St Peter, Leeds, West Yorkshire
As with the city in which it sits, Leeds Parish Church is wide, grand, fascinating, and most likely not promptly likeable. But like the city alone, the church before long reveals its friendliness and idiosyncrasies to them as are prepared to take it as they find it.
St Peter is 1 of the excellent urban parish churches of England. Building began in 1837, a couple months just after the accession of the young Queen. It was the 1st significant setting up challenge in the freshly made Diocese of Ripon, which had been carved out of the Archdiocese of York, and what a challenge it was. At first it was planned as a huge restore task on the 14th Century church which formerly stood on this website. The architect was Robert Chantrell. However, it became very clear to Chantrell that a full rebuilding was vital, and so it took place. The new church was concluded in time for opening in 1841. The cost was a small limited of £30,000, about six million in modern cash, which doesn’t look a whole lot but of program labour was proportionately so significantly much less expensive then than right now. And not only was St Peter the first good church of the Victorian period, it was also the most significant church crafted in England for much 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 should be ‘big plenty of to keep as quite a few people today as possible’. But this is no preaching barn, mainly because Hook was an early follower of the Oxford Motion, and his church was intended to provide a sacramental house as perfectly as an evangelising one particular, which clarifies its solely Gothic fashion – Hook and Chantrell were being rejecting the protestant-chosen Classical types of the early 19th Century. In truth, as nicely as St Peter, Hook’s major legacy to 19th Century Leeds would be the suburban mission church buildings in the Superior Church tradition which he planted in the poorer spots of the town.
Among the 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 Also there that day was a different early adherent to the Movement, the 20 12 months outdated Florence Nightingale.
To see the church that Chantrell designed you will need to stand on the sanctuary methods searching west, with your back to the altar, for George Road refashioned the east finish in the 1870s in the extensive Superior Church style of that time, with marble by Salviati of Venice and his own reredos. The glass above is collected Flemish glass. Your principal impact seeking into the nave will be of heavy dim wooden, for the 1841 St Peter was primarily even now a product or service of the Georgian era, and it retains its elaborately carved galleries on a few sides of the nave, as very well as an tremendous pulpit which sweeps superior up into place. Of wonderful curiosity way too is the stained glass in the south aisle and west conclusion, for like the woodwork it carefully predates the ecclesiological motion that the upcoming decade or so would convey.
The church is cruciform, but this is not straight away apparent simply because of the way transepts and aisles have been hived off for use as chapels and the like. The good tower sits earlier mentioned the north transept, which sorts an entrance spot. The chancel aisle to the east of it varieties a war memorial chapel, the outer north nave aisle now consists of a cafe. Despite the size of the church, the woodwork and divisions can make it seem rather a cluttered spot.
Walter Hook lies in effigy atop a tomb in the north chancel chapel in the medieval trend. In fact, if you failed to know, you may well choose him for a 14th Century prelate. But there are in fact a few of survivals which predate the Victorian church, together with 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 soon after this the Diocese of Ripon was submerged alongside with the Dioceses of Bradford and Wakefield into the recently fashioned Diocese of Leeds in 2014. The new Diocese, the most significant in England, at the moment has three cathedrals of equivalent standing at Ripon, Bradford and Wakefield, but there are extended term options for a new cathedral in the fantastic 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 possibly acquire on the standing of a pro-cathedral.
This, I think, would be a pity, for this incredible regenerated city warrants some thing far better, a little something large and wholly new that would be as substantially a beacon for 21st Century Anglicanism as St Peter was for the 19th Century. Leeds is 1 of the most significant towns in Europe with out a Cathedral for its countrywide church – Dublin and Berlin also spring to intellect. No, that new Cathedral requirements to be in other places in the metropolis centre. As the part of Anglicanism in English tradition shifts and modifications, so St Peter gets a lot less helpful as a flagship, and justifies to return to the muscular, sleeves-rolled-up parochial get the job done for which Walter Hook supposed it.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2017-11-08 20:19:38
Tagged: , Leeds , Minster , West , yorkshire , nikon , d5300 , yorks
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