St Peter, Leeds, West Yorkshire
As with the city in which it sits, Leeds Parish Church is vast, grand, interesting, and probably not instantly likeable. But like the metropolis by itself, the church shortly reveals its friendliness and idiosyncrasies to them as are prepared to choose it as they obtain it.
St Peter is one particular of the wonderful urban parish church buildings of England. Design began in 1837, a number of weeks soon after the accession of the young Queen. It was the very first major constructing task in the recently developed 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 enormous fix task on the 14th Century church which beforehand stood on this web page. The architect was Robert Chantrell. On the other hand, it turned clear to Chantrell that a finish rebuilding was needed, and so it transpired. The new church was completed in time for opening in 1841. The price tag was a little limited of £30,000, about 6 million in modern dollars, which does not feel a great deal but of system labour was proportionately so considerably more affordable then than these days. And not only was St Peter the initially fantastic church of the Victorian period, it was also the most significant church crafted in England for much more than a century, considering the fact that Sir Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral in London.
The building went up at the behest of the Vicar of Leeds, Walter Hook. Famously, his sole instruction to Chantrell was that the church must be ‘big plenty of to keep as several people as possible’. But this is no preaching barn, mainly because Hook was an early follower of the Oxford Motion, and his church was meant to supply a sacramental space as very well as an evangelising a person, which explains its fully Gothic style – Hook and Chantrell have been rejecting the protestant-chosen Classical forms of the early 19th Century. In truth, as nicely as St Peter, Hook’s main legacy to 19th Century Leeds would be the suburban mission church buildings in the Higher Church custom which he planted in the poorer parts of the metropolis.
Amid the congregation for the opening on 2nd September 1841 was Edward Pusey, one particular of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. Also there that working day was yet another early adherent to the Motion, the 20 yr aged Florence Nightingale.
To see the church that Chantrell built you need to have to stand on the sanctuary actions hunting west, with your back to the altar, for George Road refashioned the east end in the 1870s in the complete Large Church manner of that time, with marble by Salviati of Venice and his own reredos. The glass above is gathered Flemish glass. Your major impression on the lookout into the nave will be of hefty dark wooden, for the 1841 St Peter was essentially nevertheless a product or service of the Georgian period, and it retains its elaborately carved galleries on 3 sides of the nave, as very well as an monumental pulpit which sweeps large up into area. Of good desire much too is the stained glass in the south aisle and west finish, for like the woodwork it comprehensively predates the ecclesiological movement that the future ten years or so would provide.
The church is cruciform, but this is not straight away obvious since of the way transepts and aisles have been hived off for use as chapels and the like. The good tower sits higher than the north transept, which kinds an entrance location. The chancel aisle to the east of it forms a war memorial chapel, the outer north nave aisle now has a cafe. Regardless of the dimension of the church, the woodwork and divisions can make it appear to be instead a cluttered put.
Walter Hook lies in effigy atop a tomb in the north chancel chapel in the medieval manner. Indeed, if you did not know, you could possibly get him for a 14th Century prelate. But there are in reality a few of survivals which predate the Victorian church, together with 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 shortly soon after this the Diocese of Ripon was submerged alongside with the Dioceses of Bradford and Wakefield into the recently shaped Diocese of Leeds in 2014. The new Diocese, the greatest in England, at the moment has a few cathedrals of equal 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 part of these it is regarded as that Leeds Minster, Leeds Parish Church as was, may possibly acquire on the status of a professional-cathedral.
This, I believe, would be a pity, for this remarkable regenerated town justifies something far better, a thing huge 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 important cities in Europe without the need of a Cathedral for its national church – Dublin and Berlin also spring to mind. No, that new Cathedral demands to be somewhere else in the metropolis centre. As the position of Anglicanism in English society shifts and adjustments, so St Peter becomes fewer helpful as a flagship, and warrants to return to the muscular, sleeves-rolled-up parochial operate for which Walter Hook intended it.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2017-11-08 19:06:45
Tagged: , Leeds , West , Yorkshire , yorks , church , nikon , d5300
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