After the Reformation the Catholic faith was sustained in Leeds by local recusant families, notably the Killingbecks of Allerton Grange and the Leighs at Middleton. After the passing of the Second Relief Act in 1791, Fr Albert Underhill, a Dominican priest, built a small chapel in Lady Lane in the town centre. By 1836 this was proving inadequate for the growing Catholic population and a large new Gothic Revival church dedicated to St Anne was completed in 1838 at the top of what is now Park Row. The architect was John Child, who had also been responsible for the design for the first St Patrick, Leeds (1831-2). The church was a prominent local landmark, with a spire of 148 feet, and is recorded in Atkinson Grimshaw’s atmospheric painting of 1882, Park Row by Moonlight. Its finest internal features were the elaborate and colourful high altar and reredos, designed by A.W.N. Pugin and installed in 1842, and a pulpit designed by J.F. Bentley, 1897, alabaster and incorporating a central opus sectile panel of Christ and Disciples.

With the creation of the Diocese of Leeds in 1878, St Anne’s became the cathedral. In 1899 Leeds Corporation compulsorily purchased the cathedral, presbytery and parish schools (which had been opened in 1841) for a realignment of the junction of the Headrow and Park Row. In compensation for this, the corporation provided a new site nearby on the corner of Cookridge Street and Great George Street. Bishop Gordon’s choice of architect was between three Yorkshiremen: John Kelly (architect of St Patrick, Leeds and Holy Family, Leeds, but then nearing retirement), J.F. Bentley (then working on the designs for Westminster Cathedral) and the London-based but Leeds-born architect John Henry Eastwood. Both Bentley and Eastwood were founder members of the Guild of St Gregory and St Luke, established to raise the standard of design and furnishings in Catholic churches. Eastwood was chosen, and with his assistant Sydney Kyffin Greenslade prepared over 600 drawings, now held in the diocesan archives. As originally intended, the new cathedral was to have a prominent tower at the southwest corner facing towards Cookridge Street, but threatened litigation from adjoining premises concerned about loss of light meant that the tower was moved to a less imposing position on the north side. The contract was awarded to William Cowlin & Sons of Bristol and the foundation stone laid by Bishop Brindle of Nottingham on 26 July 1902, the Feast of St Anne. On 29 April 1904 Mass was said for the last time in Child’s old cathedral before demolition of that building got underway. Eastwood’s new Arts and Crafts Gothic-style cathedral opened for worship in the following month, and was formally opened by Bishop Gordon on 16 June 1904. The cathedral was finally consecrated on 18 July 1924,  when relics of St Tranquillinus and St Victoria, brought from the Catacombs in Rome, were sealed within the high altar.

When Eastwood’s building first opened, only the most immediately necessary furnishings were in place. Pugin’s high altar and reredos were saved for re-use, as was Bentley’s pulpit. Otherwise, furnishings were added over time as funds permitted, many of these through the efforts of Canon Thomas Shine, who was administrator from 1908 until 1921, when he became Coadjutor Bishop of Middlesbrough and embarked on a church building programme in that diocese. Much of the design flair is Greenslade’s. His high altar and reredos were installed early on, but the designs for the furnishing of the sanctuary were not prepared by Eastwood until 1907, and fundraising for these only got underway from 1910. From 1912 the sanctuary and Lady Chapel walls were painted with murals by the Italian artist Cesare Formilli. Eastwood’s bishop’s throne, with a great Gothic canopy, was installed in 1913. About the same time the Shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour was installed, designed by Eastwood as a memorial to the first administrator, Canon  Croskell. The War Memorial chapel was fitted out in 1920. In 1928 Formilli’s wall paintings on either side of the reredos were replaced with versions of the same design in mosaic, made in Venice under Formilli’s  direction. In 1930 the canons’ stalls were added, from designs by Eastwood.

After his appointment in 1951, Bishop Heenan instigated various simplifications to the design and furnishing of the interior, in tune with the austerity of the time. Formilli’s paintings (but not the mosaics) were removed from sanctuary, as was the canopy over the bishop’s throne. Bentley’s pulpit was moved from the nave to the entrance of the sanctuary and new hanging lamps installed in the nave. 1954 saw the golden jubilee of the Cathedral, which on 10 January was the setting for the first ever televised High Mass in this country.

