WALTER GIBRALTAR: from Sussex to the Bishop’s Palace, Malta

Walter Trower (1804-1877) was born in London the year before the Battle of Trafalgar, in the reign of George III. When he was about 15, his father leased Muntham Court, at Findon in Sussex and through this connection he met and fell in love with Elizabeth Goring (1799-1876) of nearby Wiston House. They married in 1829, a month after Walter was ordained into the Church of England by the Bishop of Chichester, and thereupon began a busy life of travel and adventure.

After several curacies in Sussex, Walter was ordained Bishop of Glasgow and Galloway, a huge diocese in western Scotland – but he was going even further than that.

In 1863, now as Bishop of Gibraltar, Walter and Elizabeth, with their daughters Jane, Frances and Mary, spent five years in the Mediterranean, when he became Bishop of Gibraltar.

Walter was based in the Bishop’s Palace on Malta, where the three girls, by now in their twenties, had a most interesting time. The ships of Queen Victoria’s Navy were frequently moored in Valetta Harbour, and various Army Regiments were also quartered on the Island. There were visits to Gibraltar, travel from

Malta to Greece, Turkey and Italy, as well as to Spain and France. Numerous letters written to and from Wiston sent news and, of course, gossip. This was the time of the British Empire, so politics and worries about war took up almost as much time as religious affairs.

 

 

This talk reveals the delights and hardships, as well as a terrible tragedy, of a 19th century Bishop’s life during a turbulent period of British history.