Shadrach Pryce
Shadrach Pryce, d.1914
Shadrach Pryce was Dean of St Asaph from 1899 to 1910 and had a background in education.
He was born in Dolgellau in 1833 to Hugh Price. Like his brothers Hugh and John, he changed the spelling of the surname. All three siblings were at times headmasters of Dolgellau Grammar School, where they had been educated, and all three became clergymen. John was Dean of Bangor while Shadrach was Dean of St Asaph.
In the 1890s Shadrach was well known in South-west Wales as Her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools. He was an early proponent of teaching Welsh in schools, and using Welsh to teach English, at a time when many in the establishment thought Welsh children should study in English. He argued that Welsh was the language of the home, the altar and poetry, but feared that the tide was running against Welsh from every direction.
He thought that Welsh was not a suitable language for commerce, and that it was impossible to teach multiplication tables in Welsh! That problem was later solved by introducing a decimal counting system; traditionally Welsh numbers were counted by reference to 20s (as in French).
In 1902 Shadrach’s wife Margaret died after a long and painful illness. She is also buried here.
Their younger son, Dr Arthur Meurig Pryce, was a talented medic, winning a gold medal in Edinburgh for his work on eye diseases. He left his post at Leeds University to serve in the Royal Army Medical Corps in the First World War. He was attached to the 129th Field Ambulance and was later the bacteriologist at the 35th General Hospital. He survived the war but died in France, aged 42, in February 1919. His death is classed as a war death.