Cuthbert Thicknesse

Cuthbert Carroll Thicknesse[1] (19 November 1887 – 2 June 1971) was Dean of St Albans[2] from 1936[3] until his retirement in 1955.

Born into an ecclesiastical family of Lancashire landed gentry,[4] the son of Ven.

Francis Norman Thicknesse,[5] and educated at Marlborough and Keble College, Oxford, he was ordained in 1913.

He was invalided out in 1917[8] By then, he had married Rhoda Oonah Marjorie Moran Pratt, and the Archbishop of York was able to have him appointed Rector of Bedworth, a post reserved for Chaplains to the Forces.

Noted for a ‘volcanic’ temperament,[11] he was a fierce opponent of nuclear weapons,[12] and he refused to hold a service of celebration in St Albans Cathedral at the cessation of the war with Japan in August 1945.