The Rt Revd Andrew Watson
Bishop Andrew’s ministry today
- The Rt Revd Andrew Watson became the 10th Bishop of Guildford in 2015.
- Along with his work in the diocese he has variously chaired the Panel of World Mission and the Anglican Communion, the Ordained Vocations Working Group and the Church of England Governance Project.
- He joined the House of Lords in February 2022, where he is especially focused on issues of Freedom of Religion or Belief.
Background
- Andrew Watson grew up in Buckinghamshire and Hampshire, where his father was a Director of Music at Stowe School and Winchester College.
- Music was a very major part of his upbringing, and he played the bassoon in the National Youth Orchestra as a young teenager, subsequently gaining a music exhibition at Cambridge University.
- It was also as a teenager that he began to take his faith seriously, inspired by the example of his paternal grandparents, former medical missionaries in China.
- Having studied Law in Cambridge, Andrew went on to spend two years as a youth worker and caretaker at St. Mary’s Islington, before returning to Cambridge to study Theology. It was there that he first met Beverly, his future wife, during a lecture given by the then Dean of Clare College, Revd. Dr Rowan Williams.
- Andrew and Beverly married in 1986, and Andrew was ordained a year later, serving his curacy on a council estate in Redditch.
- They moved to Notting Hill in 1990, then to Twickenham in 1996, where he was incumbent at St. Stephen’s Church for 12 years. During that time, the Church built a new hall and sent out teams to plant new congregations in St. Margaret’s, Sunbury, and onto the Ivybridge estate.
- Andrew was Bishop of Aston in Birmingham Diocese from 2008-14, before moving to Guildford in January 2015.
- Andrew and Beverly have four adult children – two girls (a professional pianist and an ordinand) and two boys (both post-doctoral biologists). Beverly was ordained in the same year that Andrew became a Bishop – 2008 – and is vicar of All Saints, Onslow Village, on the outskirts of Guildford.