The most nerve-wracking moment for ushers at the Lambeth Conference yesterday was the simultaneous arrival of 150 bishops wanting to drop off their luggage. Lines of purple shirts stretched across the car park at the University of Kent as senior clergymen from distant dioceses formed gently disorderly queues in the blazing sunshine.

Their shirts formed a vibrant stripe across the tarmac topped with a white line of dog collars, but there the uniformity ended. The shovel hats worn by clergy in Anthony Trollope's novels have been replaced by a variety of headgear including baseball caps (Dallas), cowboy hats (Texas) and a safari hat decorated to resemble a Friesian cow (Ghana).

Peter Warr, one of the volunteers employed to marshal the 650 bishops and their 570 spouses, took a philosophical attitude to the chaos even when part of the Sudanese delegation arrived without having told anyone that they were coming.

“It is in God's hands,” he said. “At least it's not raining, although we do have 500 umbrellas on hand in case it does.”

The freshest face at the conference is the suffragan bishop of Dallas, the Right Rev Paul Lambert, 58, who was consecrated on Saturday.

“I'm probably the ‘youngest' bishop here,” he said. “All the bishops who would have attended my consecration were invited to various dioceses in Britain ahead of the Lambeth Conference, so there weren't a lot around. But they did say that they would buy me a pint when I got here, so this should be a fun conference.”

Veterans include Paul Richardson, assistant bishop of Newcastle, who first came to the Lambeth Conference in 1988 when he was bishop of Aigorongo in New Guinea.

“It is a little bit like going back to school. I thought, as I was packing last night, ‘I'm going to be in a student dormitory for three weeks'.”

The youngest attender is five-month-old Enock Elnail, described by her father Andud Elnail, a bishop from Sudan, as “the little bishop”.

Her record may be broken by the end of the conference, however. Mike Avery, a former bank manager who is co-ordinating transport, discovered one bishop's wife who is days away from giving birth.

“There were a couple of people who we advised not to come because they were heavily pregnant, but one slipped through the net and was allowed to go by the airline. It looks like we'll have a conference baby.”