FAMILIES in an isolated dales village were yesterday coming to terms with the death of a bishop who was making his home among them.

The Right Reverend Ian Cundy, Bishop of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, first came to Lanehead, in Upper Weardale, County Durham, nearly 20 years ago.

He and his wife, Jo, were planning to move into the home they had built there when he took early retirement in July. But Bishop Cundy, 64, was taken ill while on a family outing to Somerset on Thursday.

He later died at Swindon General Hospital with his wife by his side. He had been suffering from a form of lung cancer for two years.

Retired farmer Neville Rutter said families in Upper Weardale were deeply saddened to hear about Bishop Cundy’s death “He was a very gentle man who had no airs and graces about him,” he said.

The bishop bought two cottages – one of them derelict – at Lanehead when he was warden at Cranmer Hall, St John’s College, in Durham, in the Eighties.

Mr Rutter said a party of villagers went to Westminster for Bishop Cundy’s consecreation in 1992.

He said: “ I remember we all sat at the back of the hall. But then an usher came up to us and asked if we were the Lanehead contingent and we were moved to the front seats, next to other bishops at the ceremony.”

Mr Rutter said he was particularly proud of the staff they had made for the bishop, which had a handle made from one of his tupp’s horns.

A book of condolence has been opened for Bishop Cundy, who first became a deacon in 1969 and entered the House of Lords in 2001.