Jim Thorneycroft
Minister

My name is Jim Thorneycroft and I was born in Manchester. I lived in Didsbury and then Stockport, Cheshire for the first 10 years of my life before moving to Surrey and falling in love with the countryside.

At the age of 15 I began a career in farming working firstly as a shepherd, then herdsman and poultry farm manager. In 1973 I married my lovely wife Sue and I then began work as a herd manager in Sussex.

During that time our first son was born and we moved briefly to Norfolk and then a year later to a dairy farm in Staplehurst, Kent. where we lived for 12years. During this time we had two more children Simon and Laura.

In 1990 we bought our own house in Staplehurst and I began work on another farm in Chart Sutton. By this time we had joined the local URC church and I had become an elder and was training to be a lay preacher. In 1993 I felt called to full time ministry and eventually began training in 1995 at Mansfield College, Oxford.

I was ordained in 1999 and Sue, I and Laura moved to our first church in Chelmsford, Essex. After three years we felt called to a church in Weymouth, Dorset where we spent 6 happy years until receiving the call to Tonbridge and Five Oak Green in January 2009.