WHEN the announcement was made on Tuesday morning of who was to be the next Bishop of Crediton, that person was already on their way to Crediton.

The honour of being the place to first meet them was Crediton Station Tea Rooms' Memory Cafe, run by Linda Brown with its regular morning for people living with dementia and their carers.

Dame Sarah Mullally will be consecrated Bishop of Crediton in Canterbury Cathedral in July and installed in a service in Exeter Cathedral in September.

She is the fourth woman to be appointed bishop by the Church of England, the first in the South West.

Aged 53, she is married to Eamonn, who works as a business architect and they have two children. They will be moving to Exeter in the summer from Salisbury where Dame Sarah is a Residentiary Canon.

Dame Sarah will be consecrated alongside the Venerable Rachel Treweek, who is to be Bishop of Gloucester. She was the first woman to be appointed as a diocesan bishop.

Dame Sarah, a former nurse, became the government's youngest-ever Chief Nursing Officer for England in 1999.

Having had the call from God, Dame Sarah said she took the "very brave decision" to come out of nursing and into the church full time.

Saying how grateful she was to her family for their support, she said it had been one of the hardest decisions of her life and how it was a joy to walk alongside people and experience something of the enduring love of God.

From Crediton, Dame Sarah was going on to visit the parish nursing project in Newton Tracey near Barnstaple to meet parish nurses and their patients.

Dame Sarah then went to Pilton Bluecoat Church of England Junior School, Barnstaple, to lead assembly and meet staff and pupils.