John Witherston Rickards (22 January 1844 – 21 June 1921), priest, founded the Anglican Parish of St Cyprian the Martyr at New Rush, Kimberley, on the South African Diamond Fields, in 1871.
[5] Frederick Noel mentions only that “the missionary spirit urged him to make his way in 1870 to South Africa.” Today, St Cyprian's, Clarence Gate, Marylebone, occupies a Neo-Gothic building perhaps only dreamt of in Gutch's (and Rickards') day.
[6] Upon his arrival in South Africa Rickards was to have joined the Missionary Brotherhood of St Augustine of Hippo at Modderpoort in the eastern Free State, in the Diocese of Bloemfontein – but he was instead diverted westwards to the newly discovered Diamond Fields, where Bishop Webb felt the needs were greater.
[7] The writer J. W. Matthews would recall something of the “primitive state of things existing”, as far as ecclesiastical arrangements were concerned, on his first arrival at the Diamond Fields in November 1871: worshipers gathered in a canvas tent billiard-room: “On entering I beheld a full-robed clergyman officiating at one end of a billiard-table, which served for his reading desk, whilst a large and attentive crowd sat around the other end, some on rude benches which were fixed along the walls, others perched upon gin cases, buckets reversed, or any other make-shift that came to hand.
..When the parson was praying or the people singing, it was not particularly edifying to be interrupted by the lively chaff and occasional bursts of blasphemy, which we could plainly hear through the canvas party-walls, which separated us from the adjoining bar and its half tipsy occupants.”[8] Fr Frederick Noel remembered “hearing letters from Mr Rickards describing the roughness of the work in those early days ... amid dust and canvas and all the discomforts of such a settlement, but he persevered until he had got a fair-sized temporary church”.