St Peter, Leeds, West Yorkshire
As with the metropolis in which it sits, Leeds Parish Church is wide, grand, intriguing, and probably not immediately likeable. But like the town itself, the church soon reveals its friendliness and idiosyncrasies to them as are geared up to consider it as they discover it.
St Peter is one of the good city parish church buildings of England. Construction started in 1837, a couple of months after the accession of the young Queen. It was the 1st key creating job in the freshly designed Diocese of Ripon, which had been carved out of the Archdiocese of York, and what a challenge it was. At very first it was prepared as a significant maintenance career on the 14th Century church which formerly stood on this web-site. The architect was Robert Chantrell. However, it grew to become distinct to Chantrell that a entire rebuilding was needed, and so it occurred. The new church was completed in time for opening in 1841. The price tag was a minimal small of £30,000, about six million in present day funds, which does not seem to be a good deal but of system labour was proportionately so a lot cheaper then than today. And not only was St Peter the to start with wonderful church of the Victorian period, it was also the biggest church constructed in England for far more than a century, since Sir Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral in London.
The constructing went up at the behest of the Vicar of Leeds, Walter Hook. Famously, his sole instruction to Chantrell was that the church need to be ‘big ample to keep as a lot of men and women as possible’. But this is no preaching barn, due to the fact Hook was an early follower of the Oxford Motion, and his church was meant to supply a sacramental space as effectively as an evangelising a single, which explains its fully Gothic model – Hook and Chantrell ended up rejecting the protestant-preferred Classical varieties of the early 19th Century. Certainly, as well as St Peter, Hook’s main legacy to 19th Century Leeds would be the suburban mission churches in the Substantial Church tradition which he planted in the poorer parts of the metropolis.
Among the the congregation for the opening on 2nd September 1841 was Edward Pusey, just one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. Also there that day was another early adherent to the Motion, the 20 12 months outdated Florence Nightingale.
To see the church that Chantrell created you have to have to stand on the sanctuary techniques wanting west, with your again to the altar, for George Street refashioned the east conclusion in the 1870s in the thorough Substantial Church manner of that time, with marble by Salviati of Venice and his have reredos. The glass earlier mentioned is gathered Flemish glass. Your primary impact wanting into the nave will be of large dim wooden, for the 1841 St Peter was in essence nonetheless a product or service of the Georgian period, and it retains its elaborately carved galleries on three sides of the nave, as effectively as an great pulpit which sweeps significant up into house. Of wonderful interest much too is the stained glass in the south aisle and west stop, for like the woodwork it completely predates the ecclesiological movement that the future decade or so would provide.
The church is cruciform, but this is not immediately clear simply because of the way transepts and aisles have been hived off for use as chapels and the like. The wonderful tower sits over the north transept, which kinds an entrance spot. The chancel aisle to the east of it forms a war memorial chapel, the outer north nave aisle now contains a cafe. Inspite of the size of the church, the woodwork and divisions can make it appear to be relatively a cluttered place.
Walter Hook lies in effigy atop a tomb in the north chancel chapel in the medieval style. Indeed, if you didn’t know, you may well get him for a 14th Century prelate. But there are in reality a few of survivals which predate the Victorian church, such as the painted Hardwick tomb of the late 17th Century on the south facet of the chancel.
In 2011, St Peter was rebadged as Leeds Minster, but soon right after this the Diocese of Ripon was submerged together with the Dioceses of Bradford and Wakefield into the newly formed Diocese of Leeds in 2014. The new Diocese, the largest in England, now has 3 cathedrals of equivalent standing at Ripon, Bradford and Wakefield, but there are lengthy time period ideas for a new cathedral in the terrific metropolis at the heart of the Diocese, and as element of these it is viewed as that Leeds Minster, Leeds Parish Church as was, may possibly get on the position of a professional-cathedral.
This, I assume, would be a pity, for this remarkable regenerated metropolis deserves anything far better, anything big and wholly new that would be as a lot a beacon for 21st Century Anglicanism as St Peter was for the 19th Century. Leeds is just one of the most significant metropolitan areas in Europe without the need of a Cathedral for its countrywide church – Dublin and Berlin also spring to intellect. No, that new Cathedral requirements to be somewhere else in the city centre. As the role of Anglicanism in English tradition shifts and improvements, so St Peter gets to be significantly less valuable as a flagship, and deserves to return to the muscular, sleeves-rolled-up parochial operate for which Walter Hook intended it.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2017-11-08 06:44:29
Tagged: , Leeds , Minster , west , yorkshire , nikon , d5300 , yorks
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