More radical changes were made for the Cathedral’s diamond jubilee, during the time of Bishop Dwyer and administrator Thomas Murphy. This was the period of the Second Vatican Council, with its renewed emphasis on active congregational participation in the liturgy. In 1963-4 the cathedral was reordered by Weightman and Bullen at a cost of £40,000. Two flights of steps and a low screen were removed from the entrance to the sanctuary, and replaced with a single flight in Swedish green marble and low marble altar rails. Bentley’s pulpit was retained but adapted. The altar was detached from the reredos to allow for westward celebration and the sanctuary repaved with travertine and marble. Eastwood’s cathedra, stalls and screens were replaced with new oak fittings in a diluted Gothic style. In the nave, new paving was laid and the original chairs replaced with hardwood pews. New gates of a vigorous Arts and Crafts character were installed at the entrance to the baptistery.

In 1987 the external stonework was cleaned and repaired and the boundary railings reinstated to Eastwood’s design (the originals having been removed in wartime). In 1991 the cathedral was re-roofed and the building floodlit. Most of these works were grant aided by English Heritage under its Cathedral Grants scheme.

In 2003 the new Cathedral Hall was built at the northeast corner of the site, from designs by Damond Lock Grabowski and Partners.

More recently, a major internal reordering has taken place, initiated by Bishop Konstant and administrator Mgr Peter McGuire, but revised and completed under Bishop Roche and Canon McCreadie, Cathedral Dean (architect Richard Williams of Buttress Fuller Alsop Williams Architects). The works lasted over a year, and the cathedral was formally reopened by Bishop Roche on 13 November 2006. In 2007 the Pugin altar and reredos were conserved and restored, with a grant from English Heritage.

Description

See list description, below. This contains a mis-spelling of Weightman & Bullen, and incorrectly dates their work. The description of the interior ought to be revised to take account of the recent reordering. Weightman and Bullen’s communion rails and Bentley’s pulpit have been removed and a new sandstone altar and ambo introduced at the entrance to the sanctuary, approached from the nave by curving steps. A new cathedra in the style of Eastwood and Greenslade has been introduced at a higher level behind this, flanked by other clergy seating, and prominent in axial views from the nave towards the sanctuary and restored reredos. The 1960s screens to the sanctuary aisles have been removed and new seating for the choir provided behind the clergy seating and below the reredos. In the nave, a York stone floor with underfloor heating has been installed, and new benches have replaced the 1960s pews. The font has been moved from the former baptistery, minus its base, to the west end, where new glass doors have also been introduced within a new lobby designed to be in keeping with Eastwood and Greenslade’s work. Reconciliation rooms of a contemporary glazed design have been introduced adjacent to the south transept. The Lady Chapel has become the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, and Pugin’s reredos conserved and restored. The Stations of the Cross, dating from 1912 and painted by Cesare Formilli, have been cleaned and better displayed.

Internal features and furnishings of note not mentioned or inadequately described in the list description include the following:

• The font, now located at the west end of the nave and doubling as a stoup, from the old cathedral. Late nineteenth century, Gothic. Hexagonal with carved sides, lacking its base.
• Statue of the Sacred Heart, 1922 by Formilli, in the former baptistery. The arts and crafts-style railings to the former baptistery are from Weightman & Bullen’s reordering, 1963-4.
• In the chapel adjoining the baptistery, the pieta, 1913 by Boulton of Cheltenham, modelled on Michelangelo’s pieta in St Peter’s, Rome.
• War memorial, 1920, by Formilli. Above the altar is the foundation stone, laid on 26 July 1902.
• Chapel of St Joseph, designed by Eastwood and executed by H. H. Martyn of Cheltenham, 1904, with a stone altar frontal and oak and gilded reredos.
• Chapel of the Sacred Heart, designed by Greenslade and executed by Nathaniel Hitch, 1904, marble altar incorporating an alabaster panel of the Last Supper; reredos with Sacred Heart, Moses and Crucifixion.
• Sanctuary reredos designed by Greenslade and executed by Flint Bros of Clapham, 1904. Central gilded relief of the Coronation of the Virgin, flanked by eight statues of Yorkshire saints.
• Mosaics around the reredos made in Venice under Formilli’s direction. 1928.
• Above the entrance to the Lady Chapel, a large statue of Our Lady Immaculate by Boulton of Cheltenham, 1933.
• Tall Gothic shrine to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, 1913, designed by Greenslade and executed by H.H. Martyn & Co. of Cheltenham, 1913, in south transept.
• Stained glass: The only one of Eastwood’s designs to be realised was the east window. Glass in the south transept, depicting the Temptation and Transfiguration, was installed before the Second World War, brought by Canon Shine from another church. Crucifixion (1927) and Resurrection (1929) in the north transept by Kayll and Read, who also provided the delicate patterned glass, installed in the rest of the church in 1931.
• Shrine of St Urban, with Greenslade’s reliquary, surmounted by a painting commemorating Yorkshire martyrs, by Richard Lomas, 1988.

