St Peter, Leeds, West Yorkshire
As with the town in which it sits, Leeds Parish Church is large, grand, intriguing, and maybe not right away likeable. But like the metropolis alone, the church soon reveals its friendliness and idiosyncrasies to them as are prepared to just take it as they discover it.
St Peter is a single of the good city parish churches of England. Building began in 1837, a several weeks following the accession of the young Queen. It was the to start with significant constructing project in the newly designed Diocese of Ripon, which had been carved out of the Archdiocese of York, and what a job it was. At initially it was prepared as a enormous maintenance work on the 14th Century church which previously stood on this web-site. The architect was Robert Chantrell. Having said that, it grew to become crystal clear to Chantrell that a full rebuilding was essential, and so it transpired. The new church was completed in time for opening in 1841. The charge was a tiny quick of £30,000, about six million in present day cash, which won’t look a lot but of program labour was proportionately so a great deal less costly then than nowadays. And not only was St Peter the 1st great church of the Victorian era, it was also the largest church created in England for extra than a century, due to the fact 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 should really be ‘big more than enough to maintain as several folks as possible’. But this is no preaching barn, for the reason that Hook was an early follower of the Oxford Motion, and his church was supposed to offer a sacramental space as well as an evangelising just one, which points out its totally Gothic model – Hook and Chantrell have been rejecting the protestant-preferred Classical kinds of the early 19th Century. In fact, as perfectly as St Peter, Hook’s most important legacy to 19th Century Leeds would be the suburban mission church buildings in the Higher Church custom which he planted in the poorer places of the metropolis.
Amid the congregation for the opening on 2nd September 1841 was Edward Pusey, one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. Also there that day was an additional early adherent to the Motion, the 20 12 months outdated Florence Nightingale.
To see the church that Chantrell developed you want to stand on the sanctuary actions hunting west, with your back again to the altar, for George Street refashioned the east conclude in the 1870s in the thorough Significant Church style of that time, with marble by Salviati of Venice and his personal reredos. The glass over is gathered Flemish glass. Your main perception on the lookout into the nave will be of heavy dim wooden, for the 1841 St Peter was primarily nevertheless a solution of the Georgian era, and it retains its elaborately carved galleries on three sides of the nave, as nicely as an monumental pulpit which sweeps large up into room. Of good fascination too is the stained glass in the south aisle and west finish, for like the woodwork it thoroughly predates the ecclesiological motion that the subsequent 10 years or so would carry.
The church is cruciform, but this is not immediately apparent mainly because of the way transepts and aisles have been hived off for use as chapels and the like. The terrific tower sits earlier mentioned the north transept, which kinds an entrance spot. The chancel aisle to the east of it types a war memorial chapel, the outer north nave aisle now incorporates a cafe. Despite the dimension of the church, the woodwork and divisions can make it feel somewhat a cluttered position.
Walter Hook lies in effigy atop a tomb in the north chancel chapel in the medieval fashion. Indeed, if you did not know, you could get him for a 14th Century prelate. But there are in reality a pair 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 before long just after this the Diocese of Ripon was submerged alongside with the Dioceses of Bradford and Wakefield into the freshly formed Diocese of Leeds in 2014. The new Diocese, the most important in England, presently has a few cathedrals of equivalent standing at Ripon, Bradford and Wakefield, but there are prolonged phrase ideas for a new cathedral in the terrific town at the coronary heart of the Diocese, and as aspect of these it is deemed that Leeds Minster, Leeds Parish Church as was, may choose on the position of a professional-cathedral.
This, I assume, would be a pity, for this remarkable regenerated city warrants anything greater, one thing 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 a single of the major metropolitan areas in Europe without the need of a Cathedral for its countrywide church – Dublin and Berlin also spring to mind. No, that new Cathedral demands to be somewhere else in the town centre. As the job of Anglicanism in English lifestyle shifts and modifications, so St Peter turns into considerably less helpful as a flagship, and justifies to return to the muscular, sleeves-rolled-up parochial work for which Walter Hook supposed it.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2017-11-08 06:44:34
Tagged: , Leeds , Minster , west , yorkshire , nikon , d5300 , yorks
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