St Peter, Leeds, West Yorkshire
As with the town in which it sits, Leeds Parish Church is large, grand, interesting, and perhaps not quickly likeable. But like the city by itself, the church shortly reveals its friendliness and idiosyncrasies to them as are organized to consider it as they obtain it.
St Peter is a person of the good city parish churches of England. Development began in 1837, a number of months right after the accession of the youthful Queen. It was the 1st big constructing project in the recently created Diocese of Ripon, which had been carved out of the Archdiocese of York, and what a undertaking it was. At initial it was prepared as a substantial mend occupation on the 14th Century church which beforehand stood on this web site. The architect was Robert Chantrell. Nonetheless, it turned very clear to Chantrell that a finish rebuilding was required, and so it transpired. The new church was concluded in time for opening in 1841. The expense was a minor shorter of £30,000, about six million in modern dollars, which would not seem a great deal but of course labour was proportionately so a lot much less expensive then than now. And not only was St Peter the initial terrific church of the Victorian era, it was also the most important church developed in England for more than a century, due to the fact Sir Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral in London.
The setting up went up at the behest of the Vicar of Leeds, Walter Hook. Famously, his sole instruction to Chantrell was that the church ought to be ‘big more than enough to hold as quite a few individuals 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 room as nicely as an evangelising just one, which describes its totally Gothic model – Hook and Chantrell were rejecting the protestant-chosen Classical sorts of the early 19th Century. Certainly, as well as St Peter, Hook’s key legacy to 19th Century Leeds would be the suburban mission churches in the Substantial Church custom which he planted in the poorer locations of the town.
Between the congregation for the opening on 2nd September 1841 was Edward Pusey, a person of the leaders of the Oxford Motion. Also there that day was another early adherent to the Movement, the 20 year old Florence Nightingale.
To see the church that Chantrell designed you want to stand on the sanctuary methods wanting west, with your back again to the altar, for George Road refashioned the east stop in the 1870s in the comprehensive Large Church fashion of that time, with marble by Salviati of Venice and his individual reredos. The glass above is gathered Flemish glass. Your most important impact on the lookout into the nave will be of weighty dim wooden, for the 1841 St Peter was basically nevertheless a products of the Georgian era, and it retains its elaborately carved galleries on a few sides of the nave, as well as an enormous pulpit which sweeps high up into area. Of wonderful fascination too is the stained glass in the south aisle and west conclusion, for like the woodwork it extensively predates the ecclesiological motion that the next ten years or so would convey.
The church is cruciform, but this is not immediately evident mainly because of the way transepts and aisles have been hived off for use as chapels and the like. The terrific tower sits over the north transept, which sorts an entrance spot. The chancel aisle to the east of it forms a war memorial chapel, the outer north nave aisle now is made up of a cafe. Despite the dimensions of the church, the woodwork and divisions can make it look alternatively a cluttered area.
Walter Hook lies in effigy atop a tomb in the north chancel chapel in the medieval manner. In truth, if you did not know, you could acquire him for a 14th Century prelate. But there are in actuality a pair of survivals which predate the Victorian church, together with 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 before long soon after this the Diocese of Ripon was submerged together with the Dioceses of Bradford and Wakefield into the newly shaped Diocese of Leeds in 2014. The new Diocese, the most important in England, at this time has three cathedrals of equal position at Ripon, Bradford and Wakefield, but there are prolonged expression strategies for a new cathedral in the great town at the heart of the Diocese, and as portion of these it is considered that Leeds Minster, Leeds Parish Church as was, may possibly consider on the position of a pro-cathedral.
This, I imagine, would be a pity, for this amazing regenerated metropolis warrants something improved, a little something significant and wholly new that would be as much a beacon for 21st Century Anglicanism as St Peter was for the 19th Century. Leeds is just one of the most significant towns in Europe devoid of a Cathedral for its nationwide church – Dublin and Berlin also spring to mind. No, that new Cathedral requires to be somewhere else in the metropolis centre. As the function of Anglicanism in English tradition shifts and modifications, so St Peter turns into fewer beneficial 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 18:21:38
Tagged: , Leeds , Minster , West , yorkshire , nikon , d5300 , yorks
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