▶Date of birth: 29 December 1870         Place of birth: Birmingham, Warwickshire

▶Father:  Thomas Moyles     Mother: Isabella Louisa Cave-Browne-Cave

▶Spouse(s): (unmarried)     Date(s) of marriage:       Place(s) of marriage:

▶Occupation: Clergyman

▶Lifestory: (Also Cave-Moyles.) Thomas was the elder son of Thomas Moyles, Birmingham surgeon, and his wife Isabella Louisa (née Cave); in later life he tended to prefer the surname Cave-Moyle. He attended Birmingham School and matriculated at Lincoln College, Oxford in 1890, BA (third class in Modern History) 1894, MA 1897. He was ordained Deacon in 1895, and Priest (both Rochester) in 1896. In 1895 he was licensed Curate of Christ Church, New Malden, Kingston-upon-Thames, until 1898, when he became Curate of Holy Trinity, Tulse Hill. Then, in 1900, he became a Curate at Cheltenham parish church of St Mary’s (also apparently working with the Church of St Mark with St Matthew), “where he proved himself a man of exceptional energy and organising power”. In 1904 he was appointed Vicar of St Paul’s, Cheltenham, which he found “a poorly organised parish with a church that had fallen into shabbiness, housing a dwindling congregation”, both of which issues he sought to remedy. He lived with his widowed mother at St Paul’s Vicarage (now Tower House), Pittville Circus; he moved out on the death of his mother and by 1915 he resided at 4 Clarence Square, and from 1916-26 at the new St Paul’s Vicarage (now Clarence Villa), Clarence Square. As man of private means, “during some years of his vicarship [he] surrendered the whole of his stipend for the furtherance of schemes for the benefit of the church”. Between 1915 and 1916 he also served as Chaplain to the Forces in Cheltenham and at the Cambridge Hospital at Aldershot. Back at St Paul’s he anticipated “the Enabling Act [and] established a parochial church council and parochial electoral roll”. In addition, he prosecuted “a ‘non-party’ policy in the services, which hitherto had had a distinctly evangelical flavour”. This change led to some members leaving his congregation. At the same time, St Paul’s became the first church to abolish pew rents. After twenty-two years he left St Paul’s in Cheltenham, feeling the strains of managing a large parish of 7,000 people, and moved to the less arduous position of Much Dewchurch in Herefordshire. However, his energies revived, he accepted the office of Vicar at the London Docklands parish of St Paul’s, Shadwell, where he died in 1932, at the age of sixty-one. In 1932 a Chapel was dedicated to his memory at St Paul’s in Cheltenham. His effects are death amounted to over £11,750.

▶Moved to Pittville from:  Elsewhere in Cheltenham      Moved from Pittville to: Much Dewchurch, Herefordshire

▶Date of death:  9 February 1932      Place of death: London Hospital, Shadwell

▶Date of burial:  12 February  1932      Place of burial: Abbey Dore, Herefordshire

▶Notes: Quotations from obituary in Gloucestershire Echo, 9 February 1932       ID: 10712

Contributor(s):  John Simpson/Alan Munden