Thomas Vowler Short

Photo of grave of Thomas Vowler ShortThomas Vowler Short, d.1872

As Bishop of St Asaph for 24 years, Thomas Vowler Short took a keen interest in improving education across the diocese.

He was born in 1790 in Dawlish, Devon, to an archdeacon. He graduated with double first class honours from Oxford University. He became Bishop of Sodor and Man in 1841. When he became Bishop of St Asaph in 1846 he made the same “translation” (transfer to another diocese) as Isaac Barrow had done, two centuries earlier. Bishop Barrow is buried in the grave on the other side of the cathedral entrance to Bishop Short’s.

Engraving of Thomas Vowler ShortBishop Short recognised the importance of education in improving the living conditions of ordinary people. He used his own money, as well as Church funds, to establish many schools. When he stepped down as bishop, every parish in the diocese had at least one school. In 1906 more than 30,000 children attended the diocese’s Church schools, far more than in any other Welsh diocese.

He wrote a history of the Church of England pre-1688, among other books. He arranged printing of parallel text schoolbooks, in Welsh and English on facing pages.

He did not learn Welsh himself, and in 1857 residents of the Mold area petitioned Parliament for Dr Short’s “removal” from the see of St Asaph because he could not “address the word of salvation intelligibly to the British (Welsh) people”. They also complained that the Church gave him £4,200 a year, a palace, a peerage and “enormous patronage”.

In 1833 Thomas married Mary Conybeare, widow of another prominent clergyman. She died in 1846, just two years after the couple moved to St Asaph, and is buried here. Thomas placed flowers between the pillars of the table grave for the rest of his life.

In Mary’s memory, he commissioned a fountain in Mount Road in 1865 which gave local residents a convenient supply of clean water. When he stepped down in 1870, he was only the third bishop to use a new law which permitted bishops to resign.

The engraving of him is shown here courtesy of the National Library of Wales.

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