Joseph Wellington Hunkin

Who was Joseph Wellington Hunkin?

The Rt Rev Joseph Wellington Hunkin, OBE, MC, DD was the eighth Bishop of Truro from 1935 to 1950. He was born on 25 September 1887 at Truro and educated at Truro College, the Leys School and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Ordained in 1914, he began his career with a curacy at St Andrew’s, Plymouth. He was then a Chaplain in the British Armed Forces during World War I and after that Dean of his old college. From 1927 until his ascension to the Episcopate he was Archdeacon of Coventry and an Honorary Chaplain to the King. In 1938 he volunteered to be chaplain to the British Legion Volunteer Police Force. He died on 28 October 1950. He was a strong Evangelical and noted for his pastoral work. He was the chair of a commission to produce a new English translation of the Bible from 1948 to 1950. Hunkin used as his pastoral staff a shepherd's crook of iron with a wooden shaft bound with a silver band inscribed "Un para, un bugel" and humbly enlisted in the Home Guard during World War II. A keen gardener, he was commemorated by a garden in the cathedral close and a shrub donated to every parish.