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sketcher and clergyman, was born in London on 12 September 1812. Ordained deacon in 1838, he married Anne Ireland in London that same year. En route to Van Diemen’s Land they landed in December at Sydney and Bishop W.G. Broughton, who was very short of clergy, induced them to remain. After briefly acting as minister to the penal establishments Walsh was appointed to the new Sydney parish of St Laurence in April 1839, his predecessor having proved to be an alcoholic. In September he was ordained priest by Broughton with whom he forged a firm friendship; the bishop secured a Lambeth Master of Arts degree for him in 1843. Walsh worked vigorously to raise funds to complete his parish church, holding services in a storeroom in Elizabeth Street until Christ Church was consecrated in 1845. In the same year, with the assistance of Thomas Sutcliffe Mort, the successful Christ Church School was founded.

A member of the High Church Cambridge Camden Society, Walsh made Christ Church a centre of liturgical revival and, somewhat belatedly, attempted to convert his rudimentary pointed Gothic church building (not begun by him) into an archaeologically correct embodiment of the English ecclesiologists’ architectural ideals. The result was not entirely successful, although when Edmund Blacket’s tower was added to the front it disguised earlier sins of ignorance such as the box-like form and over-large central entrance door. Walsh was involved in the erection of several other Sydney churches in a more 'correct’ style, all designed by Blacket, another close friend and the regular organist at Christ Church. The two took drawing lessons together from Conrad Martens in 1847, an entry in Martens’s account book recording that on 11 January they had paid £7 for joint lessons. Walsh also paid Martens 5 guineas for private classes on 24 August 1847.

On 27 September 1853 Walsh rode to Mount Tomah with Lord Henry Scott , Lord Schomberg Kerr and Rev. Henry Stobart . All were keen sketchers, yet it was only Walsh’s 'one or two sketches’ that Stobart recorded in his journal as having been made on the trip. A watercolour, View nr. Sydney by the Revd. W. Walsh is in the collection of drawings Lord Henry made in Australia (Palace House, Beaulieu, Hampshire: microfilm, Mitchell Library). The three visitors stayed in Sydney with 'our very kind friends, the Walshes and Naylors, who have a house between them’. This was the large (extant) Cleveland House at the Rocks attributed to Francis Greenway .

Walsh’s health seems always to have been delicate and in July 1850 he took leave of absence on health grounds and returned to England. There he raised funds for a peal of bells for Christ Church and gave an illustrated lecture to the Ecclesiological Society (formerly Cambridge Camden Society) on 'The ecclesiology of New South Wales’. The sketches he used in his talk may be the unsigned pencil and wash drawings now in a scrapbook in the State Library of NSW (Dixson Galleries DG*15) since they include most of the buildings discussed. In 1855 Walsh was a member of the Sydney Sketching Club (with Martens as president), the sole qualification for admission being 'a certain degree of competency to sketch from nature’. In 1864 he again took leave for health reasons and this time remained in England, resigning his Sydney parish in 1867. Through the influence of another friend, G.A. Selwyn, former bishop of New Zealand who had recently been appointed to the See of Lichfield, Walsh was found some English livings. He kept up colonial contacts and in 1872 sent a watercolour, Asia in a Cyclone , to the annual exhibition of the Agricultural Society of New South Wales, where it was shown non-competitively.

Towards the end of his life Walsh was drawn back to New South Wales, arriving in 1880 and living at Bodalla with the family of his old friend T.S. Mort. When Blacket’s Mort Memorial Chapel was completed in 1881, Walsh resigned his English positions and became the first incumbent but died at Bodalla soon afterwards, in December 1882.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011