St Peter, Leeds, West Yorkshire
As with the town in which it sits, Leeds Parish Church is vast, grand, intriguing, and maybe not quickly likeable. But like the city alone, the church shortly reveals its friendliness and idiosyncrasies to them as are geared up to choose it as they find it.
St Peter is just one of the wonderful city parish churches of England. Design began in 1837, a few months following the accession of the youthful Queen. It was the initially important creating project in the newly established Diocese of Ripon, which experienced been carved out of the Archdiocese of York, and what a job it was. At first it was planned as a large fix occupation on the 14th Century church which formerly stood on this web-site. The architect was Robert Chantrell. Having said that, it turned obvious to Chantrell that a finish rebuilding was essential, and so it transpired. The new church was completed in time for opening in 1841. The expense was a minimal short of £30,000, about 6 million in present-day cash, which doesn’t seem a large amount but of class labour was proportionately so significantly cheaper then than right now. And not only was St Peter the initial good church of the Victorian period, it was also the most significant church developed in England for extra than a century, because Sir Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral in London.
The setting up went up at the behest of the Vicar of Leeds, Walter Hook. Famously, his sole instruction to Chantrell was that the church ought to be ‘big enough to maintain as a lot of persons as possible’. But this is no preaching barn, simply because Hook was an early follower of the Oxford Motion, and his church was meant to offer a sacramental place as very well as an evangelising just one, which points out its totally Gothic design and style – Hook and Chantrell were rejecting the protestant-most well-liked Classical kinds of the early 19th Century. Certainly, as properly as St Peter, Hook’s major legacy to 19th Century Leeds would be the suburban mission churches in the Significant Church custom which he planted in the poorer parts of the metropolis.
Amongst the congregation for the opening on 2nd September 1841 was Edward Pusey, one particular of the leaders of the Oxford Motion. Also there that day was yet another early adherent to the Movement, the 20 12 months previous Florence Nightingale.
To see the church that Chantrell crafted you will need to stand on the sanctuary measures searching west, with your again to the altar, for George Road refashioned the east end in the 1870s in the comprehensive High Church fashion of that time, with marble by Salviati of Venice and his individual reredos. The glass higher than is gathered Flemish glass. Your most important effect searching into the nave will be of heavy dim wooden, for the 1841 St Peter was effectively however a products of the Georgian era, and it retains its elaborately carved galleries on 3 sides of the nave, as effectively as an monumental pulpit which sweeps large up into space. Of wonderful curiosity as well is the stained glass in the south aisle and west finish, for like the woodwork it carefully predates the ecclesiological motion that the following 10 years or so would carry.
The church is cruciform, but this is not straight away noticeable because of the way transepts and aisles have been hived off for use as chapels and the like. The great tower sits above the north transept, which types an entrance spot. The chancel aisle to the east of it kinds a war memorial chapel, the outer north nave aisle now includes a cafe. Inspite of the sizing of the church, the woodwork and divisions can make it look alternatively a cluttered area.
Walter Hook lies in effigy atop a tomb in the north chancel chapel in the medieval style. Without a doubt, if you did not know, you could possibly get him for a 14th Century prelate. But there are in point a few of survivals which predate the Victorian church, including the painted Hardwick tomb of the late 17th Century on the south aspect of the chancel.
In 2011, St Peter was rebadged as Leeds Minster, but before long after this the Diocese of Ripon was submerged along with the Dioceses of Bradford and Wakefield into the recently fashioned Diocese of Leeds in 2014. The new Diocese, the most important in England, currently has 3 cathedrals of equivalent status at Ripon, Bradford and Wakefield, but there are long time period strategies for a new cathedral in the excellent city at the heart of the Diocese, and as element of these it is deemed that Leeds Minster, Leeds Parish Church as was, could possibly choose on the position of a professional-cathedral.
This, I consider, would be a pity, for this extraordinary regenerated city justifies one thing greater, something major and wholly new that would be as much a beacon for 21st Century Anglicanism as St Peter was for the 19th Century. Leeds is just one of the largest metropolitan areas in Europe without the need of a Cathedral for its national church – Dublin and Berlin also spring to brain. No, that new Cathedral requirements to be in other places in the city centre. As the job of Anglicanism in English lifestyle shifts and changes, so St Peter gets less useful as a flagship, and warrants to return to the muscular, sleeves-rolled-up parochial get the job done for which Walter Hook supposed it.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2017-11-08 06:44:38
Tagged: , Leeds , Minster , west , yorkshire , nikon , d5300 , yorks
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