St Peter, Leeds, West Yorkshire
As with the town in which it sits, Leeds Parish Church is extensive, grand, interesting, and most likely not immediately likeable. But like the city itself, the church soon reveals its friendliness and idiosyncrasies to them as are ready to get it as they discover it.
St Peter is a person of the great urban parish church buildings of England. Construction began in 1837, a few months immediately after the accession of the youthful Queen. It was the first big making undertaking in the newly designed Diocese of Ripon, which experienced been carved out of the Archdiocese of York, and what a undertaking it was. At initial it was planned as a large restore career on the 14th Century church which previously stood on this web-site. The architect was Robert Chantrell. Having said that, it turned obvious to Chantrell that a finish rebuilding was needed, and so it happened. The new church was concluded in time for opening in 1841. The charge was a small brief of £30,000, about 6 million in today’s cash, which won’t seem a good deal but of course labour was proportionately so substantially cheaper then than right now. And not only was St Peter the initial terrific church of the Victorian period, it was also the greatest church constructed in England for extra than a century, given 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 need to be ‘big ample to maintain as quite a few folks as possible’. But this is no preaching barn, for the reason that Hook was an early follower of the Oxford Movement, and his church was meant to provide a sacramental room as nicely as an evangelising a person, which describes its completely Gothic fashion – Hook and Chantrell had been rejecting the protestant-chosen Classical forms of the early 19th Century. Certainly, as nicely as St Peter, Hook’s main legacy to 19th Century Leeds would be the suburban mission churches in the Substantial Church custom which he planted in the poorer parts of the metropolis.
Among the congregation for the opening on 2nd September 1841 was Edward Pusey, a single of the leaders of the Oxford Motion. Also there that working day was an additional early adherent to the Movement, the 20 year aged Florence Nightingale.
To see the church that Chantrell built you want to stand on the sanctuary measures hunting west, with your back to the altar, for George Street refashioned the east stop in the 1870s in the comprehensive Significant Church style of that time, with marble by Salviati of Venice and his possess reredos. The glass higher than is gathered Flemish glass. Your main effect on the lookout into the nave will be of significant dark wood, for the 1841 St Peter was fundamentally continue to a solution of the Georgian period, and it retains its elaborately carved galleries on a few sides of the nave, as effectively as an tremendous pulpit which sweeps large up into room. Of wonderful curiosity as well is the stained glass in the south aisle and west finish, for like the woodwork it comprehensively predates the ecclesiological movement that the future 10 years or so would convey.
The church is cruciform, but this is not quickly clear simply because of the way transepts and aisles have been hived off for use as chapels and the like. The wonderful tower sits previously mentioned the north transept, which varieties an entrance location. The chancel aisle to the east of it kinds a war memorial chapel, the outer north nave aisle now consists of a cafe. Even with the measurement of the church, the woodwork and divisions can make it appear to be relatively a cluttered area.
Walter Hook lies in effigy atop a tomb in the north chancel chapel in the medieval trend. Without a doubt, if you did not know, you may well get him for a 14th Century prelate. But there are in simple fact a couple of survivals which predate the Victorian church, which includes 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 quickly just after this the Diocese of Ripon was submerged together with the Dioceses of Bradford and Wakefield into the freshly fashioned Diocese of Leeds in 2014. The new Diocese, the most significant in England, at the moment has a few cathedrals of equal status at Ripon, Bradford and Wakefield, but there are very long time period designs for a new cathedral in the fantastic town at the coronary heart of the Diocese, and as component of these it is deemed that Leeds Minster, Leeds Parish Church as was, may well just take on the standing of a pro-cathedral.
This, I assume, would be a pity, for this amazing regenerated town warrants a little something far better, something massive and wholly new that would be as considerably a beacon for 21st Century Anglicanism as St Peter was for the 19th Century. Leeds is one particular of the greatest cities in Europe with no a Cathedral for its national church – Dublin and Berlin also spring to brain. No, that new Cathedral needs to be in other places in the metropolis centre. As the position of Anglicanism in English tradition shifts and modifications, so St Peter gets considerably less handy as a flagship, and warrants to return to the muscular, sleeves-rolled-up parochial do the job for which Walter Hook supposed it.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2017-11-08 19:06:47
Tagged: , Leeds , West , Yorkshire , yorks , church , nikon , d5300
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