Welsh Journals

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railways was a great help, although horse travel or walking was still essential for many. But when the Bishop of St Davids attended the reopening of Whitton Church in December 1874, the local press noted that the railway had made possible the first visit ever of a Bishop of St Davids to that part of the Diocese.6 The population of the Diocese was thinly scattered, about 450,000 in the whole diocese in 1871, with about 18,969 of them in Radnorshire. There was some discussion of dividing the Diocese, at a time when new dioceses were the fashion in England, with the most ambitious plan being that to divide St Davids Diocese into four, based at St Davids, Aberystwyth, Swansea, and Brecon.7 But for many years it was considered more important to increase clerical stipends than to create new dioceses, and it was not until 1923 that St Davids was divided, and then just into two, St Davids in the west and Swansea and Brecon in the eas. Far away in Pembrokeshire, at 'the end of the world where the Patron Saint of Wales sleeps by the western sea'8, lay the great Cathedral of the Diocese, visited by Francis Kilvert on 17 October 1871, when the marvellous building was being restored by Sir George Gilbert Scott. The Bishop in 1877 was the Right Reverend William Basil Tickell Jones, a very able scholar and administrator, of a Cardiganshire fami- ly, consecrated in August 1874, successor to the Right Reverend Connop Thirlwall.9 It was said that an English bishop whose Welsh no one could understand had been succeeded by a Welsh bishop whose Welsh was not much better. But the Bishop's lack of fluency in Welsh was no handicap to him in the Radnorshire part of his vineyard. Bishop Jones had been Archdeacon of York when he was appointed Bishop of St Davids by the Prime Minister, Mr Disraeli, and he remained Bishop until his death in 1897. He was described by Herbert M. Vaughan in South Wales Squires as 'a small, delicate, nervous man, but with a dry wit and keen sense of humour. On one occasion his butler was found guilty of some serious breach of morals. 'I always had my doubts about him' was the Bishop's comment, 'ever since he was recommended to me as a very pious little man".10 Bishop Jones was a great scholar. His greatest work was a joint work with Professor E A Freeman on The History and Antiquities of St Davids [in four parts, 1852-57]. He served as General Secretary and later Joint-Editor and President of the Cambrian Archaeological Association, and he had a keen interest in church restoration. He was aloof with the clergy, but he did not terrify them as Bishop Thirlwall had done.11