St Peter, Leeds, West Yorkshire
As with the metropolis in which it sits, Leeds Parish Church is extensive, grand, intriguing, and most likely not quickly likeable. But like the town by itself, the church soon reveals its friendliness and idiosyncrasies to them as are geared up to get it as they obtain it.
St Peter is a single of the great urban parish churches of England. Design began in 1837, a number of months following the accession of the younger Queen. It was the very first major developing challenge in the freshly created Diocese of Ripon, which experienced been carved out of the Archdiocese of York, and what a project it was. At to start with it was prepared as a enormous mend position on the 14th Century church which previously stood on this web site. The architect was Robert Chantrell. Nevertheless, it became obvious to Chantrell that a complete rebuilding was needed, and so it occurred. The new church was completed in time for opening in 1841. The charge was a tiny brief of £30,000, about 6 million in present day cash, which would not appear a large amount but of course labour was proportionately so a lot less expensive then than currently. And not only was St Peter the initially terrific church of the Victorian era, it was also the greatest church built in England for additional than a century, considering the fact that Sir Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral in London.
The making went up at the behest of the Vicar of Leeds, Walter Hook. Famously, his sole instruction to Chantrell was that the church really should be ‘big ample to hold as lots of people as possible’. But this is no preaching barn, due to the fact Hook was an early follower of the Oxford Movement, and his church was meant to supply a sacramental house as nicely as an evangelising one particular, which clarifies its solely Gothic design and style – Hook and Chantrell were being rejecting the protestant-favored Classical kinds of the early 19th Century. In truth, as effectively as St Peter, Hook’s major legacy to 19th Century Leeds would be the suburban mission churches in the Substantial Church tradition which he planted in the poorer places of the city.
Amongst the congregation for the opening on 2nd September 1841 was Edward Pusey, a single of the leaders of the Oxford Motion. Also there that day was yet another early adherent to the Movement, the 20 yr outdated Florence Nightingale.
To see the church that Chantrell designed you need to have to stand on the sanctuary ways searching west, with your back again to the altar, for George Street refashioned the east conclusion in the 1870s in the thorough Large Church style of that time, with marble by Salviati of Venice and his own reredos. The glass earlier mentioned is gathered Flemish glass. Your primary impact on the lookout into the nave will be of hefty darkish wooden, for the 1841 St Peter was in essence continue to a item of the Georgian era, and it retains its elaborately carved galleries on a few sides of the nave, as properly as an enormous pulpit which sweeps high up into space. Of great interest also is the stained glass in the south aisle and west end, for like the woodwork it extensively predates the ecclesiological movement that the upcoming 10 years or so would bring.
The church is cruciform, but this is not instantly apparent simply because of the way transepts and aisles have been hived off for use as chapels and the like. The excellent tower sits over the north transept, which varieties an entrance region. The chancel aisle to the east of it kinds a war memorial chapel, the outer north nave aisle now contains a cafe. Despite the sizing of the church, the woodwork and divisions can make it feel instead a cluttered position.
Walter Hook lies in effigy atop a tomb in the north chancel chapel in the medieval manner. In truth, if you failed to know, you may well just take him for a 14th Century prelate. But there are in reality a couple of survivals which predate the Victorian church, which include the painted Hardwick tomb of the late 17th Century on the south side of the chancel.
In 2011, St Peter was rebadged as Leeds Minster, but quickly after this the Diocese of Ripon was submerged together with the Dioceses of Bradford and Wakefield into the freshly shaped Diocese of Leeds in 2014. The new Diocese, the biggest in England, currently has 3 cathedrals of equivalent status at Ripon, Bradford and Wakefield, but there are very long expression ideas for a new cathedral in the wonderful city at the coronary heart of the Diocese, and as section of these it is regarded that Leeds Minster, Leeds Parish Church as was, may possibly just take on the standing of a pro-cathedral.
This, I assume, would be a pity, for this extraordinary regenerated city justifies a thing far better, some thing massive and wholly new that would be as substantially a beacon for 21st Century Anglicanism as St Peter was for the 19th Century. Leeds is one of the most significant metropolitan areas in Europe with no a Cathedral for its countrywide church – Dublin and Berlin also spring to thoughts. No, that new Cathedral needs to be elsewhere in the town centre. As the purpose of Anglicanism in English culture shifts and variations, so St Peter becomes less handy as a flagship, and justifies to return to the muscular, sleeves-rolled-up parochial work for which Walter Hook meant it.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2017-11-08 19:06:42
Tagged: , Leeds , West , Yorkshire , yorks , church , nikon , d5300
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