Educated at Felsted School and Pembroke College, Cambridge[1] Walsh studied for ordination at Lincoln Theological College before embarking on curacies in Southgate, London[2] and Cambridge.
[3] From 1958 until 1961[4] he was Staff Secretary of the SCM and from then until 1966 Vicar of St Mary Moorfields, Bristol.
[5] There then followed two Rectorships of ten years apiece at, firstly, Marlborough and latterly Ipswich.
Appointment to the suffragan bishopric of Tewkesbury in 1986[6] completed his ecclesiastical career and he retired (to Ipswich) in 1995.
He was ordained and consecrated a bishop (thereby taking up his suffragan See) on 29 January 1986, by Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, at Gloucester Cathedral.