In every age, The Order of St George the Martyr seeks out a particular kind of greatness: not applause, but character — service shaped by humility, faithfulness, courage, and practical compassion. Our tradition calls members to help those in need and to uphold the enduring chivalric virtues in modern life.
Two of our members — Knight Mick Pocock and Knight Graham Hambling — reflect those ideals through years of devoted volunteering with Arthur Rank Hospice Charity in Cambridge, where their work has brought comfort to patients and families at their most vulnerable.
(Left: Knight Mick Pocock; Right: Knight Graham Hambling)
Arthur Rank Hospice Charity is sustained by a remarkable community of volunteers — more than 600 people offering time, skill, and kindness across Cambridgeshire. Within that fellowship, Mick (from Cambridge) and Graham (from Stapleford) have become enduring figures in the Hospice gardens team: present, reliable, and quietly resolute.
Their service is closely tied to a defining chapter in the Hospice’s story. When care moved from Mill Road to Shelford Bottom in 2016, the grounds were described as a “blank canvas”. Mick and Graham were among those who helped bring order and beauty to that new beginning — planting hundreds of plants and shaping a landscape that, season by season, became a place of refuge.
Within a hospice, comfort is often found not in grand gestures, but in the quiet excellence of things well kept: a path that invites a slow walk, a border in bloom, a view that steadies the mind. The gardens at Arthur Rank Hospice are part of that ministry of care — offering patients and families a refuge of order, beauty, and peace. Mick’s work reflects that spirit. He has described mowing a section of lawn so that the light and dark stripes can be appreciated from several vantage points around the building — a simple discipline, repeated with care.
(Photo: Arthur Rank Hospice Charity)
He has also strengthened the Hospice environment through practical gifts and support: donating bird tables so patients can watch wildlife from their rooms, and helping in the steady background work that keeps fundraising moving, such as collecting charity tins. These details may be modest in themselves, but together they honour a chivalric understanding of service — humility in action, offered for the good of others.
Recognition for a Decade of Service
When the Hospice honours long-serving volunteers, it is not merely marking time served; it is acknowledging a form of steadfastness that cannot be improvised. Long service in a place of care means constancy — returning in all weather, week after week, and tending peace where it is most needed.
At Arthur Rank Hospice Charity’s Long Service Awards, both Mick and Graham were formally recognised. The Hospice noted that Mick collected his ten-year service certificate alongside fellow Volunteer Gardener Graham Hambling — a shared moment of recognition for two men whose contribution has been measured not in display, but in faithful, enduring work.
(Left: Knight Mick Pocock; Right: Knight Graham Hambling. Photos: Arthur Rank Hospice Charity)
For Mick, this pattern of service sits within a wider life of public contribution. After 38 years at Girton College and 10 years as a Special Constable in Cambridge, he entered retirement not as an ending, but as a new chapter of giving — describing his volunteering as among the best decisions he made after leaving full-time work.
Graham’s commitment is equally rooted and outward-looking. Alongside his work at the Hospice, he is Treasurer of the Cambridge Cactus and Succulents’ Society charity, and he supports Arthur Rank Hospice Charity further by donating proceeds when he opens his garden to the public — extending the circle of benefit beyond the Hospice gates.
Service that reaches beyond one cause
The measure of a servant-hearted life is rarely confined to a single role. What distinguishes Mick and Graham is the consistency of their generosity — the habit of seeing what is needed and responding without fuss.
Mick’s charitable support extends beyond the Hospice. In the attached photograph, he stands beside a donation point for the Mundesley Volunteer (Inshore) Lifeboat. The wording on the collection box notes that it was kindly donated by Mr Michael Pocock — another quiet act of practical support, helping a volunteer lifeboat charity continue its lifesaving work.
A living example of chivalry today
Chivalry, rightly understood, is not ceremony alone. It is a discipline of character: courage expressed as steadiness; loyalty expressed as reliability; humility expressed as service that does not seek recognition. That is the calling our Order sets before its members — to help those in need and to live the virtues of justice, faith, and compassion in the texture of ordinary days.
Through their long service to Arthur Rank Hospice Charity — and through the wider pattern of charitable support in their lives — Knight Mick Pocock and Knight Graham Hambling show what modern service looks like: purposeful, gentle, and sustained. Their legacy is written not in noise, but in the patient flourishing of a place made more beautiful for those who most deserve peace.