St Peter, Leeds, West Yorkshire
As with the city in which it sits, Leeds Parish Church is broad, grand, fascinating, and potentially not right away likeable. But like the city by itself, the church quickly reveals its friendliness and idiosyncrasies to them as are prepared to take it as they locate it.
St Peter is 1 of the excellent urban parish church buildings of England. Development started in 1837, a number of months just after the accession of the youthful Queen. It was the first significant constructing job in the recently produced Diocese of Ripon, which had been carved out of the Archdiocese of York, and what a task it was. At initial it was planned as a significant fix occupation on the 14th Century church which earlier stood on this web-site. The architect was Robert Chantrell. Nonetheless, it grew to become distinct to Chantrell that a full rebuilding was necessary, and so it happened. The new church was completed in time for opening in 1841. The value was a very little short of £30,000, about six million in modern revenue, which would not seem to be a large amount but of program labour was proportionately so significantly less expensive then than right now. And not only was St Peter the initially good church of the Victorian period, it was also the biggest church created in England for a lot 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 should really be ‘big enough to keep as lots of people as possible’. But this is no preaching barn, mainly because Hook was an early follower of the Oxford Motion, and his church was supposed to offer a sacramental space as nicely as an evangelising one, which explains its completely Gothic fashion – Hook and Chantrell were being rejecting the protestant-preferred Classical varieties of the early 19th Century. In fact, as very well as St Peter, Hook’s key legacy to 19th Century Leeds would be the suburban mission church buildings in the High Church custom which he planted in the poorer places of the city.
Between the congregation for the opening on 2nd September 1841 was Edward Pusey, one particular of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. Also there that day was a further early adherent to the Motion, the 20 calendar year previous Florence Nightingale.
To see the church that Chantrell crafted you will need to stand on the sanctuary actions seeking west, with your back to the altar, for George Road refashioned the east finish in the 1870s in the complete Superior Church fashion of that time, with marble by Salviati of Venice and his have reredos. The glass previously mentioned is collected Flemish glass. Your principal perception seeking into the nave will be of major dim wooden, for the 1841 St Peter was essentially nevertheless a solution of the Georgian period, and it retains its elaborately carved galleries on three sides of the nave, as well as an huge pulpit which sweeps high up into room. Of good fascination also is the stained glass in the south aisle and west close, for like the woodwork it comprehensively predates the ecclesiological motion that the following ten years or so would carry.
The church is cruciform, but this is not quickly obvious due to the fact of the way transepts and aisles have been hived off for use as chapels and the like. The fantastic tower sits previously mentioned the north transept, which types an entrance area. The chancel aisle to the east of it varieties a war memorial chapel, the outer north nave aisle now incorporates a cafe. Irrespective of the dimension of the church, the woodwork and divisions can make it appear to be alternatively a cluttered area.
Walter Hook lies in effigy atop a tomb in the north chancel chapel in the medieval fashion. In fact, if you did not know, you may possibly just take him for a 14th Century prelate. But there are in actuality a couple of survivals which predate the Victorian church, which include 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 following this the Diocese of Ripon was submerged along with the Dioceses of Bradford and Wakefield into the newly shaped Diocese of Leeds in 2014. The new Diocese, the biggest in England, now has three cathedrals of equivalent status at Ripon, Bradford and Wakefield, but there are extensive term programs for a new cathedral in the excellent town at the heart of the Diocese, and as section of these it is viewed as that Leeds Minster, Leeds Parish Church as was, could just take on the position of a pro-cathedral.
This, I believe, would be a pity, for this incredible regenerated town justifies something greater, some thing big and wholly new that would be as substantially a beacon for 21st Century Anglicanism as St Peter was for the 19th Century. Leeds is 1 of the most significant metropolitan areas in Europe without the need of a Cathedral for its countrywide church – Dublin and Berlin also spring to thoughts. No, that new Cathedral wants to be in other places in the city centre. As the part of Anglicanism in English culture shifts and alterations, so St Peter will become less practical as a flagship, and deserves to return to the muscular, sleeves-rolled-up parochial perform 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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