The life of a charismatic cleric whose vocation changed communities in South Africa and Bishop’s Stortford will be celebrated on Friday, April 26.
Reverend Clive Slaughter’s funeral service will take place from 11.30am at St Barnabas Centre - the medieval barn he helped convert into a place of worship for an expanding congregation at St James the Great, Thorley.
The rector, who retired from the parish in 2001 before spending a further decade as a locum at St Andrew’s in Much Hadham, St Cecilia’s in Little Hadham, St Mary’s in Sawbridgeworth and Furneux Pelham, Braughing and Stocking Pelham, passed away on Friday, April 5, surrounded by his family.
His widow Marcia said: “He had always said that if he were to choose a time to go, he would like it to be Easter. He loved to preach about the Resurrection – “always remember that we are Resurrection people” he told his congregations.”
She said everyone was welcome at the service: “He would have loved to think that folk had come to say 'goodbye', and to sing loudly and strongly, just as he did!”
Clive was born in Harpenden in Hertfordshire, on February 1, 1936, the eldest of Gerald and Enid Slaughter’s three children.
He was educated at the Royal Masonic School in Bushey and raised as an Anglican.
After leaving school, he completed his National Service and contemplated a career in the armed forces before his love of travel took him to work in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and then to Kitwe in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia).
In his spare time, he followed in the footsteps of his uncle Tod Slaughter, a famous actor who played the villain in many Victorian melodramas, by taking to the stage.
Clive’s strong singing voice won him the leading roles in a series of musicals including a performance of Camelot to mark Zambian independence, attended by President Kenneth Kaunda.
In South Pacific, he met Marcia, a television presenter who played his leading lady and thereafter, Clive said their wedding in 1964 was the finale of the show.
At the church of St Michael and All Angels in Kitwe, where they were married, Clive led the choir and was made a lay minister.
Marcia recalled: “His parish priest once challenged him about being ordained – Clive said ‘definitely not’. ‘He’s cracked tougher nuts than you’ was the reply.”
Their daughter Katy was born in 1969 and Alex, known as Ali, followed in 1971.
Two years later the family moved to Pietermaritzburg, Natal, in South Africa, where Clive opened a grass-cutting machinery business.
He was an agent for Hayters Lawnmowers, having become great friends with Doug Hayter, who founded the Spellbrook company.
He also indulged his passion for vintage cars. He bought a 1930s Phantom 1 Rolls-Royce in bits while he was in Zambia and brought it with him to restore, using spares flown into the country by a friend with a Hercules aircraft.
The family soon became members of the town’s lively church, St Saviour’s, and it was here that Clive felt a calling to join the clergy.
After a rigorous interview with the Bishop of Natal, the family sold the business, their home and the Rolls-Royce and travelled to Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape so Clive could begin a three-year theological course at St Paul’s College.
Clive and Marcia’s third daughter Debbie was born there and despite never being academic in his schooldays, Clive earned distinctions at St Paul’s.
He served his curacy at St John’s Church in Pinetown, near Durban, Natal, and after 18 months, the Bishop of Natal offered Clive his own parish nearby at Bluff. The catch was that it did not have a church, just a hall.
Marcia said: “Over the course of several very happy years, and a great deal of hard work, fundraising and vision, a beautiful church was finally built with enough room for children’s work and a parish office.
“It was named after St Barnabas, known in the New Testament as ‘the Encourager’. Clive’s hero!”
Clive’s talents were again in demand when the family was asked to move to the parish of St Martin in the Fields in Durban North.
It had a daughter church in the suburb of Phoenix, where Mahatma Gandhi had lived as a young lawyer.
Marcia said: “With the help of a young architect, plans were drawn up for a church with simple and beautiful lines. The Church of the Holy Trinity, Phoenix, was consecrated in 1985.
“Clive loved living in South Africa, but there were massive injustices under the rule of the apartheid system.”
As a result, in 1987, he and Marcia brought their young family back to England and they were offered the parish of St James the Great, Thorley.
Little did Clive know his expansive talents would quickly be called on again. Thorley Park was still under construction and both the church and his new congregation were small.
However as the estate grew, so did demand for more room at St James’.
Initial plans for an extension were rebuffed but eventually agreement was reached for a 16th-century barn to be used instead.
Stortford Park resident Jean Papworth had agreed to fund the building and despite the increased cost of the barn conversion, she agreed to foot the bill.
Marcia said: “So it came about – a glorious transformation from a dilapidated piggery to a magnificent centre for worship and a gift to Thorley for community events. Jean was our Barnabas figure.”
St Andrew’s in Much Hadham became his home parish on retirement and Clive and Marcia moved to Hunsdon.
He had suffered a small stroke in 2010 and after fully retiring when he was 80, he developed Parkinson's disease.
The condition robbed him of his mobility and other senses, but Marcia said: “He faced this with courage, never complaining.”
The couple, who have seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild, would have celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in November.
The Slaughter family has asked for donations to http://www.parkinsons.org.uk instead of funeral flowers. See https://drobinson.co.uk/donate-in-memory/ for more details.