[5] He was educated at Barnard Castle School, then a direct grant grammar school in Barnard Castle, County Durham, and at St Aidan's and St John Fisher Associated Sixth Form, an ecumenical sixth form college in Harrogate, North Yorkshire.

[9] His first posts were curacies at Knaresborough and Darwen[7] after which he was Vicar of Accrington then Vocations Officer and Selection Secretary in The Ministry Division.

During a protracted investigation – while there was a vacancy in the diocesan see — into the efficacy of safeguarding practices in the diocese, Sowerby was additionally Acting Bishop of Chichester.

He succeeded Peter Allan CR, who retired at the end of the 2018–2019 academic year;[15][16] Sowerby resigned his see effective 31 August 2019.

Sowerby previously held views consistent with traditionalist Anglo-Catholicism, such as rejecting the ordination of women as priests or bishops.