Archbishop Michael is to dedicate the church hall at St Andrew Abu Dhabi to Edward and Jocelyn Henderson, in a ceremony in memory of the couple to be held after the 6pm service on Sunday 12 March.

Henderson Hall will celebrate the rich contributions Edward and Jocelyn made to the Anglican church, and to the city they called home. 

“They played such an important role in the early development here,” said senior chaplain the Reverend Christine Trainor, speaking to local newspaper The National—”not only at St Andrew’s but also the UAE as it was becoming a nation.”

Indeed, the Hall once housed the Daly Library, set up by Jocelyn in the late 1970s after the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan invited Edward to Abu Dhabi to establish the National Centre for Documentation and Research—forerunner of the National Archives. 

The couple married in 1960, and each published a book about their lives—Jocelyn’s The Gulf Wife, and Edward’s Arabian Destiny.

Jocelyn was warden emeritus of St Andrew’s until her death in 2021, aged 100. Edward died in 1995. 

Photo credit: The National