List description (Cathedral, presbytery, walls, railings & gates)

GV II*

Roman Catholic cathedral and presbytery with boundary walls, railings and gates. 1902-04 with C19 remains. By JH Eastwood and SK Greenslade; re-ordered 1960 by Wakeman and Bullen. Cathedral: Ketton stone ashlar, coursed Horsforth sandstone, slate 2-pitch roofs; presbytery: cream and red brick, steeply-pitched slate roof with diamond motif to brick stack between bays 1 and 2 and deep eaves; stone boundary walls, cast-iron railings and gates. Arts and Crafts Gothic Revival style.

PLAN: on an almost-square trapezoidal site which slopes up from west to east, the Cathedral having a wide 4-bay nave, north and south aisles and short transepts, 4-bay chancel with organ on north side and octagonal sacristy to south, 2-stage north tower, a ceremonial west entrance, and south entrance from St Ann Street; 2 storey with attic and basement presbytery and offices on the north-east corner of the site, entered from Great George Street.

EXTERIOR: west elevation: porch with 7 steps to low double gates with cross and scroll motifs and paired panelled doors under arch surmounted by a large stone Crucifix with flanking figures fronting the west window of 3, 6, 3 lights; flanking buttresses. South facade: steps up to deeply-recessed paired panelled doors under a round arch, left; 2, and 3-light windows with elaborate tracery under deep segmental and pointed arches; sacristy with single-light windows and octagonal roof projects right, boundary wall has ashlar coping surmounted by plain bars, thicker standards with splayed finials and overthrow at entrance. North facade: 2-stage tower with plinth, narrow windows and niches, 2-light louvred belfry windows, clasping square buttresses, pyramid roof; presbytery left: steps up to round-arched stone porch right, 4-panel door, top 2 panels glazed, small-pane cross windows of 5 lights, a canted bay to left of entrance. North side boundary wall and railings similar to those on south side, fronting presbytery but interrupted along range fronting transept.

INTERIOR: cathedral has elaborate font on north side; side chapels with statues and altars, short transepts, high chancel with organ on north side. Roll mouldings to nave piers, ornate niches high on plain walls, the 3 flanking the chancel arch having statues, shallow pointed arch to roof; east end mosaic with figures rising to small east window above fine carved and painted reredos. Fittings from the earlier church include reredos in south chancel chapel designed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, completed by 1842, Decorated details, cresting and 9 figures; pulpit by JF Bentley, 1897.

HISTORICAL NOTE: the first church was built in 1838 and became the cathedral of the new Roman Catholic diocese of Leeds in 1878. JH Eastwood was a founder member of the Guild of St Gregory and St Luke devoted to the improvement of church craftsmanship.

(A History of Modern Leeds: Yates, N: The Religious Life of Victorian Leeds: MUP: 1980-: 256; Pevsner, N & Metcalfe P: The Cathedrals of England).

Listing NGR: SE2994733908

The post +Leeds – Cathedral Church of St Anne appeared first on Taking Stock.

