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Canon Edmund Snowden
Edmund Snowden was the first vicar of St Thomas's. He came to a new church without a congregation and had the job of building the congregation from scratch. There was no vicarage and he had to live in the Highfields area of Huddersfield. St Thomas's offered a style of worship which was markedly different from other parishes of the time but which, in time, became a model for those other parishes.
After a ministry of nearly forty years, he left for the country parish of Kirby Overblow near Harrogate. He died after a short time and is buried in the churchyard there.
Canon Samuel Swire
Samuel Swire came to Huddersfield from a curacy in London. He was a Christian socialist and a papalist. Things began to change!
The Eucharist replaced Morning Prayer as the main Sunday service and soon the Eucharist was celebrated every day. The Stations of the Cross were installed which caused an objection from the bishop, resulting in them being stored until more favourable times. The people were encouraged to go to confession and the Blessed Sacrament was reserved. Schools, a mission room and a parish institute all flourished.
Samuel Swire served St Thomas's, like his predecessor, for almost forty years. He died in office and is buried in Edgerton Cemetery.
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Fr Alan Corin
Alan Corin was parish priest during the war years. He spent much time away from the church as an army chaplain. The parish was effectively run at this time by the curate, Fr James Wardle. 
Fr James Wardle
At the end of the war, Fr Wardle joined the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield and spent most of the rest of his life working in Zimbabwe before returning for a few years' retirement at Mirfield.
Fr Corin, after the war, moved on to the parish of St Mary the Virgin of Eton, Hackney Wick in East London.
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Fr Robert Collick
Fr Collick came to St Thomas's from the parish of Royston, near Barnsley and presided over St Thomas's at a time of general decline in church attendance. St Thomas's worship and witness continued but the church was not flourishing as it had been in the time between the wars. Fr Collick moved on to the parish of Holy Innocents, Thornhill Lees, Dewsbury and from there to St Ninian's, Whitby.
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Fr Gordon Pavey
Fr Pavey came to St Thomas's without a stipend and worked as an adviser to the Wakefield Diocese and as a schoolmaster at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Wakefield. However, the daily mass continued, as did all aspects of parish life. In his time, Huddersfield became home to many people newly arrived from the Caribbean islands and St Thomas's became 'their' church.
A priest was appointed to work as chaplain to the West Indian people in Huddersfield and soon the congregation revived, so much so that the Eucharist was celebrated according to the usage of the Church in the Province of the West Indies!
Fr Pavey left Huddersfield to teach at St Martin's College, Lancaster and then to another college near Bristol. He was an honorary assistant priest at All Saints, Clifton. After the decision of the Church of England to ordain women to the priesthood, he became a Roman Catholic, was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest and appointed as a Canon of Clifton Cathedral, Bristol. He died in 2007.
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Fr Matthew Nicholls
Fr Nicholls was appointed as a full time parish priest following the rapid growth of the congregation. He had worked in East London and, more recently, in the Caribbean on the island of Aruba. Fr Nicholls was highly principled, outspoken and controversial. He was parish priest at the time of the Second Vatican Council and soon Mass was said at St Thomas's with the priest facing the people and in a much simplified manner. Fr Nicholls pioneered good relations with the local Muslim communities and the parish hall was used by Muslims during Ramadan in the time before mosques were established in the town.
Fr Nicholls retired to become chaplain of the Anglican Convent in Aberdeen and then moved to Malvern in Worcestershire before he died.
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Fr Robert Buttolph
Robert Buttolph came to Huddersfield after a short spell in Norwich following ministry in the Caribbean. He trained for the priesthood at Codrington College, Barbados when the college was run by priests of the Community of the Resurrection. The principal of the college was Fr Anselm Genders who later became Bishop of Bermuda and an assistant bishop in the Diocese of Wakefield.
Fr Buttolph came as, once more, the parish's fortunes were in decline. Churchgoing in general was in decline, the Caribbean community in Huddersfield was moving further away from the town centre, bus services were cut dramatically on Sundays and many of those from Canon Swire's day were reaching the end of their lives.
Fr Buttolph did much to improve the appearance of the church inside. It had become a very dark and gloomy place. Outside, the church was sandblasted, as were the surrounding buildings. Before his retirement things had stabilized. The daily mass was in the evening and the Sunday congregations began to grow again. He retired to Thornton Lodge in Huddersfield and died some three or four years later.
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Canon Richard Giles
Richard Giles came to St Thomas's with a background of reordering churches and St Thomas's was not to be an exception. After little more than a year in the parish, the church was closed and the Sunday Mass was celebrated in the parish hall. In November 1990, the reordered St Thomas's was reopened very much as you see the church today. The music of the liturgy was changed dramatically, with guitars and drums being introduced, but a great variety of musical styles were used which complemented contemporary liturgy in a contemporary setting.
Richard Giles left St Thomas's in 1999 to become Dean of Philadelphia in the Diocese of Pennsylvania in the USA. An even more ambitious reordering of Philadelphia Cathedral occurred under his leadership. He has now returned to England in retirement and lives in the North East.
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Fr Lee Bennett
It took over four years to make an appointment after Richard Giles's departure and Fr Bennett came to the parish in September 2003. He left after only eleven months, moving on to a parish in Barnsley and then to another in Essex.
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