St Peter, Leeds, West Yorkshire
As with the metropolis in which it sits, Leeds Parish Church is large, grand, intriguing, and potentially not immediately likeable. But like the city by itself, the church quickly reveals its friendliness and idiosyncrasies to them as are ready to consider it as they obtain it.
St Peter is one particular of the wonderful city parish church buildings of England. Construction began in 1837, a number of weeks immediately after the accession of the younger Queen. It was the initial significant constructing project in the newly designed Diocese of Ripon, which had been carved out of the Archdiocese of York, and what a venture it was. At initially it was prepared as a enormous repair task on the 14th Century church which beforehand stood on this web page. The architect was Robert Chantrell. Nevertheless, it turned very clear to Chantrell that a finish rebuilding was essential, and so it took place. The new church was completed in time for opening in 1841. The cost was a very little small of £30,000, about 6 million in present-day money, which won’t seem a lot but of program labour was proportionately so a lot less costly then than these days. And not only was St Peter the initial great church of the Victorian period, it was also the most important church developed in England for much 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 need to be ‘big sufficient to maintain as several people as possible’. But this is no preaching barn, due to the fact Hook was an early follower of the Oxford Motion, and his church was supposed to provide a sacramental space as effectively as an evangelising a person, which describes its solely Gothic type – Hook and Chantrell were rejecting the protestant-chosen Classical forms of the early 19th Century. Without a doubt, as perfectly as St Peter, Hook’s principal legacy to 19th Century Leeds would be the suburban mission churches in the Significant Church custom which he planted in the poorer parts of the city.
Amongst the congregation for the opening on 2nd September 1841 was Edward Pusey, just one of the leaders of the Oxford Motion. Also there that working day was yet another early adherent to the Motion, the 20 calendar year aged Florence Nightingale.
To see the church that Chantrell constructed you need to stand on the sanctuary steps seeking west, with your again to the altar, for George Road refashioned the east conclude in the 1870s in the comprehensive Higher Church style of that time, with marble by Salviati of Venice and his personal reredos. The glass earlier mentioned is gathered Flemish glass. Your major perception seeking into the nave will be of heavy dark wood, for the 1841 St Peter was effectively continue to a products of the Georgian period, and it retains its elaborately carved galleries on a few sides of the nave, as nicely as an massive pulpit which sweeps significant up into room. Of great curiosity as well is the stained glass in the south aisle and west conclude, for like the woodwork it carefully predates the ecclesiological motion that the subsequent ten years or so would carry.
The church is cruciform, but this is not instantly obvious since of the way transepts and aisles have been hived off for use as chapels and the like. The fantastic tower sits over the north transept, which types 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. Even with the sizing of the church, the woodwork and divisions can make it seem somewhat a cluttered put.
Walter Hook lies in effigy atop a tomb in the north chancel chapel in the medieval style. Certainly, if you did not know, you may well acquire him for a 14th Century prelate. But there are in truth a few of survivals which predate the Victorian church, such as the painted Hardwick tomb of the late 17th Century on the south aspect of the chancel.
In 2011, St Peter was rebadged as Leeds Minster, but quickly right after this the Diocese of Ripon was submerged alongside with the Dioceses of Bradford and Wakefield into the newly formed Diocese of Leeds in 2014. The new Diocese, the most significant in England, presently has three cathedrals of equal status at Ripon, Bradford and Wakefield, but there are very long term options for a new cathedral in the terrific metropolis at the coronary heart of the Diocese, and as element of these it is deemed that Leeds Minster, Leeds Parish Church as was, may well get on the standing of a professional-cathedral.
This, I imagine, would be a pity, for this remarkable regenerated town deserves one thing much better, something major 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 most significant towns in Europe with out a Cathedral for its national church – Dublin and Berlin also spring to thoughts. No, that new Cathedral desires to be in other places in the city centre. As the function of Anglicanism in English tradition shifts and alterations, so St Peter gets less handy as a flagship, and deserves to return to the muscular, sleeves-rolled-up parochial function for which Walter Hook intended it.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2017-11-08 19:06:47
Tagged: , Leeds , West , Yorkshire , yorks , church , nikon , d5300
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