St Peter, Leeds, West Yorkshire
As with the metropolis in which it sits, Leeds Parish Church is wide, grand, interesting, and probably not promptly likeable. But like the city by itself, the church soon reveals its friendliness and idiosyncrasies to them as are ready to consider it as they obtain it.
St Peter is a single of the terrific city parish church buildings of England. Development started in 1837, a couple months after the accession of the young Queen. It was the initial big creating venture in the recently established Diocese of Ripon, which had been carved out of the Archdiocese of York, and what a challenge it was. At to start with it was prepared as a significant maintenance work on the 14th Century church which earlier stood on this website. The architect was Robert Chantrell. Having said that, it grew to become very clear to Chantrell that a total rebuilding was needed, and so it transpired. The new church was finished in time for opening in 1841. The price tag was a tiny limited of £30,000, about 6 million in present day funds, which would not appear a large amount but of training course labour was proportionately so considerably much less expensive then than these days. And not only was St Peter the initial good church of the Victorian period, it was also the major church crafted in England for more than a century, considering that Sir Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral in London.
The developing 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 more than enough to maintain as many folks as possible’. But this is no preaching barn, because Hook was an early follower of the Oxford Movement, and his church was meant to supply a sacramental space as perfectly as an evangelising one particular, which clarifies its totally Gothic type – Hook and Chantrell were being rejecting the protestant-most well-liked Classical varieties of the early 19th Century. In truth, as nicely as St Peter, Hook’s primary legacy to 19th Century Leeds would be the suburban mission church buildings in the Substantial Church custom which he planted in the poorer places of the town.
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 day was another early adherent to the Motion, the 20 12 months previous Florence Nightingale.
To see the church that Chantrell crafted you need to have to stand on the sanctuary methods searching west, with your again to the altar, for George Avenue refashioned the east conclusion in the 1870s in the complete High Church fashion of that time, with marble by Salviati of Venice and his possess reredos. The glass previously mentioned is gathered Flemish glass. Your main perception seeking into the nave will be of heavy dim 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 great pulpit which sweeps significant up into place. Of great interest too is the stained glass in the south aisle and west stop, for like the woodwork it thoroughly predates the ecclesiological motion that the up coming ten years or so would bring.
The church is cruciform, but this is not immediately obvious since of the way transepts and aisles have been hived off for use as chapels and the like. The great tower sits earlier mentioned the north transept, which forms an entrance region. The chancel aisle to the east of it sorts a war memorial chapel, the outer north nave aisle now consists of a cafe. Regardless of the dimensions of the church, the woodwork and divisions can make it feel instead a cluttered position.
Walter Hook lies in effigy atop a tomb in the north chancel chapel in the medieval manner. Indeed, if you didn’t know, you could choose him for a 14th Century prelate. But there are in reality a pair of survivals which predate the Victorian church, which includes the painted Hardwick tomb of the late 17th Century on the south side of the chancel.
In 2011, St Peter was rebadged as Leeds Minster, but soon just after this the Diocese of Ripon was submerged together with the Dioceses of Bradford and Wakefield into the recently shaped Diocese of Leeds in 2014. The new Diocese, the major in England, at this time has three cathedrals of equal standing at Ripon, Bradford and Wakefield, but there are long term designs for a new cathedral in the great metropolis at the heart of the Diocese, and as part of these it is considered that Leeds Minster, Leeds Parish Church as was, might just take on the status of a pro-cathedral.
This, I believe, would be a pity, for this amazing regenerated town justifies a thing far better, a thing major 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 greatest metropolitan areas in Europe without a Cathedral for its national church – Dublin and Berlin also spring to brain. No, that new Cathedral desires to be in other places in the city centre. As the function of Anglicanism in English lifestyle shifts and modifications, so St Peter gets to be less handy as a flagship, and warrants to return to the muscular, sleeves-rolled-up parochial function for which Walter Hook supposed it.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2017-11-07 18:21:28
Tagged: , Leeds , Minster , West , yorkshire , nikon , d5300 , yorks
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