New prebendary at Hereford Cathedral

It is announced today that the Bishop of Hereford has appointed The Revd Nick Read obe as a Prebendary and member of the College of Canons. Nick will be collated and installed during Evensong on Sunday 17 January 2021 at 3.30 pm. Further details about the service, restrictions permitting, will be issued nearer the time. Nick will take the prebendal stall de Hinton, in succession to Prebendary Mike Kneen, who becomes prebendary emeritus.

Nick has a degree in agricultural science, and a postgraduate degree in forestry. He was the Food Policy & Research Adviser for the National Farmers Union before being ordained in 1995. He was first  a (non-stipendiary) agricultural chaplain with Oxford Diocese and combined chaplaincy with starting a national charity helpline called the Rural Stress Information Network, which he ran for four years. Nick came to Hereford Diocese in 1998 to be the stipendiary agricultural chaplain and from 2007 onwards combined it with the role of diocesan environment officer.

In 2011 he left the Church’s employment to head up the Bulmer Foundation, a sustainable development charity based in Hereford (now called the Brightspace Foundation), but carried on as a volunteer chaplain. For the last two years Nick has been half-time with Brightspace and half-time chaplain with Borderlands Rural Chaplaincy (an Anglican-Methodist collaboration). He is co-chair of Herefordshire Green Network and chair of Herefordshire Local Nature Partnership, and has been a member of a working group for the last 12 months, attempting to write a strategy to make Herefordshire carbon neutral by 2030, in response to the climate and ecological emergency. He heads the land-use section of a similar initiative for South Shropshire Climate Action. Nick is  married to Julie, incumbent in the Kingsland group, and they have three grown-up children and one grandson.