St Peter, Leeds, West Yorkshire
As with the town in which it sits, Leeds Parish Church is large, grand, interesting, and maybe not immediately likeable. But like the town by itself, the church shortly reveals its friendliness and idiosyncrasies to them as are geared up to consider it as they come across it.
St Peter is one particular of the excellent urban parish church buildings of England. Development began in 1837, a handful of weeks after the accession of the youthful Queen. It was the to start with big building task in the newly established Diocese of Ripon, which had been carved out of the Archdiocese of York, and what a venture it was. At 1st it was planned as a massive restore occupation on the 14th Century church which previously stood on this web-site. The architect was Robert Chantrell. Nonetheless, it grew to become crystal clear to Chantrell that a full rebuilding was important, and so it transpired. The new church was concluded in time for opening in 1841. The price tag was a minor limited of £30,000, about 6 million in present day revenue, which will not feel a good deal but of training course labour was proportionately so a great deal much less expensive then than currently. And not only was St Peter the first terrific church of the Victorian era, it was also the greatest church developed in England for 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 really should be ‘big ample 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 Movement, and his church was meant to offer a sacramental space as nicely as an evangelising 1, which explains its solely Gothic design and style – Hook and Chantrell were rejecting the protestant-chosen Classical forms of the early 19th Century. In fact, as effectively as St Peter, Hook’s primary legacy to 19th Century Leeds would be the suburban mission churches in the Substantial Church tradition which he planted in the poorer places of the city.
Amid the congregation for the opening on 2nd September 1841 was Edward Pusey, a single of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. Also there that working day was yet another early adherent to the Motion, the 20 12 months old Florence Nightingale.
To see the church that Chantrell designed you need to stand on the sanctuary measures searching west, with your back to the altar, for George Street refashioned the east stop in the 1870s in the extensive Large Church manner of that time, with marble by Salviati of Venice and his very own reredos. The glass higher than is gathered Flemish glass. Your major effect looking into the nave will be of significant darkish wooden, for the 1841 St Peter was essentially continue to a solution of the Georgian period, and it retains its elaborately carved galleries on 3 sides of the nave, as very well as an tremendous pulpit which sweeps superior up into space. Of good curiosity way too is the stained glass in the south aisle and west finish, for like the woodwork it completely predates the ecclesiological motion that the following ten years or so would provide.
The church is cruciform, but this is not immediately noticeable because of the way transepts and aisles have been hived off for use as chapels and the like. The wonderful tower sits higher than the north transept, which varieties an entrance place. The chancel aisle to the east of it varieties a war memorial chapel, the outer north nave aisle now includes a cafe. Even with the dimensions of the church, the woodwork and divisions can make it appear alternatively a cluttered location.
Walter Hook lies in effigy atop a tomb in the north chancel chapel in the medieval manner. In fact, if you did not know, you could take him for a 14th Century prelate. But there are in simple fact a pair of survivals which predate the Victorian church, including 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 immediately after this the Diocese of Ripon was submerged together with the Dioceses of Bradford and Wakefield into the freshly shaped Diocese of Leeds in 2014. The new Diocese, the most significant in England, at present has a few cathedrals of equal status at Ripon, Bradford and Wakefield, but there are prolonged phrase strategies for a new cathedral in the great city at the heart of the Diocese, and as aspect of these it is regarded as that Leeds Minster, Leeds Parish Church as was, may just take on the position of a professional-cathedral.
This, I consider, would be a pity, for this incredible regenerated city warrants a little something superior, one thing massive and wholly new that would be as a great deal a beacon for 21st Century Anglicanism as St Peter was for the 19th Century. Leeds is one of the largest cities in Europe without having a Cathedral for its nationwide church – Dublin and Berlin also spring to thoughts. No, that new Cathedral wants to be somewhere else in the town centre. As the function of Anglicanism in English lifestyle shifts and adjustments, so St Peter results in being a lot less handy as a flagship, and warrants to return to the muscular, sleeves-rolled-up parochial function for which Walter Hook intended it.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2017-11-08 20:18:38
Tagged: , Leeds , Minster , West , yorkshire , nikon , d5300 , yorks
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