Toddy Hoare

Toddy Hoare trained as a sculptor and was freelance for 3 years until recession in the mid-1970s made such a living impossible so joined the 15/19th King’s Royal Hussars to pay his debts, serving in Northern Ireland. Ordination followed via The Missions to Seamen in Holland and Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. After a curacy in Guisborough, he was the curate-in-charge of the Hillside Parishes in North Yorkshire on the Moors near Thirsk for 25 years and chaplain to the Yorkshire Agricultural Society.

All those miscellaneous experiences proved useful during that quarter century amongst twelve villages with 8 churches, with sculpture playing a prominent role illustrating scripture or as sermons in bronze. When his wife, Liz, got a post she could not refuse teaching spiritual formation at Wycliffe Hall Theological College he retired to concentrate on sculpture once more and exhibit in London. He took up the pen to write poetry whose muse had been largely dormant since art school, further prompted by Covid lockdown.

He has four children, eight grandchildren, a Labrador, and has as much enjoyment of Oxford as there had been of Yorkshire.