Church Heritage Record 646379

The present church dates predominantly from 1837-1841, when the preceding medieval church was rebuilt by Robert Dennis Chantrell during the incumbency of Dr Walter Farquhar Hook.

The Minster has been the site of continuous Christian worship since perhaps the seventh century, and, with Kirkgate, represents the oldest continuously inhabited part of the city of Leeds. The Minster contains hundreds of monuments dating from the mid-fifteenth century to the present, including many war memorials, reflecting its significance as the historic parish church; and, yet earlier, the reconstructed Anglo-Saxon cross on the altar flats which attests to the significance of Leeds as a religious centre in the ninth to tenth centuries. The Minster is also of paramount importance in the history of Anglican architecture and liturgy in the nineteenth century. It is amongst the most renowned churches of its era, “one of the key ecclesiastical projects of the time, a landmark in both the scholarly revival of the Gothic style and the high-church revival of Anglican Christianity.”

ts exterior is an early exemplar of ‘scholarly’ Gothic. The Minster is the most important work of Robert Dennis Chantrell, an architect of regional significance. The church was a landmark in the scholarly revival of the Gothic style (which was to have a particular impact on the architecture of Leeds throughout the nineteenth century). The design of the Minster is coherent, well-proportioned and well-detailed. Chantrell’s repositioning of the tower to the north side significantly improved the building’s visibility from the town centre. 

The interior reflects the “liturgical dilemma” faced by the church at the start of Queen Victoria’s reign: its west end is a Georgian-style “preaching box”, crammed with seating focussed on the pulpit; its raised east end, of equal length, prefigured the reforms of the Ecclesiologists in allowing generous space for ritual in the sanctuary and in front of the altar, as well as providing stalls for a robed choir for the daily choral services that were one of Dr Hook’s most influential innovations. It has been called “internally, probably the country’s most important church of its date,” and is largely unaltered, save for the removal of pews at the west end, and the reordering of the north aisle and, to a lesser extent, of the Lady Chapel. The church contains many furnishings and memorials of significance.

The tower base functions as the entrance, a dramatic introduction to the building. It gives access to the crossing, Lady Chapel and City of Leeds Room. The Lady Chapel is dedicated as a war memorial and contains many individual memorials. It offers a discrete space in the church for worship or other events. It contains loose seating of local importance and a more significant altar and reredos of the 1920s. The City of Leeds Room, formed by the subdivision of the outer north aisle, functions as a café and gift shop; it also contains the lavatories. The room is useful for its purpose but its connection with the main body of the church and also the exterior of the building could perhaps be improved.

The crossing is of high significance as it forms the point of entry to the main body of the church building and is the pivot around which the organisation of the building turns: to the east, the choir stalls and chancel; to the west, the congregational seating; ahead, the towering organ that fills the south transept. Similarly, the principal east-west vista and its principal aesthetic components – including the high altar and reredos, the choir stalls, pulpit, nave pews and font – are of high architectural significance. The sanctuary and altar flats are of high architectural importance as the visual focus of the building. The altar flats offer a large area to gather but may present access difficulties for wheelchair users and the infirm. The chancel contains the choir stalls: these are of particular historical significance because of the importance of the Minster in the history of church music. Similarly, the Corporation stalls at the crossing reflect the historical importance of the Minster as the civic church.

The Minster contains many items designed by significant architects and designers of the nineteenth century, including the reredos by G. E. Street incorporating designs by Clayton & Bell; the sanctuary apse mosaics by Salviati; the Lady Chapel reredos by F. C. Eden; the effigial monument by Sir Gilbert Scott; and the font by Butterfield. Earlier items of artistic significance include the Anglo-Saxon cross on the altar flats; the Elizabethan Hardwicke tomb and the Walker and Beckett monument by Flaxman, among many other monuments; and the sixteenth-century altar in St Katherine’s chapel. Glass in the church includes Flemish glass of the sixteenth century, several good Victorian windows, and most recently the “Jacob’s Ladder” window in etched glass that fills the tower arch.