[2] He was further educated at Leeds University, gaining a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1941, before training for the ministry at the College of the Resurrection (Mirfield).
In 1954 materials were ordered for the building of the cathedral tower but it was not before August 1959 — just when Attwell announced his resignation — that work was actually started and the foundation stone laid by his predecessor as dean, Francis Smith[6] Afterwards he returned to England to become Rector at St Michael's, Workington, Cumberland (1960–1972); he was also made an honorary canon of Carlisle Cathedral in 1964, and served as rural dean of Cockermouth and Workington (1966–1970).
He sat on the national Church Assembly/General Synod as a Proctor in Convocation (1965–1982) and served David Halsey, Bishop of Carlisle as an examining chaplain (1972–1983).
[8] At his installation on Man, he pledged himself to serve the island and “to seek to appreciate all that was important in the Manx way of life and to the Manx nation, and would try to master the Manx language.” [9] In their study of “The work of a religious representative in a democratic legislature,” Edge and Pearce remark that the interventions of Attwell, like those of his predecessor Eric Gordon, “initially sought to explicitly identify philosophical foundations for legislative activity” but that though he had been complimented for his attendance in the legislature, his contributions, compared with those of other bishops, had been “relatively low key.” He was concerned with issues of morality – in particular “the importance of the conventional family” in relation to Civil Registration and Matrimonial legislation, but also with regard to education as “character development rather than simply vocational training”, and in relation to the rising tide of illegal drugs.
At a farewell function the Lieutenant-Governor formally thanked him for his work, noting particularly his contribution to debates on “youth, on heart and soul, and on morality in its greatest sense”.