COMERFORD WAY: Patrick Comerford’s online journal on Anglicanism, theology, spirituality, history, architecture, travel, poetry, beach walks ... and more
28 March 2026
Mowbray Stephen O’Rorke,
the bishop with the ‘tallest
mitre in Christendom’ and
his family roots in Ballinasloe
Patrick Comerford
For many years, I maintained a website and Facebook page for a project I had called the Dead Anglican Theologians Society. The project has been moribund for the past five years, but should I ever have thoughts about breathing new life into it, some of the 20th century theologians I ought to include are Alfred Hope Patten (1885-1958), Bishop Mowbray Stephen O’Rorke (1869-1953) and Eric Milner-White (1884-1963), three key Anglican theologians I was reminded of when I was in Walsingham earlier this month, speaking at the Ecumenical Pilgrimage.
The ashes of Bishop Mowbray Stephen O’Rorke are buried in the Shrine Church, beneath a very impressive, mediaeval-style effigy, close to the Holy House, the Annunciation Altar and a similar effigy memorialising Alfred Hope Patten.
It was said Bishop O’Rorke wore the ‘tallest mitre in Christendom’. He had been a bishop in what is now Ghana, where he was supported by the Anglican mission agency SPG (now USPG), and was one of the leading figures in the Anglo-Catholic movement throughout the first half of the 20th century. He also had very strong family links with Ireland, and his parents were married in Saint Peter’s Church, Dublin, before they emigrated to Birmingham.
The Right Revd Mowbray Stephen O’Rorke (1869-1953), second Bishop of Accra, was the second of five sons of William Joseph O’Rorke of Ballinasloe, Co Galway, and later of Birmingham and Nottingham, and Annie Elizabeth Wilson, daughter of William Wilson of Saunders Grove, near Baltinglass, Co Wicklow.
Although he was born in England, Bishop O’Rorke was proud of his Irish family background and chose to do his theological training at Trinity College, Dublin.
William Joseph O’Rorke may have romanticised that he was related to James Rorke (1827-1875), the Irish-born adventurer who gave his name to Rorke’s Drift in South Africa, explaining why William gave the name ‘The Drift' to the family home on Magdala Road in Nottingham.
However, it is more likely William Joseph O’Rorke was a closely related to a well-known clerical and land-owning branch of the O’Rorke family in Co Galway that once owned the Clonbern and Bermingham House estates. Some sources suggest he may have been related to the Revd John O’Rorke (1775-1849), and through him to Charles Dennis O'Rorke (1827-1915), of Clonbern House, Co Galway, and Sir George Maurice O’Rorke, the Irish-born Speaker of the House of Representatives, New Zealand.
The Revd John O’Rorke born in 1775, the son of the Revd Timothy O’Rorke, also known known as Timothy or Teige, Thaddeus or Thady, or later in late as Thomas O’Rorke. The Rev Thaddeus O’Rorke joined the Church of Ireland and after that was always known as Thomas O’Rorke. He was the Curate of Cong, Co Mayo, and his headstone bears the name Thomas. The Revd Timothy O’Rorke always referred to himself and to his father as Thomas.
John O’Rorke was educated at Trinity College Dublin (BA 1800), and from 1801 he was the curate of Moylough, Co Galway. He later became Rector of Foxford, Co Mayo, and Vicar of Straid, in the Diocese of Achonry, but he continued to live in Moylough.
He leased land from the Bellews of Mountbellew and bought the Clonbern estate in Co Galway from the family of Archbishop Beresford of Tuam in 1828. His landholdings included over 1,600 acres in Co Roscommon and 217 acres in Co Westmeath. He was not popular in the Moylough area and was frequently was involved in law suits, particularly with a neighbouring landholder, Daniel Moore Kilkelly.
John O’Rorke was married three times, and had a large number of children before he died at Moylough House, Co Galway, on 31 January 1849 at the age of 73 after a fall from his horse.
His son, Charles Dennis O’Rorke, built Clonbern House in the early 1850s and inherited Bermingham House, near Tuam, from his uncle, John Dennis, a famous huntsman. By the 1870s, Charles O’Rorke owned 1,302 acres in Co Galway and over 1,000 acres in Co Kerry. The Land Commission acquired an estate of over 5,200 acres belonging to Charles Trench O’Rorke of Clonbern in 1927.