From  1918,  Fr  Broderick,  based   in  Fitzwilliam  and   then  Kinsley,  said  Mass occasionally at the Grange in Ackworth. At the founding of the parish of Ackworth and Kinsley in 1920, Eagle House was bought in High Ackworth and a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes. In 1937, the parish was re-founded as Kinsley with Ackworth and a new church and presbytery built in Kinsley. Our Lady of Lourdes was then built at Ackworth Crossroads (now Hill Top) in 1939, about two miles southwest of High (and Low) Ackworth villages.  It was a developing community and is now bigger than the two villages combined (and still growing). Probably in the early 1970s, a low ceiling was introduced into the church and some reordering undertaken. Some further reordering was undertaken and new lighting installed in the early 1990s. The church remained a chapel-of -ease to Kinsley until 2004 when both were incorporated into Hemsworth parish and served by the priest resident there.

Description

Our Lady of Lourdes is built on a north/south axis parallel to the Barnsley Road, but liturgical compass points are used throughout this report.

This cruciform plan church is built of red brick with cast stone detailing and a pitched pantiled roof. There is no foundation stone and the author has not discovered the name of the architect, but some details suggest Charles E. Fox (soldier courses up the gables, the raised brick cross in the east wall and the tripartite window to the south transept). It is certainly a more architecturally accomplished building than the simple church erected at Kinsley the previous year (presumably for  the same priest) by Empsall, Clarkson & Clarke.

The tall windows of the three bay nave have cast stone tree-like tracery and metal framed glazing set on the inside face of the deep brickwork openings. (Unfortunately, all the tracery is obscured externally by sheets of polycarbonate). The north ‘transept’ is not open to the nave, but is in fact a flat roofed single storey block containing a confessional (west half) and the sacristy (east). The eastern external sacristy doorway has been bricked up. Above the two labelled internal doors with painted surrounds there is a glazed roundel with cruciform cast stone tracery, now cut in two by the inserted ceiling. The south transept is open to the nave – though the opening is also cut in half by the ceiling – with a simplified Venetian window in its south wall, also with tree-like cast stone tracery and decorative metal framed glass. Externally there is a triangular headed niche in the gable above the window, with a modern white- painted stone statue of Our Lady placed on a projecting platform painted blue like the back of the niche. The gable cross is missing. The east wall of the transept contains a large internal altar niche that projects externally as a square block. Between it and the chancel rises a brick chimney from the underground boiler chamber beneath.

The west end has a stepped flat topped gable wall rising above the pitched nave roof. Its gable cross is also missing, but the substantial decorated base survives, over a stone cross (instead of a west window), that appears to be a recent insert. It was perhaps like the raised brick cross of the east wall? There is no west door, but a single storey five sided apse, designed as a baptistery but now used as an area for serving refreshments. There are three small square headed windows. Its internal round arch (the apex also cut off by the ceiling) is flanked by round headed altar niches. The main entrance is from the southwest flat-roofed porch, up three stairs with the original iron rails and double panelled wooden door set within a carefully detailed cast stone surround.

The chancel has three nearly square windows with metal framed glazing to north and south, but no east window; the original altar sanctuary extends enough to allow a small side window to each side. As the external east gable has no soldier course and does not rise above the pitched roof like the other gables, it has possibly been reduced (perhaps when the present pantiled roof was put on?); the present terracotta Victorian-style cross at the apex is clearly not original.

The internal space is made low and almost oppressive by the suspended ceiling. There is a continuous painted inscription (gold letters on white) running around the whole interior. The eastern apse of the south transept containing a statue of Our Lady is covered with mainly blue mosaics by Fr Bill Burtoft of c.1990-95. The sanctuary furniture is recent, with the shadows of the hanging crucifix creating a dramatic backdrop to the big wooden altar.

The post Ackworth – Our Lady of Lourdes appeared first on Taking Stock.

Addingham is notable for its connection with three local Martyrs: Richard Kirkman, who born in the village and who was executed at York in 1582, Christopher Wharton and Richard Horner, both born in nearby Bolton Bridge and executed at York in 1598. Up until 1893 provision for Mass was at nearby Ilkley. Fr Galli from Sacred Heart of Jesus, Ilkley secured the use of two upper rooms in a building just off Main Street in Addingham. The rooms were registered in 1907 as a place of worship and for marriages in 1909. Mass was said here once a month by the priests from Ilkley until 1922, when the Bishop of Leeds entrusted the care of the Addingham Catholics to the Passionist fathers at Myddleton Lodge. Addingham was made a separate parish at this time.

