Heddwen Hewis
Profile
My childhood … The year was 1945, peace had just been declared, and my father was having a drink with the local village policeman, whom he asked: ‘What name shall I give to my new-born daughter?’ The policeman suggested Heddwen (‘white peace’).
I was born and grew up in a small Welsh-speaking village on the banks of the river Teifi, just outside Lampeter among the green hills of Cardiganshire. Welsh was the language of my home, my school, and the Unitarian church. I remember reading my first English book at the age of seven, and being thrilled to find a whole new world opening up for me. A deep-rooted belief in the Unitarian faith, Welsh language and culture, and a life that revolved around the farming seasons: these were the foundations of my early upbringing. My maternal grandmother took me to the Unitarian church in Lampeter every Sunday; her family had been thoroughly Unitarian for at least two generations before her. My deceased grandfather had been a radical thinker who loved discussing religious ideas and was a fervent believer in religious freedom and tolerance.
This same grandfather lectured on land management and agricultural production at the Aberystwyth College of the University of Wales. He often gave talks to Welsh farming communities who had no access to the literature in English. He also believed in the education of women: when my mother decided to stay at home to work in the farm, he made sure that she first attended an agricultural college. My father’s family were tanners for many generations. They produced the leather to make harnesses for pit ponies working in the mines of South Wales. When the ponies were replaced by machines, my father sold up and took over the village shop, which he ran until the day he died at 80. Here I was born, to a family that was for generations an integral part of the life of the village and the surrounding farms. Indeed, much of my childhood was spent with my grandmother, watching her milk the cows and churn the butter. I remember drinking the warm milk, enjoying the summer sun at haymaking, and feeling the protection of the animals in the cowshed in winter.
From this deep sense of cultural identity, my life expanded into adulthood, interwoven with the threads of Unitarianism, marriage and family life, and a career in Nutrition and Health.
Student years … My interest in food science came from a love of chemistry at school. My training in Nutrition and Dietetics began in Cardiff and continued at the University College Hospital in London. How I enjoyed those student days – and I received the award for Dietetic Student of the Year four years running! After qualifying in 1967, I took up my first post as Dietician at the West Middlesex Hospital in Isleworth, London; but after a year I was seeking more challenges, and I went on to study under Professor John Yudkin (a leading figure in Nutrition) at Queen Elizabeth College in London. With a M.Sc. degree behind me I secured a job at St Bartholomew’s, one of London’s oldest teaching hospitals.
At Cardiff I had felt the need of a place of worship. I often wondered why Unitarianism? If I had been born into another faith, would I have still found my way to Unitarianism? Sometimes with friends I attended other places of worship, but these were never right for me, and I rejoiced in the freedom of the religious tradition into which I was born. In London I became a member of the London Welsh Unitarian Congregation, meeting monthly at Essex Hall. In true Welsh style, the service was followed by tea and home-baked cakes. It was at a gathering of Unitarians in London that I first met a young minister from Mansford Street Unitarian church in Bethnal Green. He offered me a lift home in his car. Three years later (in 1970) we were married.
Marriage, motherhood, career – and Hinckley … A year after we were married, we were off to North America. First, a month in Canada, where Peter looked after a small Unitarian Universalist church on the shore of Lake Massawippi. Then to the USA for a five-month pulpit exchange with the Minister of Tennessee Valley Unitarian church. I became involved with the Greater Knoxville Nutrition Council and helped with many of their projects. On return to Britain, I was appointed Group Dietician at the Whipps Cross Group of Hospitals in London. But life was about to change.
In 1972 we moved to Hinckley in Leicestershire, when Peter was appointed Minister of the Great Meeting Unitarian church in that small manufacturing town, dependent largely on the manufacture of hosiery and knitwear. My career moved forward – first as specialist Metabolic Dietician at the East Birmingham Hospital, but soon exchanging this for a post nearer home as dietician at the Leicester Royal Infirmary, working alongside – would you believe it – another Unitarian dietician! In addition, I helped to set up the first dietetic clinic in Hinckley, working one morning a week in a wooden hut at the small two-warded Cottage Hospital. I wrote a research paper on overweight women working in the Hinckley hosiery and knitwear industry, which was presented at the first International Congress on obesity at London’s Royal College of Physicians.
Then I took a career break, with the birth of our daughter, Bethan in 1975 and son, Griffith in 1978. Returning to my profession in 1990, I took a refresher course and emerged as a fully recycled dietician, working first in Hinckley’s new Health Centre, and then as Diabetes Research Dietician at Leicester General Hospital. 1990 to1991 was a particularly busy time, supporting Peter as President of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches. And in 1992 came an important career move for me, when I became Senior Dietician for HIV/AIDS in Leicestershire. This was pioneering work, which took me twice to France to report to the International Conference on Nutrition and HIV Infection in Cannes.
So it was a great wrench for us when, after several years of careful thought, we accepted the invitation to move to Oxford, where Peter was appointed Chaplain/Tutor at Harris Manchester College. Hinckley had been the place that we called home for 29 happy years, where our children were born and brought up, and where we belonged in the church and local community.
Oxford … Our new life is completely different. Peter enjoys the challenges of his job and the stimulus of academic life. We feel privileged to be part of the university life in this splendid city, with its wealth of knowledge and history. Members of the Sunday congregation at the chapel are a great mixture of thinking individuals, most of them having thought their way into Unitarianism.
Since our move to Oxford in 2001, I have been devoting some time to my mother in Cardiganshire and my elderly aunt in Colwyn Bay. Now aged 90, my mother suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, but she receives excellent daily care and can still live in our old family home. She keeps in good spirits and is so happy to see me that it makes my long journeys worthwhile. Perhaps caring for my mother and aunt has made me more sensitive to the many old people living around us in Yarnton, near Oxford. I am often invited into their homes for a chat, and I have learned much from them. One elderly couple actually speak the very language of heaven, and we spend many an afternoon discoursing in our mother tongue!
Looking back … Peter and I have just celebrated our 33rd wedding anniversary; for me this also means 33 fulfilling years as a minister’s wife, although in truth I regard myself as being married to Peter, who happens to be a minister. Life is never dull. I have tried to support Peter in everything he has done for Unitarianism, and we have worked together as a team in his ministry. In this job we have found that although people’s circumstances and expectations may be very different, our basic needs as individuals are the same. November 2003 (written by Heddwen and edited by Rosemary Neale)