The bishop’s father, William Joseph O’Rorke, was born in Ballinasloe, Co Galway, in 1835, the son of Owen O’Rorke; his mother, Ann Elizabeth Wilson (1840-1912), was the daughter of William Wilson of Sander’s Court, near Baltinglass, Co Wicklow.
The couple were married in Saint Peter’s Church, Dublin, on 23 September 1862. He gave his address as 20 Union Square, Islington, London, and she was living at 38 Longwood Avenue, Dublin. (No 39 Longwood Avenue was later the home of Adelaide Margaret Field (1878-1953) who was baptised in Saint Peter’s in 1878 and married Charles William Comerford (1877-1953) in Holy Trinity Church, Rathmines, in 1910).
Anne and William O’Rorke moved to Birmingham, and they were the proprietors of a temperance hotel in Yardley. Later they ran the Caledonian Hotel on Lister Gate, Nottingham, which was bombed on 24 September 1916 in the only Zeppelin raid on the city. They were the parents of six children, five sons and a daughter, who were born in Birmingham and Nottingham between 1863 and 1879.
Mowbray Stephen O’Rorke was born in Birmingham on 21 May 1869 and he was baptised in the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, Bristol Street, Birmingham, on 1 August 1869.
He was educated at University School, Nottingham, and Wesley College, Sheffield. He was engaged in business in London from 1885 to early 1899, and was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple. He moved to Dublin in 1899, where he studied theology at Trinity College, Dublin in preparation for ordination (BA, Div Test 1902; MA, 1905; BD and DD 1912).
He was ordained deacon on 21 September 1902 and priest on 20 December 1903 by the Bishop of Durham, Handley Moule, previously Norrisian Professor of Divinity at Cambridge.
His first appointments were as a curate in Jarrow (1902-1905) and at Saint Margaret’s, Durham (1905-1910). He then spent a year in Australia as the priest-in-charge of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, Rockhampton, Queensland (1910-1911). He returned to England and the Diocese of Durham on 14 May 1912 as the curate of Saint Oswald’s, Durham (1912-1913). While he was there, his mother Ann Elizabeth (Wilson) O’Rorke died in Nottingham on 29 June 1912.
When Nathaniel Temple Hamlyn (1864-1929) retired as the first Bishop of Accra on the Gold Coast (now Ghana), he was succeeded by O’Rorke as the second Bishop (1913-1924). He was consecrated bishop in the chapel Lambeth Palace on 25 January 1913 by Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury; AF Winnington-Ingram, Bishop of London; George Nickson, Bishop of Jarrow; Henry Montgomery, secretary of SPG (now USPG) and former Bishop of Tasmania; Bishop Nathanael Temple Hamlyn; and Herbert Mather, former Bishop of Antigua, who had been in charge of the Diocese of Accra during the vacancy.
In the Diocese of Accra, he worked hard to train local priests, introduced a number of Anglo-Catholic liturgical practices and oversaw the establishment of new churches. However, he understood that the success of the Anglican Mission depended on the development of Ghanaian leadership, and he ordained two Ghanaian priests in 1916. But O’Rorke was aware too of the factors that led to the listlessness of the Anglican mission in Ghana. His work was hampered at times by interference from the colonial government.
He attended the sixth Lambeth Conference of bishops in July 1920 and August 1920 and also took part in the Anglo-Catholic Congress that year. On Tuesday 29 June 1920, he was among the 1,200 robed priests and 22 bishops who walked through Holborn in central London to Mass in Saint Alban’s Church and the opening of the first Anglo-Catholic Congress.
He returned to England in 1924, and was succeeded by John Aglionby as Bishop of Accra (1924-1951). By then, there were only three African clergy in the diocese, and it was not until O’Rorke left in 1924, that a theological college was started.
He was the Rector of Blakeney and Langham Parva in the Diocese of Norwich in 1924-1934, and with Cockthorpe in 1924-1929. As the Rector of Blakeney, Norfolk, he was the close neighbour of Father Hope Paten when he was restoring the shrine and pilgrimage in Walsingham.
