Cuthbert Thicknesse
The Very Rev Cuthbert Carroll Thicknesse was Dean of St Albans from 1936 until his retirement in 1955.
Born into an ecclesiastical family of Lancashire landed gentry, the son of Ven. Francis Norman Thicknesse, and educated at Marlborough and Keble College, Oxford, he was ordained in 1913. He was firstly a Curate of St John-at-Hackney and then a Temporary Chaplain to the Forces, during which time he married Rhoda Oonah Marjorie Madan Pratt. He was wounded at Ypres and became Rector of Badsworth, after which he was Rector of Wigan Parish Church and an Honorary Chaplain to the King before his elevation to the Deanery. A fierce opponent of nuclear weapons, he refused to hold a service of celebration in St Albans Cathedral at the cessation of the war with Japan in August 1945. He was described in his obituary as “a high church man and convinced Anglican”.
