Roger Farnworth
Roger was a philosopher, painter, archaeologist and poet, who worked for many years securing human rights for the dispossessed worldwide.
Roger painting in the garden around The Rookery
The Early Years
Roger was born in Truro, Cornwall, but his parents, Edna and Reg, came from Lancashire. He had strong memories of travelling to visit his grandparents towards the end of the war; he saw Manchester in ruins and experienced the blackouts.
His maternal grandfather, Thomas Wolstenholme, came from a Kearsley mining family. Instead of following in the family footsteps, Thomas entered the cotton trade, where he went from rags to riches twice over. He was famed for testing a bolt of cotton by simply fingering it with eyes closed. On one occasion, he took almost all the cotton from Mauritius.
Roger’s grandmother, Effie, was a Primitive Methodist. She had worked in the cotton mills before training as a dressmaker. The hardworking, strict lives of the Wolstenholmes were part of the weave of Roger’s life.
At seven years old, Roger went to board at Taunton Boys’ School, where he was desperately unhappy. He moved to Probus School, where he was known as ‘Brainbox’ by all the boys.
A World of Miracles
After studying philosophy at the University of Bristol, Roger completed a social work diploma at the University of London. In 1963, he became one of seven interviewers employed by the Central Council for Health Education for a completely new kind of investigation, into the sexual lives of young people. (The results are in a book by John Schofield.)
One of the team members was Laura Renouf, from Jersey. Roger was immediately struck by her. He recalled defending her views on Nabakov in a heated group discussion, upon which she turned to him and kissed him square on the lips.
Roger recalled going to the Selsey marshes with Laura. She was an ardent birdwatcher and flower lover, and he was stunned by how she could turn the drab, brown and grey landscape into a beautiful throb of life.
It was with Laura that Roger built his fundamental understanding of the world as ‘Miracle’ for a mystery that can be seen in wild nature but also goes beyond.
A World Worth Fighting For
When Roger and Laura became friends with Monika and Guntis, two Latvian refugees from the war, life changed utterly for Roger. He was no longer a conventional boy who had never read for pleasure. Worlds opened up suddenly – drinking, dancing, the impassioned poetry of the Latvian diaspora. The joy of that time was something that stayed with him always.
In 1964, Roger and Laura travelled to Zambia with their six-month-old daughter, Cathy. The stayed there for four years, working as English teachers in three schools in the remotest part of Northern Province, near the Congo. These were huge experiences, at a time when post from home took weeks to arrive, and the skies and vistas in Zambia seemed endless.
Tristan, their son, was born in the last year of their stay.
Roger and Laura shared the birth of Zambia as an independent nation. When they went for further training in Rhodesia, they soon got involved in demonstrations against Ian Smith. At one hustings, together with some African students, they prevented Mr Smith from speaking.
As Roger called ‘Beware the Ides of March’, they were both arrested. Laura’s face was on the front page of the nation’s newspapers the next day, a never-ending source of pride for Roger. Their demonstration resulted in a court case and deportation back to Zambia.
All his life, Roger fought for the cruelly oppressed. He supported Survival International, a small Ethiopian trust, and many more charities working in developing countries.
Roger became an Observer with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) for several months, working at the barbed wire walls to ensure the Palestinians could cross to tend their olive groves. Upon his return, Roger gave over sixty talks all over Britain to encourage new observers to come forward.
Roger cared passionately about the freedom of the Palestinians and of all peoples.
A Place to Call Home
For two years or so, Roger and his family left Zambia, seeking a new life. They moved around Cornwall and Ireland, and spent a year living in Saudi Arabia too. They were searching for an old, remote property that they could renovate and use to enter the tourist trade.
In 1970, they found what they were looking for. A beautiful, dilapidated rectory in Cornwall. Amid tall beech trees, the Rookery in Warleggan became their home. It was a place they loved passionately; Roger learnt to build and decorate, and for years he would work on the house until late at night, after getting back from working as a teacher during the day.
The plan was to let the Rookery out to holiday-makers in the summer and then to quirky, wonderful artists and hippies during the winters. But when Laura died on the 2nd of January in 1980, the meaning of the Rookery changed. Roger came to see it as a haven for people harmed in some way; he rented out the flats to people with difficult lives while continuing to seek out tenants that had a wild and unconventional understanding of the world.
Throughout his life, Roger supported his friends in every way possible, including in their darkest hours. He was profoundly affected by Laura’s death and grieved for her deeply all his life. It took him years to build a new life that held true to the poetry, painting and love of the wild world that he had shared with Laura.
Roger’s World
Roger was an active member of the local community and part of various groups.
He was a founding member of the North Cornwall Seven group, a collection of artists which exhibited widely. He joined the Liskeard Poets and other poetry groups, and he wrote poems with few words that explored the beauty and ache of the world.
Roger worked closely with Oxfam, teaching school children across Cornwall about developing countries, and was a member of the local United Nations Association. In his work for the Bethany Trust, Roger greatly valued talking to people with HIV/AIDS on days out to the sea and the pub, at a time when this illness was not curable.
He loved going on retreats at Dartington Hall and Sharpham; he spent many years with the Julian Group and other religious study and meditation groups. For many years, he was also on the management committee for the Footsbarn Theatre company; he followed their fantastical shows, drinking and dancing many a night away.
World music, dancing and festivals were some of Roger’s great joys; he delighted many younger festival goers as he joined in their revelry. He also had a profound interest in astronomy. He loved the vastness and mystery of the universe and took a huge interest in the latest scientific research into the galaxy. But his curiosity didn’t stop at the heavens.
Roger’s Legacy
Over the last decade or so of his life, Roger studied the archaeology of Bodmin Moor and further afield. He gave a talk to the Cornwall Archaeology Society and developed new ideas about the meaning of Neolithic monuments across Cornwall, which came to be recognized by professional archaeologists as profound and significant.
Roger discovered many new cairn platforms, other archaeological features, and view frames centred on Rough Tor, above which the cosmos revolves with the North Star.
Landscape for Roger was holy. The way the Neolithic monuments called to each other across Cornwall and the heavens meant everything to him. Roger loved nature’s unknowable, unpredictable hand on the landscape; the shifting light and trees bent down by the wind.
He fought the introduction of wind turbines in remote locations, including in his hometown of Warleggan Parish, and spent a lot of time researching other forms of renewable energy. Advocating community managed energy schemes, Roger felt that the wind farms ‘let down future generations who will never again experience the rugged beauty of Rough Tor’s archaeology’ or gain the same insights into the Neolithic history of the landscape.
For many years, Roger was an active member in Mensa. He programmed their Arts and Science Days, organized Think at Oxford and compiled the Think magazine. Towards the end of his life, Roger was appointed Intellectual Events Officer for Mensa. Before he passed away, he was preparing ten major conferences around the country.
Mensa said of him:
“Roger was a man with a huge intelligence but also a man with a wonderful sense of fun. And most of all, he was a man with a great aim – to widen the scope of the intellectual side of Mensa. To that end, he set about organising a series of events which would provide food for thought – a menu for the mind.
“Roger was a great character and a thought challenger. He enjoyed encouraging group discussions and watching where people went with their knowledge, imagination and interpretation.”