From 1922 onwards it was hoped to build a new church and a site was found on Bolton Road. On 9 August 1927 the foundation stone of a new church was laid by Bishop Cowgill and the church was dedicated to Our Lady and the English Martyrs. The architect was W. H. H. Marten of Leeds and the church was built at a cost of £2,000.

The Passionist fathers had care over the parish until 1978. In 1981 James Clarke and Sarah Foley, two former inhabitants of the village, endowed the building of the presbytery and link building containing parish rooms. The sanctuary was reordered at about this time.

Description

A single-storey structure, constructed on a sandstone plinth with concrete dressings and pebbledash walls and a red plaintile roof. Arts and Crafts style. Rectangular in plan, the west (street) elevation is a gable wall with a dressed stone porch with opposing doors on the north and south sides. Surrounds to windows and doors all moulded concrete. The north and south elevations are identical, of six bays with stone buttresses. The long sloping roofline is broken by four dormer windows.

Good porch doors with decorative glass panels and door furniture in Arts and Crafts style. Once inside the main feature is the open arch-braced truss roof; later metal structural supports have been inserted. The roof trusses spring from delicate carved fluted columns which have exposed concrete bases. The church is lit by the dormer windows at clerestory height in the north and south elevations. A central aisle flanked by simple wooden pews leads to the sanctuary. The reordering has left some of the original Gothic wooden altar rails and a forward altar of white and coloured marble stands in front of the original altar and reredos. This is constructed of a combination of coloured marbles and alabaster; the altar is similar to that installed in the chapel at Myddleton Lodge by the Passionists and provided by Boulton & Sons of Cheltenham. Here the medallions illustrate two of the English Martyrs. The Stations of the Cross were donated by members of the Fattorini family. The sacristy lies behind the sanctuary and used to house stairs up to the roof space where overnight accommodation was provided for the visiting Passionist fathers.

The post Addingham – (Our Lady and) English Martyrs appeared first on Taking Stock.

Airedale was originally a mining community outside Castleford and was greatly expanded after Second World War slum clearances in Castleford and Pontefract. In 1944, Mass was first offered in the adjacent Magnet public house by Canon John Cromford from the mother parish church of St Joseph, Castleford. Later the Methodist Hall was used and then a 300-seat army hut purchased for £100 and brought from Scarborough by the men of the parish on two trucks.

In 1958, Fr Michael Daly was appointed to create the new parish of St Edmund and he commissioned a Wakefield architect, Philip B. Beard, to design a church to the Bishop of Leeds’ instructions: no arcades (consider portal frame construction), seating with a central aisle, two confessionals, a porch/narthex and copper roof. Work began in August 1960 and although a Christmas Mass was conducted in the church in 1961, it was only formally opened on 21 February 1962. The fear of mining subsidence led to three tiers of ramps being laid, which presumably took some time to construct. Although the Catholic Building Review in 1959 suggested that the church was to be built in ‘sand faced bricks’, the decision seems to have been made to use stone cladding instead. With the presbytery, the church cost £43,000, and seats around 370.

The population continued to expand and in 1972, a large parish hall was begun, to the north of the church and it was planned to build a school too.

In 1996, all the copper roofs were replaced with blue slates; the mosaic background to the crucifix was removed from the rear wall of the sanctuary; a suspended ceiling added to the nave and new lighting installed, at a total cost of £105,350.

Description

The church is aligned southwest to northeast, but liturgical compass points are used.

Both St Edmund’s church and presbytery are built of brick with stone cladding with ashlar dressings surrounding the timber windows and doors and blue slate roofs (replacing the original copper finish) with incongruous Victorian tile crestings and finials  dating  from  1996. The church is a six- bay portal frame, the western bay recessed for the west gallery over a glazed narthex and with transverse single storey additions forming a baptistery (north) and covered porch (south). An additional narrower frame provides an eastern sanctuary bay. Midway along the south side a flat-roofed building provides two confessionals, a large sacristy and the link to the presbytery. A small, probably lead, covered spirelet and cross sit on the roof above the front of the west gallery (possibly a distant echo of the contemporary Coventry Cathedral).

