Loved and admired

Maurice Quinn remembers Jeremy Hooper

Jeremy Hooper, an avid supporter of the Traditional Mass, died earlier this year aged eighty-nine. He often attended St Mary’s, a little gem of a church situated down a leafy lane in the Dorset village of Marnhull. It was here that I first met Jeremy, and was immediately captivated by his friendly demeanour and ability to put people at ease. He was always willing to engage with those around him.

During the Second World War Jeremy was sent to school in America, and on his return attended Bryanston School in Dorset. When he came of age, like many men at the time, he did his National Service, before going up to Cambridge, where he read History. After graduation, he held various desk jobs but none really suited his temperament, so he went to Wardour in Wiltshire as a farm student. He stayed with a Roman Catholic family, which made a strong impression on him. So much so that, in 1956, he was received into the Church in the Chapel of All Saints at New Wardour Castle.

Jeremy Hooper: At heart an outdoor man

For a while Jeremy became a strawberry grower living in a small house near Old Wardour Castle. He married Gillian in Oxford, studied for his postgraduate Certificate of Education, and taught in senior schools in Tisbury, Wilton, and then Salisbury. His expanding family moved into the former Presbytery at New Wardour Castle, which had enough land for them to work a smallholding and an ample garden. The chapel at Wardour filled an important part ofJeremy’s life. He took on the role of doorkeeper, and, with a learned nod to history, sat on the rough old pew at the back of the chapel where - at the time of the Gordon Riots in the 1780s - a strong man waited, whose job it was to repel any ‘antipapists’ making an appearance. Jeremy also lit the fire for the Easter Vigil in an ancient brazier just outside the doors of the chapel.

That Jeremy had a great regard for the concerns of others was given concrete expression by his election as a District Councillor. Eventually he became Chairman of Salisbury District Council – he was above all a people person and a man with a social conscience. The Latin Mass had a special place in his heart, and he suffered some disappointment when his efforts to set up a regular Usus antiquior at New Wardour Castle came to nothing. But he lived always in the hope that the problems involved would one day be solved.

At heart an outdoor man, Jeremy’s hobbies included gardening, growing vegetables and fruit, and exercising hunters for the nearby stables. He will be missed locally as a great character with strong opinions expressed with conviction, but also for a genuine kindness and concern for others. Jeremy’s Latin Traditional Rite Sung Requiem was celebrated by Fr Martin Budge in a full All Saints Chapel, New Wardour Castle at 10am on Friday, 26 July, served by Dominic Prendergast and me, with organist Nicholas Walker, who was joined by Hugh Hetherington to form a choir. Jeremy would have loved his dignified and reverent Requiem. A rendering of Salve Regina was a last farewell to a man who was much loved and admired. In your charity, please pray for Jeremy and for his wife Gillian and his six children.