Toddy and soul

THERE are those who describe the Rev Toddy Hoare as "slightly eccentric," a view to which his wife takes considerable exception. "He's very eccentric," corrects Liz Hoare. "One of the great glories of the Church of England has been its eccentric clergymen."

It's Toddy who may arrive at services in a wartime Jeep or roar up, all goggles and leather, in a vintage sports car.

It's Toddy who every year for Christian Aid cleans shoes in Thirsk market place, who persuaded a parishioner to model naked in his garage for a sculpture of Mary Magdalene, who held a service to bless both huntsmen and their hounds and thus had "Appalled" and "Aghast" yelping as one to the letters columns of the Yorkshire Post.

It's Toddy who ran with the hounds and still loads for the guns, who wrote learned books on the theology of hunting, shooting and fishing and who, given the option of four formal forenames at his christening, became synonymous with a medicinal Scotch instead.

As a baby, insists Patrick Reginald Andrew Reid Hoare, he developed near-terminal whooping cough, sent to recuperate at his grandmother's in Scotland.

His grandmother's had a distillery at the bottom of the garden. "I was weaned on whisky," he insists, and even the sober-sided Crockford's Clerical Directory calls him Toddy now.

"That's the legend, anyway," says Liz.

He was an Army officer, rode the Queen's horses at Windsor, still sounds a bit more authoritative - "What I want you to do is..." - than probably is his intention.

He trained as a sculptor, went to Oxford, became curate of Guisborough and for the past 25 years has been vicar of what became known as the Hillside Parishes, eight churches and around 2,000 folk either side of the accidental A19 north of Thirsk, North Yorkshire.

"I'm of the old school. I don't move unless I'm made to," he says. "I wasn't brought up to apply for jobs. My ministry has been in the hands of the bishops, really."

We'd first met him at Easter 1995, a dawn service at St Mary Magdalene's, Over Silton, a darkened church in the middle of a white-knuckle field.

"There is neither electricity nor heating," the column observed, "save for two or three portable gas heaters vainly essaying the greatest feat of warming since the end of the Pleistocene ice age."

A year later we attended Palm Sunday service at the church of St Mary the Virgin, Leake, one of those churches with a door within a door that is ever-redolent of the biblical bit about the camel and the eye of a needle.

The vicar shared centre stage with a donkey called Annabelle. "His owner received a bottle of port for his trouble," said the 1996 column. "Toddy's reward will doubtless be elsewhere."

He leaves this weekend. Liz, also a priest, has been offered a lectureship at Oxford. Toddy, 59, will semi-retire, concentrate on his highly-acclaimed sculpture and hopes that it speaks prayerfully. "I try to express something of biblical truth or beg theological reflection by the beholder," says his website.

They met when Liz, a former Durham University student and lecturer, was gaining experience at Boltby - another of the Hillside parishes - though it was several years before they really discovered one another's dog collar size.

They were attending the same course, equally shocked to learn that dogs weren't allowed, equally determined that their black Labradors would be part of it.

Hers was Noah, his Marl. The dogs got on pretty well, too - still do, says Liz, 11 years her husband's junior.

The farewell service is also at Leake, a lunchtime marquee tethered to several gravestones out the back. Officially, 87 have indicated their intention of stopping; it looks like it could feed the five thousand.

The church is full. Folk accustomed to arriving with five minutes to spare and to finding seats in all parts suddenly discover standing room only. Even the choir stalls are commandeered.

Annabelle being elsewhere, he shares centre stage with Liz. Liz has an altogether purer voice (and nicer ears, too.)

The service also includes a children's section called "Godly play", of which Mrs Hoare is particularly fond. This one's about Noah's Ark, though 40 days and 40 nights seems like a drop in the ocean after the summer of 2007.

The Toddy programme, that is to say the sermon text, is from Proverbs - "When there is prophecy the people unravel" - his parting gift to his parishioners little lengths cut from two balls of string.

If the question's how long is a piece of string, the answer's about a foot. Good for marking the place in their bibles, he says.

"I give thanks for you and I hope you will give thanks for me, warts and all," he tells them.

"Yes," whispers a lady in the next pew, as enthusiastically as enigmatically.

Terence Allinson, long-serving churchwarden at Boltby, says that they're "mindful of the exhausting demands of nurturing the spiritual dimension of eight churches" but also that administration had never been Toddy's strong point.

"So much bumph addressed to the vicar has landed in my pending tray for disposal."

Terence also recalls when the vicar would arrive by vintage tractor - "That being the only way through". Tractor and Jeep will go with him to Oxford.

"He's just different, a bit of a character," says Maurice Osgood, another churchwarden. "Toddy has always been very friendly, always interested in you. His wife's brilliant, especially with children."

As the five thousand head for the lunch tent, Terence Allinson says they're really going to miss him. "More than anything else," he says. "Toddy has style."