The top two-thirds of the west facade to Queen’s Park Drive are glazed within a stone frame that projects over the glass and iron double west doors flanked by windows. The side walls are of white painted render between red brick buttresses protecting the steel frames, the large three-light windows being placed at an angle at the western end of each bay.

Inside, the sixty-foot span worshipping space is almost square with a gently pitched ceiling and dominated by the strongly coloured glass of the huge west window depicting the Creation (signed Clokey, Belfast). All other glazing is of obscure white glass, using alternating reeded and patterned panes. All the furnishings are of 1961 with polished brass (or copper?) altar rails, font cover, candlesticks and tabernacle. The sanctuary steps and three eastern altars make much use of a grey marble but the main altar (now brought forward from the east wall) is faced with a white marble with crimson veining and the side altar frontals are of a pink mottled marble. All altars include brass indents and the original wooden crucifix is also framed in polished brass. It originally stood against a mosaic background (possibly pink) but this started to fall off and was replaced with plaster painted dark pink in 1996. The lino tile floor is also original, grey with darker grey insets.

The post Airedale – St Edmund appeared first on Taking Stock.

In 1914 Canon John Hewison of St Joseph’s Castleford purchased this corner site to provide a chapel-of-ease serving the numerous small mining villages in the north of his parish. He appointed Arthur Hartley, an architect from Pontefract to design a building to seat 100. Bishop Cargill blessed the foundation stone beside the west porch on 30 August 1915. The church opened on 6 August 1916.

The parish was created in 1954 and in the 1960s the church was reordered with new furniture and the walls re-plastered. A separate parish centre was also built to the rear (and a little downhill) of the church. It is thought that some or all of the walls were underpinned in the 1970s. The present presbytery next to the church was bought to replace another house further north up Preston Road. Fr Lawler has carried out a number of improvements.

Description

The church is at right angles to Preston Lane and so oriented to the north-east, therefore liturgical compass points have been used.

St John’s church is a simple three-bay rectangular red brick and slate building, 48 ft by 21ft, with large raking buttresses, a projecting chancel with a sacristy wrapped around its north and east sides and a west porch. There is some applied timber framing in the gable of the west wall over the three light west window over the west porch (with its own raking buttresses). All the windows are wooden framed with a flat trefoil head, but there are stone cills that seem to suggest stone windows might have been planned. The nave windows have two lights and reach to the wall plate under overhanging eaves. It seems there were worries about subsidence, hence the raking buttresses, but the tallest wall at the east end is unbuttressed. However, the northeast vestry was extended beneath the northern of the two east windows at some point to provide a WC for the priest.

The nave has a close boarded three-cant ceiling with side purlins and thin arched braces reinforced with iron tie bars. The sanctuary is similarly ceiled and has been re-floored and redecorated by Fr Lawler. He has also carpeted the nave and introduced an etched glass west door, the nineteenth century altar rails and many new furnishings and devotional pieces. Most windows are filled with stained glass, many post-First World War memorials, but three are recent. The format is remarkably consistent, with standing figures surrounded by coloured glass in decorative lead frames.

The post Allerton Bywater – St John the Evangelist appeared first on Taking Stock.

Baildon originated as a village in the hills to the north of Shipley, but was greatly extended with interwar housing. From 1863 Baildon Catholics attended Mass in Shipley. A Mass centre to serve the growing community was established 1929; Fr McGarvey held the first services in the Woodbottom School in December that year and in 1930 in a hut in Cliffe Lane. The site for a new church was bought for £720 in 1930; Fr McGarvey raised 90% of the building fund from America. The first Mass was celebrated in the new church on 2 July 1933. St Aidan’s became a parish in 1945 with Fr McGarvey the first parish priest.

Description

The building is built across a steep slope so that the parish hall is on the lower ground floor beneath the church. The church is built of coursed sandstone, with nave and chancel under one roof, covered with Welsh slates, with coped verges and cast-iron eaves gutters. The church is entered by a flat-roofed porch with parapet at the west end facing the road, with original double timber side doors. The four-bay nave has three pointed windows to the south and four to the north side, all in concrete surrounds, between pilaster buttresses. The chancel is expressed by a stone bellcote carried up above the south wall, and has single lancets to each side and to the east. To the south of the chancel is a two-storey tower with swept hipped roof, containing entrance to parish rooms on lower ground floor and vestry and sacristy on ground floor. The lower ground floor parish room has segmental-headed windows.

