St Peter, Leeds, West Yorkshire
As with the city in which it sits, Leeds Parish Church is huge, grand, intriguing, and possibly not promptly likeable. But like the town by itself, the church before long reveals its friendliness and idiosyncrasies to them as are well prepared to choose it as they uncover it.
St Peter is one of the terrific city parish churches of England. Building commenced in 1837, a couple of months immediately after the accession of the younger Queen. It was the initial significant setting up project in the newly established Diocese of Ripon, which had been carved out of the Archdiocese of York, and what a project it was. At 1st it was prepared as a substantial fix task on the 14th Century church which earlier stood on this web-site. The architect was Robert Chantrell. However, it turned clear to Chantrell that a full rebuilding was essential, and so it happened. The new church was completed in time for opening in 1841. The charge was a minimal brief of £30,000, about 6 million in present day money, which isn’t going to seem a ton but of training course labour was proportionately so considerably cheaper then than these days. And not only was St Peter the initially terrific church of the Victorian era, it was also the biggest church designed in England for additional than a century, due to the fact Sir Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral in London.
The creating 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 keep as a lot of people today as possible’. But this is no preaching barn, because Hook was an early follower of the Oxford Motion, and his church was supposed to offer a sacramental house as perfectly as an evangelising one, which clarifies its fully Gothic design – Hook and Chantrell were being rejecting the protestant-preferred Classical kinds of the early 19th Century. Certainly, as well as St Peter, Hook’s major legacy to 19th Century Leeds would be the suburban mission church buildings in the Significant Church tradition which he planted in the poorer spots of the city.
Among the the congregation for the opening on 2nd September 1841 was Edward Pusey, just one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. Also there that day was one more early adherent to the Movement, the 20 year aged Florence Nightingale.
To see the church that Chantrell created you need to stand on the sanctuary ways searching west, with your back again to the altar, for George Road refashioned the east stop in the 1870s in the complete Superior Church style of that time, with marble by Salviati of Venice and his possess reredos. The glass higher than is collected Flemish glass. Your key impact wanting into the nave will be of weighty dim wood, for the 1841 St Peter was in essence nevertheless a product of the Georgian period, and it retains its elaborately carved galleries on 3 sides of the nave, as nicely as an huge pulpit which sweeps high up into house. Of wonderful desire also is the stained glass in the south aisle and west conclude, for like the woodwork it carefully predates the ecclesiological motion that the following decade or so would bring.
The church is cruciform, but this is not straight away apparent for the reason that 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 kinds an entrance space. The chancel aisle to the east of it sorts a war memorial chapel, the outer north nave aisle now consists of a cafe. Despite the sizing of the church, the woodwork and divisions can make it look rather a cluttered location.
Walter Hook lies in effigy atop a tomb in the north chancel chapel in the medieval vogue. In truth, if you did not know, you may well just take him for a 14th Century prelate. But there are in point a pair of survivals which predate the Victorian church, such as 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 before long immediately after this the Diocese of Ripon was submerged alongside with the Dioceses of Bradford and Wakefield into the freshly fashioned Diocese of Leeds in 2014. The new Diocese, the largest in England, at present has a few cathedrals of equal standing at Ripon, Bradford and Wakefield, but there are long term designs for a new cathedral in the excellent city at the coronary heart of the Diocese, and as component of these it is regarded as that Leeds Minster, Leeds Parish Church as was, could possibly acquire on the position of a pro-cathedral.
This, I feel, would be a pity, for this amazing regenerated town justifies one thing superior, a little something huge and wholly new that would be as considerably a beacon for 21st Century Anglicanism as St Peter was for the 19th Century. Leeds is 1 of the biggest towns in Europe with out a Cathedral for its national church – Dublin and Berlin also spring to thoughts. No, that new Cathedral requirements to be in other places in the town centre. As the function of Anglicanism in English culture shifts and improvements, so St Peter becomes fewer beneficial as a flagship, and deserves to return to the muscular, sleeves-rolled-up parochial do the job for which Walter Hook supposed it.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2017-11-07 18:21:32
Tagged: , Leeds , Minster , West , yorkshire , nikon , d5300 , yorks
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