O’Rorke offered the necessary pontifical services, from the consecration of churches to the blessing of bell and became and became one of the first Guardians of the Shrine at Our Lady of Walsingham. He was the episcopal presence on 13 October 1931, when the image of Our Lady of Walsingham was moved from the parish church of Saint Mary and enthroned in the newly-built Holy House, and consecrated the Holy House and the Shrine Church. As a founding priest guardian (1931-1953), had Saint Cuthbert’s stall on the south side of the chancel, although he did not sign the Guardians’ Roll.
When he retired to the west country for health reasons, he remained a guardian and he returned to Walsingham in 1938 to bless the newly-built Shrine Church. He held a general licence in the Diocese Bath and Wells (1934-1939) as chaplain of Saint Audries School, West Quantoxhead, Somerset and then of King’s College, Taunton.
O’Rorke retired in 1939, and had a general licence in London from 1939 and Exeter from 1947. He lived in Roborough, South Devon, and died in a nursing home in Eastbourne, Sussex, on 15 March 1953. His will included a £500 bequest to SPG (now USPG). He was also a friend and supporter of exiled Russian Orthodox Christians.
His ashes were buried in the Shrine Church in Walsingham under his stately effigy beside the Annunciation Altar, close to the Holy House and to the monument to Hope Patten. He is depicted in one of the six carved heads in the shrine church roof.
Bishop O’Rorke’s siblings also led interesting lives. He was one of the two brothers among five who were ordained, one was an army chaplain and prisoner of war, and another brother was a vet and army officer.
His parents, Ann Elizabeth (Wilson) O’Rorke, who died in Nottingham on 29 June 1912 and William Joseph O’Rorke who died in Nottingham on 2 March 1924, were the parents of six children, a daughter and five sons:
1, Owen William Wilson O’Rorke (born 1863), born Birmingham, later lived in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he married Celina Marie Bonnafon (1875-1945) and was the father of two sons and a daughter.
2, George Samuel O’Rorke MA LLD (1866-1963), born Birmingham, a solicitor in Nottingham.
3, (Right Revd) Mowbray Stephen O'Rorke MA DD (1869-1953), later Bishop of Accra.
4, Annie Elizabeth O’Rorke (1874-1962), born Nottingham.
5, (Revd) Benjamin Garniss O’Rorke MA DSO (1875-1918), was an army chaplain and prisoner of war. He studied at Oxford and was ordained deacon in Exeter Cathedral in 1898 and priest in 1899, serving his title at Saint Peter's, Tiverton, until 1901.
He was a chaplain during the Boer War, and became assistant deputy chaplain general with the British Expeditionary Force. He was captured during the retreat from Mons on 25 August 1914 when the Coldstream Guards and others fought a rear guard action to hold off the Germans as the British forces escaped. He was a prisoner of war in Germany for 10 months before being repatriated as a non-combatant. He returned to France with the 33rd Division as senior chaplain. He was mentioned in Despatches and awarded the DSO. He died from pneumonia in Falmouth Military Hospital, Cornwall, on Christmas Day 1918, aged 43, and is buried in Falmouth Cemetery. His book In the Hands of the Enemy, was one of the first books to describe what it was like to be a POW.
He was also the author of Our opportunity in the West Indies, published by SPG in 1913.
He married Myra Roberta MacDougall (1872-1958), daughter of the Revd Henry MacDougall (1820-1900). They were the parents of one daughter, Kathleen Myra Frances O’Rorke (1910-2010), who later lived in Ithaca, New York. The widowed Myra O’Rorke married Major Steuart Menzies (1862-1939) in 1928.
6, (Lieut-Col) Frederick Charles O’Rorke FRCVS (1879-1976), born Nottingham, was a vet with the Army Veterinary Corps on the Western Front, 1914-1919. He also served in World War II. He married Dorothy Violet Whitaker (1880-1963), who died in Castlebar, Co Mayo, and they were the parents of (Lieut-Col) Frederick Denis Whitaker O’Rorke (1909-1998).
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