Dom (Edward) Paulinus Gorwood, who died at Fort Augustus Abbey on August 9th, 1917, was born at Beverley, in Yorkshire, on September 1st, 1854, and sang as a boy in the choir of the famous minster there. He showed early talent as a draughtsman, won prizes at the South Kensington School of Art, and was for a time engaged in the drawing-office of a Hull shipbuilding firm.
After his conversion to Catholicism he entered Belmont Priory as one of the first group of novices for the newly founded monastery at Fort Augustus, was professed on September 24th, 1880, and ordained priest on May 31st, 1887.
Nearly the whole of Dom Paulinus’s religious life was spent within the walls of his monastery ; but he passed a year at the abbey of Emaus, in Prague, studying art under Dom Desiderius and Dom Luke, the founders of the Beuron School of religious painting.
Dom Paulinus, on his return to Fort Augustus, was for some time in charge of the extensive mission attached to the Abbey ; and his zeal, simplicity, piety and devotion to duty greatly endeared him to his scattered flock. He found time also for the practice of his art,: both within and without the monastery ; and the mural decorations of the chapel in Glenmoriston, the church at Beauly, and the college chapel at St Augustine’s, Ramsgate, among others, were the work of his skilful brush.
He was engaged almost up to the time of his death, both at Fort Augustus and at St Bride’s Abbey, Milford Haven (where he was for a year chaplain to the Benedictine Nuns) in painting a beautiful altar-piece for one of the chapels of his monastery ; and the wall of the cell in which he peacefully and piously died, in his sixty-third year, was adorned with a life-size painting of the Crucifixion, executed by himself. His remains lie in the monastic cemetery of Fort Augustus, between the choir of the new Abbey Church and the borders of Loch Ness. R.I.P.