The interior has not been inspected, but is understood to have an aisleless nave with oak pews and plain plastered walls. The shallow sanctuary has an oak altar and liturgical fittings. The floor is carpeted and there are two mosaic panels to St Aidan and St Oswald in the sanctuary. The parish hall has a suspended ceiling and timber floor, with a bar at one end.

The post Baildon – St Aidan appeared first on Taking Stock.

The church was built in 1934 as a chapel-of-ease to Sicklinghall. The Diocesan Directory gives the architect as Stephen Simpson. Bardsey became part of the parish of Wetherby in 1942.

Description

Small, simple coursed sandstone building with Welsh blue slate roof. Plain, stripped-down Arts and Crafts style, almost domestic in character. Main elevation to street is the gable end of the rectangular building with to the left a single storey stone porch with simple carved stone hoodmould over the main wooden door. Triple light stone mullioned window with small panes of frosted clear glass. The gable is surmounted by a small carved stone cross. South flank elevation punctuated by three sets of two-light windows, again with stone mullions and dressings and similar small panes. At the rear of the north elevation a small porch to the sacristy.

Internally the church has a simple rectangular plan form. A suspended ceiling has been inserted, with office-style lighting. The walls are whitewashed with the stone window dressings revealed. The sanctuary is raised up by a single step with a carved wooden altar of restrained Gothic Revival design. The simple wooden pews are of a similar date and appear to date from the building of the chapel.

The post Bardsey – The Blessed Sacrament appeared first on Taking Stock.

Up until 1897 Catholics at Barnoldswick had to travel the seven miles to the chapel at Bentham Hall but in that year Fr Honore Marchel acquired a disused Methodist chapel in Westgate. This served until 1901 when the present spacious site, on the corner of Gisburn Road and Gisburn Street, was purchased and a temporary corrugated iron church erected. Barnoldswick became an independent parish in 1907. The school was built in 1914 and in 1927 Charles Simpson of Edward Simpson & Son of Bradford was commissioned to design the present church, which was built in 1928-9 and opened by Bishop Cowgill of Leeds in June 1929. The design appears to have been strongly influenced by the parish priest, the Revd Theodore Van Woerkom, a Dutch émigré;  a plaque at the west end states that he ‘designed and built this church’.

The church was reordered in the late 1970s, at the time of its silver jubilee. The marble altar was brought forward and the original altar rails re-sited in the arches at the side of the sanctuary.  A dwarf wall was removed and the three steps extended across the face of the sanctuary. A marble lectern and ambo were introduced and the font re-sited near the sanctuary. The reordered church and altar were dedicated by Bishop Wheeler of Leeds.

Description

St Joseph’s is a late flowering of the Gothic Revival in its latest Perpendicular manifestation, owing perhaps more to the Nonconformist churches of George Baines & Son than to the Anglican ecclesiastical work of Temple Moore. Rock-faced stone with ashlar dressings and slate roofs. Nave and sanctuary under one continuous roof. North and south nave aisles, their roofs hidden behind parapets, and terminated by lower chapels also with parapet roofs. Sacristies etc attached at the southeast corner, southwest porch (entered from the east side) and a distinctive southwest bellcote with octagonal stone piers and a crocketted pinnacle. The windows are mostly of three lights, with the mullions passing through the middle of reticulation units. The west window is made up of two similar adjoining windows set high up. These windows all have flat surrounds without chamfers, giving an overall appearance of flatness. The sanctuary has no east window and single-light windows set high up on the north and south sides. Domestic-style mullioned windows to the presbytery.

The interior surprises because it is lined in red brick. There is no structural division between nave and sanctuary, although the two are clearly distinguished by the wall treatment. Robust nave arcades of unusual form. To the aisles the piers are flat but to the nave the piers are chamfered, coming almost to a point. Above these chamfers there are bulbous capitals but above all is flat with the many mouldings of the arches dying into the imposts. Continuous moulded hoodmoulds. The sanctuary has single arch openings into the side chapels and the upper windows with deeply-splayed reveals. The east wall has three blind arches in a stepped arrangement set high up. Hammerbeam roof with scissor trusses. The church has a good collection of furnishings. The carved oak high altar and reredos were donated in 1936 by the Jurgens family of Holland, when the original wooden altar was moved to the Sacred Heart chapel. The Stations of the Cross, painted in copper, are said to be copies of those in Antwerp Cathedral.

