worship completed, the Anglican community in Cyprus looked around for another project on which it could focus its energies. The answer was not immediately obvious.

Not only was the Orthodox Christian community off-limits, even the island’s Islamic minority was out of reach. In 1875, the Church Missionary Society had de­cided that all “Missions to Mo­hammedans” in Cyprus should be suspended until the issue of the Ottoman Empire’s protracted de­cline was resolved.

THE arrival, in 1900, of a bluff, straight-talking cleric, the Revd Frank Newham, marked the first time that any elements of a specifically Anglican theology began to permeate Cypriot society. A gregarious man, Newham was not above coaxing people into church at­tendance by standing them a round of drinks on a Saturday night at the Nicosia Club.

THE arrival, in 1900, of a bluff, straight-talking cleric, the Revd Frank Newham, marked the first time that any elements of a specifically Anglican theology began to permeate Cypriot society. A gregarious man, Newham was not above coaxing people into church at­tendance by standing them a round of drinks on a Saturday night at the Nicosia Club.

Soon after his arrival, Newham established the Nicosia English School. Initially intended as a lan­guage crammer, to teach English to Cypriot boys who would work as translators in the colonial adminis­tration, under Newham’s direction the school expanded to provide a broad-based, liberal education.

The school’s founder also sub­scribed to the theories of the in­fluential cleric, writer, and social reformer Charles Kingsley, believing in the moral, even spiritual im­port-ance of team sports for instilling “self-restraint, fairness, honour, un-envious approbation of another’s success”.

Newham, like Kingsley, saw sport in school as part of a broader pro­gramme of social reform, stressing the part that athletic activities could play in the demo­lition of class divisions.

During his time as headmaster, Newham sought to enrol pupils from a range of economic, cultural, and religious backgrounds, and fre­quent­ly waived the fees of impoverished pupils. He took satisfaction from the fact that the “the different nation­alities cause no friction” — the re­sult, perhaps, of the school’s dis­tinctly un-Victorian motto: “Respect each other’s feelings.”

The values of the English School had a significant impact on genera­tions of Cypriots, and traces of its philosophy can still be seen in parts of Cypriot society today. But the school did little to provide the Anglican community with either a moral focus or a sense of purpose.

DEPRIVED of the opportunity to proselytise, teach, or do mission work, the Anglicans of Cyprus became apathetic and directionless. One cleric who visited the island during the 1920s de­scribed them as being “almost dead spiritually”, and lamented the “dis­tinct spirit of complacency” that charac­terised the island’s expatriate congregations.

Another visitor, in a blunt letter to the diocesan bishop, explained that the Anglicans of Cyprus were “signally ineffective” because “so many of [them] were non-effectives in the home country.”

The community itself was well aware of this malaise, and made sporadic attempts to energise its collective spiritual life. A seamen’s mission at the port city of Famagusta was suggested, along with a “healing mission” led by a married couple from the Home Counties. The head of the island’s forestry department came up with his own scheme for “a general campaign to enlist the considerable number of people who have no denominational allegiance whatever”.

But the plans came to nothing, and the Anglicans of Cyprus slipped further into a solipsistic torpor, until, in 1928, the ecclesiastical archi­tect William Douglas Caröe offered to design a church for the govern­ment’s summer capital on Mount Troodos.

But the plans came to nothing, and the Anglicans of Cyprus slipped further into a solipsistic torpor, until, in 1928, the ecclesiastical archi­tect William Douglas Caröe offered to design a church for the govern­ment’s summer capital on Mount Troodos.

Following the pattern set by their counterparts in India, the British abandoned the heat of Nicosia in June, migrating by camel, mule, and bus to a vast encampment of tents in the Troodos mountain range. Caröe proposed a permanent building for the Church of St George in the Forest, a modest Arts and Crafts-style struc­ture, with high-pitched roofs echoing the shapes of the surrounding pine trees.

Caröe’s successful restorations of Tewkesbury and Durham Cathedrals had made him an architectural celeb­rity, and the Anglicans of Cy­prus were both excited and over­awed.

Donations poured in for pews, Prayer Books, and a weather vane, while the church committee sol­emnly passed a resolution prohibit­ing the acceptance of “gifts of fur­niture . . . except those made to the de­sign of the Architect or approved by someone representing him”.

BACK in Nicosia, and in other cities on the island, the slow pace of life in the tiny Mediterranean colony was changed for ever by the outbreak of the Second World War. Tens of thousands of British and colonial troops were posted to Cyprus, leading to greater Anglo-Cypriot contact than ever before.

By early 1941, the military au­thorities observed a rapid escalation in cases of venereal disease among British troops on the island. For the Anglicans of Cyprus, safeguarding the moral and spiritual welfare of British troops became an issue of grave concern. Ironically, after decades of doubt and anxiety about its purpose in the colony, the community was re-energised, and gained a new sense of direction.

The chaplain of St Paul’s, in Nicosia, initiated tea- and supper-parties for the soldiers, mobilising his parishioners in the preparation of food, while worshippers working for the antiquities department arranged expeditions and talks about “inter­esting and historic places in the neighbourhood”.

The diocese also began co-operating with Charles Potts, a formidable army chaplain known as “the fighting parson” because of his boxing skills. Potts was a man of tremendous energy, who roamed around Cyprus on a motorcycle, carrying with him his communion set, ecclesiastical robes, and up to 100 hymn books.

Together with the parishioners of St Paul’s, he established a recre­ational club for servicemen where they could relax, read newspapers, or attend occasional lectures or debates.

To finance the project, he estab­lished a magazine, Tin Hat, which he marketed under the memorable slogan “To keep ‘A’ company out of the brothels”. The publication sold well, and Potts was able to rent a large stone house on the walls of the old city of Nicosia.

TODAY, 50 years after Cyprus gained independence, St Paul’s (since 1981 a cathedral) and its sister churches continue to provide spiritual support for the minority Anglican community on the island.

The door to missionary work among Cypriots remains closed. But the surge in tourism has opened up other opportunities: each summer, teams of young Christians mingle among the crowds of young people who come to party at the popular clubbing resort of Ayia Napa, hoping to encourage them to seek a more spiritual side of life. Charles Potts, the “fighting parson”, would have approved.

Sweet and Bitter Island: The British in Cyprus by Tabitha Morgan (IB Tauris, £25 (CT Bookshop £22.50); 978-1-84885-329-4).