Gwenda and Torkill Fozzard
Profile
Like many long-married couples, the Fozzards tend to be referred to as a unit: as TorkillandGwenda, or GwendaandTorkill. But, despite their many similarities – both Unitarians, both pacifists, both lovers of music, both concerned about the agricultural industry’s abuse of the natural environment – they are distinct and very different individuals, as I discovered when I had the pleasure of interviewing them for this article.
Gwenda Owen was born into a large, close-knit family and brought up on her grandfather’s farm in the village of Pentre Berw on Anglesey. A native speaker of Welsh, she did not start to learn English until the age of 11, when she won a scholarship to the local grammar school. Her love of literature was nurtured by her mother and grandmother, who used to read aloud to her from the works of Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and other classics. Her pacifism was inspired by her uncle, who, having fought in World War I, registered as a conscientious objector in World War II. Like most of their community, the family were staunch Methodists, and they got a bit of a shock when – following her marriage to Torkill in 1974 – she became a Unitarian.
Torkill was born and brought up in Cambridge, the son of a Norwegian mother and a Yorkshire father. Wishing him to have a religious education not bound by creed and dogma, they sent him to the Quaker school in Saffron Walden, and encouraged him when at home to join them in worship at the Unitarian Memorial Church. Torkill joined the Unitarian FOY (Fellowship of Youth) Society, with whom he enjoyed weekend retreats at Flagg Barn, near Hucklow in Derbyshire. On moving to Hull to study botany at the university, he joined the Unitarian church there. On graduating, he began his career as a plant pathologist with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food (MAFF) in Cardiff.
It was the Civil Service that brought Torkill and Gwenda together. She began working for MAFF when she left school, helping to organise a programme to combat tuberculosis in cattle. Altogether she worked for the ministry in various capacities for 42 years, until she retired during the BSE crisis in 1998. Remembering the organic dairy farm of her childhood, she is very critical of the profit-driven, intensive industry of today, in which cows are treated as mere units of production. Similarly Torkill, who worked for years on trials of agricultural chemicals, is concerned about the development of genetically modified crops, which he sees as a dangerous interference with biological structures, risking the release of unknown and potentially damaging variables into the environment.
From Cardiff, where they belonged to West Grove Unitarian Chapel during the ministry of Revd. Eric Jones, Torkill and Gwenda moved in 1980 to live and work in Nottingham. They joined the friendly chapel in the coal-mining village of Mansfield. Here Revd. Derek Smith inspired his congregation to read and study (Gwenda has happy memories of the study group which met to discuss anything from The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists to early Sea of Faith publications), and he got the men to cook Christmas dinner every year for the congregation. She describes Derek Smith as a ‘grassroots minister’ and a wonderful mentor who opened her mind to many new ideas. In addition to their membership of the Mansfield chapel, she and Torkill also supported the chapels in Belper and Derby.
When they moved to live in Reading in 1986, the Fozzards found that there was no Unitarian community there. So they began attending services in Oxford once every four or five weeks (as they still do); but they also helped to found the Reading Fellowship, which meets once a month and has a core group of about ten members. They are a ‘do it yourself’ congregation with no formal ministry, although retired minister Peter Godfrey acts as a guiding influence. Torkill describes Unitarianism as ‘a religion that makes you think’ – and the Reading Fellowship’s custom of meeting to discuss the sermon after every service certainly reflects that fact. At Oxford they are always welcome. It is a particular pleasure to hear Gwenda conversing in Welsh with Heddwen Hewis, Gwen Cox, and David Lewis; and to hear Torkill playing the piano on occasions during our services.
Playing the piano – Chopin, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn – is Torkill’s favourite way of relaxing, and he keeps fit by playing squash. Gwenda used to love archery for the mental concentration and silent absorption that it demands. In recent years, ill health has obliged her to give up some of her leisure activities. Fortunately, the condition from which she suffers, called Sleep Apnoea, is now responding to treatment, so she hopes to be able to start some voluntary work soon. Meanwhile, Torkill is still employed as a milkman, a job that he began after being made redundant from the Civil Service in 1989. He rises daily at 2 am (yes, that’s two o’clock in the morning) to start his deliveries at 2.30 am. He likes the solitude of the early hours, which gives him time to think, and he enjoys the dawn chorus and the sunrise; but he also values his contacts with his customers, many of whom have become his friends and (I suspect) rely on him for numerous acts of kindness.
Asked to name their favourite hymns, Torkill nominates the pilgrim hymn, "He who would valiant be"; and Gwenda opts for an old Welsh hymn which declares "I don’t want a life full of luxury … all I want is galon hapus, galon onest, galon lan" – a happy heart, an honest heart, and a pure heart. The words seem to sum them both up very well. Catherine Robinson March 2005