Entry amended by AHP 11.09.2026, incorporating information from parish website.

The post Barnoldswick – St Joseph appeared first on Taking Stock.

The first priest came to Batley in 1853.  Land for a new church was purchased in 1861 and the building was completed in December 1870. The architect was John Kelly of Leeds. The original church consisted of a nave and chancel under one roof with a south porch. In 1884 the church was enlarged by the addition of transepts containing side altars and the small apsidal northwest baptistery was probably added at the same time. The marble high altar was installed in 1929. The sanctuary mosaics were installed in 1952. The church has escaped major post-Vatican II liturgical adaptation.

List description

II

Gothic Revival Church. 1870. Dressed stone. Pitched slate roof.  4-bay buttressed nave with porch to right and apsidal baptistry to left. Transepts. Nave windows are 2- light with stained glass and cusped heads with single quatrefoil over. Each bay has relieving arch. The front of the church is apsidal. The rear elevation, to the road, has central triple group of very tall lights with sexfoil in head. To each side is 2-light similar window with quatrefoil in head. Central doorway with pointed arch and cambered head. Plain but colourful interior. The apsidal chancel is treated as a blind arcade filled with mosaic, above which are 9 paired 2-light stained glass clerestory windows. Chancel arch with 2 carved figures. Chapels to left and right separated by 2 bay arcade. Later gallery to rear below which is glass screen forming vestibule. Arched braced hammer beam roof.

The post Batley – St Mary of the Angels appeared first on Taking Stock.

Dewsbury prospered from about 1870 with the arrival of large textile mills and the railway.  A school-chapel was opened in 1881 by Fr Kenny.  The architect has not been established, but Edward Simpson is a possibility; at any rate it was Simpson who substantially enlarged it with the addition of a sanctuary in 1914. From 1914 the church operated independently from the school, which closed around forty years ago.

Description

The church is a small stone-built structure with a low-pitched slate roof. The west extension is raised above a classroom space with large semi-circular brick arches. The north wall has inset windows and the east wall windows and a door. The extension has a stone buttress to the east wall and rooflights to the sanctuary, both added in the second half of the twentieth century. The school building adjoins the centre of the church (the school and chapel originally formed an ‘H’ plan). The hall building faces Naylor Road and is of two storeys. Raised bellcote to north gable. At the south end of the east wall is a doorway, the former entrance to the chapel (which led via steps underneath the hall to the internal courtyard). Above this a small canopied recess which once housed a figure of St Joseph. The exterior wall of the (liturgical) west end has a tall pair of Gothic windows, now blocked with stone.

Today the church is entered through a northeast porch, via a stone and concrete ramp built in the 1960s. The interior is long and narrow and painted white, with some coloured areas to lower walls. The old chapel has a simple wood beam structure, the 1914 extension is defined by squat Gothic arches which are rendered in white.  There are two side aisle arcades formed of ornate wooden bracing. One space houses a repository and a Victorian font (brought from St Paulinus), the other has a side chapel and doors leading to the school. The organ is located immediately opposite the entrance. The vestry is in the northwest corner, originally entered via a separate external porch, now longer in use. There is a late twentieth century gallery with spiral staircase at the (liturgical) west end. The sanctuary is raised by three steps (boiler room and classroom below).

Fr William Hayes commissioned the Lady Altar and Altar of St Joseph in 1918-21. In 1931 the stained glass east windows, featuring four saints and two quatrefoil angels, were paid for by subscription. The church has a variety of pew types, all of which appear to be 20th century. The pulpit dates from the 1990s and is dedicated to the church’s recent donor with the inscription: Gwen Cockrem /1910-1993 / In /Gratitude. On the wall of the gallery is a fine blue and white ceramic roundel of the Virgin and Child with seraphim, in the style of della Robbia.

The post Batley Carr – St Joseph appeared first on Taking Stock.