John Hencher - further thoughts

John Bredon Hencher: actor, priest, teacher, calligrapher, friend

 John Bredon Hencher (1931 to 2011) died peacefully in Hereford Hospital on Sunday 3^rd April aged 79 years. He had been cared for at home for the last 18 months by his civil partner John Cupper and a dedicated team of friends and professional carers.

John always said he was born over a stable at Ombersley Court, Worcestershire, attended Hartlebury Grammar School and moved to London to train as an actor in London, shifting his accent from its native burr to RP.  The Bredon in his name celebrates the Worcestershire hill made famous by AE Houseman in A Shropshire Lad. John's acting career included BBC radio, Stratford and the Century Theatre in the north west of England with its fleet of blue wagons transforming into a real theatre.  John and I used to wonder if we were ever there together when the blue wagons rolled into my hometown of Rochdale and out across the boards trod the young, red haired Hencher. The life of a travelling actor was not enough so John then went to train for ordination at Lichfield Theological College. He served his title at Pershore Abbey, was domestic chaplain to Mervyn Charles-Edwards, bishop of Worcester and spent six years of as Vicar of Amblecote, Stourbridge. 

Falling in love with John Cupper, after they had met during a Whit Monday masque at Hartlebury Castle in 1968, changed the whole direction of his life and John's. They set up home together in Amblecote Vicarage but John Hencher was already feeling the constraints of parochial life, as it was too constraining for him. Training as a teacher at Worcester College of Education allowed more of his talents to flower. A natural performer, he could captivate any audience, no matter how intractable. After qualifying as a teacher, they moved to Salperton in the Cotswolds. Soon moving again to Herefordshire, to what was to become not just their home but also a welcome oasis for a widening circle of friends who enjoyed their generous hospitality. 

Their new home, dating back to 1429 and built for a local priest, in the black and white vernacular of Herefordshire, was surrounded by what eventually became a garden of great distinction complete with commissioned sculptures. The sheds had classical Latin quotations in John Hencher's characteristic hand. 

He found a part-time post at Monmouth School combining teaching English with being a chaplain. He greatly enjoyed his years at Monmouth, having Rowan Williams as neighbour. His love of theatre led to many, professional level performances, in some of the great Shakespearian leads providing much enrichment to the school’s curriculum. His prodigious memory had much of Shakespeare and the romantic poems easily to hand.

Although John was a priest, his spirituality was far wider and deeper than that which could be easily contained even in the then capacious, and now so sadly reducing, Anglican Church. He was not at home in the Sea of Faith movement, on the very edge of the church, or when he moved to an ambivalent position akin to Buddhism before finally finding a home, as many have like him, in the Society of Friends. His letter to Rowan explaining the reasons for leaving the Church of England and the reply he received spoke much about the relationship the two men had and how they could remain friends though in disagreement. The near silent worship he found with the Quakers chimed in with his deep interest in monastic life or more precisely with those who live a life based upon a rule. For John, his way of being a Quaker combined so many deep elements within him including the Bhutanese prayer flags that fluttered by the stream at the end of the Tank House garden.

John Hencher, the polymath, larger-than-life man, combined aspects of the characters of Hamlet, Lear and Falstaff but with much of John Keats in him developed, in his later years, yet another career at which he excelled – calligraphy. His works, on paper and wood, are now prized possessions. I think his finest pieces match those of David Jones – the Anglo-Welsh poet, calligrapher, painter and man of letters. His spirituality certainly does. But John was a man of relationships, friendships, love, the beauty of the English language and its supreme genius William Shakespeare.

At the end of The Tempest Prospero speaks the epilogue:

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,

And what strength I have's mine own,

Which is most faint: now, 'tis true,

I must be here confined by you,

Or sent to Naples. Let me not,

Since I have my dukedom got

And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell

In this bare island by your spell;

But release me from my bands

With the help of your good hands:

Gentle breath of yours my sails

Must fill, or else my project fails,

Which was to please. Now I want

Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,

And my ending is despair,

Unless I be relieved by prayer,

Which pierces so that it assaults

Mercy itself and frees all faults.

As you from crimes would pardon'd be,

Let your indulgence set me free.

Next, every, time from now on you hear these words, hear John Hencher's voice.


A few days before he died, JH was watching the episode of Treasure Hunt together with JC. which had them had them pitted against clock. 26 March 1987. What a joy that episode was to us who just knew that the two of them would come home with the Treasure. Their personalities just shone out, together with their brains, was a sure fire winner.


Coronation Street was a must at The Johns. More follows on this soon

If heaven is the Persian word for paradise, this was heaven. Even in the last years of his life, to be at a lunch party in the garden, among a crowd of friends, The Johns at home, the sun, the garden, the sculptures, the food, the wine, the talk, the talk, the talk, the laughter, here in Herefordshire….if heaven is half as good as this…At the heart of John’s life though was his love for John Cupper. ‘The Johns’, were always welcoming, always generous, and always full of laughter and delight. Many lives have been transformed, my own included, by the love that the Johns had for each other. Always a mark of a real relationship, there’s was one which overflowed to embrace many, many other people.