St John the Evangelist's Church is a
redundant Anglican
Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...
church in the centre of the city of
Leeds
Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...
,
West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. It is an inland and upland county having eastward-draining valleys while taking in the moors of the Pennines. West Yorkshire came into exi ...
, England. It is recorded in the
National Heritage List for England
The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, an ...
as a designated Grade I
listed building
In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...
,
and is under the care of the
Churches Conservation Trust
The Churches Conservation Trust is a registered charity whose purpose is to protect historic churches at risk in England. The charity cares for over 350 churches of architectural, cultural and historic significance, which have been transferred in ...
.
The architectural historian
Nikolaus Pevsner
Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (1 ...
refers to it as "the only church at Leeds of more than local interest".
History
St John's is the oldest church in the city centre of Leeds. It was begun in 1631 and was consecrated in 1634, at a time when few churches were being built.
It was paid for by
John Harrison
John Harrison ( – 24 March 1776) was a self-educated English carpenter and clockmaker who invented the marine chronometer, a long-sought-after device for solving the problem of calculating longitude while at sea.
Harrison's solution revol ...
, who was a wealthy wool merchant and local benefactor.
[ The church was altered between 1830 and 1838; this included remodelling of the tower by John Clark.][ In the middle of the 19th century the parish planned to demolish the church and build a more modern one. A successful campaign to rescue it was supported by ]Richard Norman Shaw
Richard Norman Shaw RA (7 May 1831 – 17 November 1912), also known as Norman Shaw, was a British architect who worked from the 1870s to the 1900s, known for his country houses and for commercial buildings. He is considered to be among the g ...
and Sir George Gilbert Scott
Sir George Gilbert Scott (13 July 1811 – 27 March 1878), known as Sir Gilbert Scott, was a prolific English Gothic Revival architect, chiefly associated with the design, building and renovation of churches and cathedrals, although he started ...
.[ Gilbert Scott said that 'no other town in England can produce a parallel', persuading the Bishop to allow it to be restored rather than destroyed.] In 1866–68 Shaw restored
''Restored'' is the fourth
studio album by American contemporary Christian music musician Jeremy Camp. It was released on November 16, 2004 by BEC Recordings.
Track listing
Standard release
Enhanced edition
Deluxe gold edition
Standard ...
the church, and added a south porch and a new vestry
A vestry was a committee for the local secular and ecclesiastical government for a parish in England, Wales and some English colonies which originally met in the vestry or sacristy of the parish church, and consequently became known colloquiall ...
. From 1890 Temple Moore
Temple Lushington Moore (7 June 1856 – 30 June 1920) was an English architect who practised in London. He is famed for a series of fine Gothic Revival churches built between about 1890 and 1917 and also restored many churches and designed ch ...
reinstated some of the 17th-century woodwork removed by Shaw, and carried out further restoration.[ St John's was declared redundant on 1 November 1975, and was ]vested
In law, vesting is the point in time when the rights and interests arising from legal ownership of a property is acquired by some person. Vesting creates an immediately secured right of present or future deployment. One has a vested right to an ...
in the Trust on 17 January 1977.
Architecture
Exterior
The style of the architecture from the outside could be mistaken for the late 15th century. The church is built in ashlar
Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruv ...
stone, and has a grey slate
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...
roof. Its plan consists of a nave
The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...
with a south aisle
An aisle is, in general, a space for walking with rows of non-walking spaces on both sides. Aisles with seating on both sides can be seen in airplanes, certain types of buildings, such as churches, cathedrals, synagogues, meeting halls, parl ...
and a south porch, a chancel
In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse.
Ove ...
, and a west tower. The whole of the exterior of the church is embattled
A battlement in defensive architecture, such as that of city walls or castles, comprises a parapet (i.e., a defensive low wall between chest-height and head-height), in which gaps or indentations, which are often rectangular, occur at interva ...
with pinnacle
A pinnacle is an architectural element originally forming the cap or crown of a buttress or small turret, but afterwards used on parapets at the corners of towers and in many other situations. The pinnacle looks like a small spire. It was mainly ...
s at the corners. Its architectural style is Perpendicular
In elementary geometry, two geometric objects are perpendicular if they intersect at a right angle (90 degrees or π/2 radians). The condition of perpendicularity may be represented graphically using the ''perpendicular symbol'', ⟂. It can ...
. The tower is in three stages and has diagonal buttress
A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall. Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient buildings, as a means of providing support to act against the lateral (s ...
es. In the bottom stage is a two-light west window; the middle stage contains a clock face on the north, west and south sides; and in the top stage are three-light bell openings. The porch has angle buttresses, and an arched doorway with a sundial
A sundial is a horological device that tells the time of day (referred to as civil time in modern usage) when direct sunlight shines by the apparent position of the Sun in the sky. In the narrowest sense of the word, it consists of a flat ...
above. On each side of the church are four-light Perpendicular windows, with five-light windows at the east ends of the nave and aisle, and at the west end of the aisle. Internally the arcade
Arcade most often refers to:
* Arcade game, a coin-operated game machine
** Arcade cabinet, housing which holds an arcade game's hardware
** Arcade system board, a standardized printed circuit board
* Amusement arcade, a place with arcade games
* ...
is carried on octagonal piers Piers may refer to:
* Pier, a raised structure over a body of water
* Pier (architecture), an architectural support
* Piers (name), a given name and surname (including lists of people with the name)
* Piers baronets, two titles, in the baronetages ...
, the capitals of which are carved with acanthus leaves and ball ornaments. The roof is highly decorated, containing tie beams, corbel
In architecture, a corbel is a structural piece of stone, wood or metal jutting from a wall to carry a superincumbent weight, a type of bracket. A corbel is a solid piece of material in the wall, whereas a console is a piece applied to the s ...
s carved with angels and musicians, gilded
Gilding is a decorative technique for applying a very thin coating of gold over solid surfaces such as metal (most common), wood, porcelain, or stone. A gilded object is also described as "gilt". Where metal is gilded, the metal below was tradi ...
pendants, and panels decorated with roses and other plants.[
]
Interior
The richly carved decoration and plasterwork follow late 16th century styles derived from the Low Countries. Most of the fittings are Jacobean in style, and have been described as the "glory" of the church.[ This applies particularly to the elaborately carved screen across the nave and the aisle.][ There is similarly detailed carving on the wall panels, the pews and the ]pulpit
A pulpit is a raised stand for preachers in a Christian church. The origin of the word is the Latin ''pulpitum'' (platform or staging). The traditional pulpit is raised well above the surrounding floor for audibility and visibility, access ...
.[ Also in the church is a royal coat of arms and three brass ]chandelier
A chandelier (; also known as girandole, candelabra lamp, or least commonly suspended lights) is a branched ornamental light fixture designed to be mounted on ceilings or walls. Chandeliers are often ornate, and normally use incandescent li ...
s.[ The stained glass dates from the 19th century, and includes a memorial window to John Harrison, depicting him performing good deeds, and directing the building of the church. Around the church are memorials to other citizens of the city.][
]
See also
*Grade I listed buildings in West Yorkshire
There are over 9,000 Grade I listed buildings in England. This page is a list of these buildings in the county of West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. It i ...
*Grade I listed churches in West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. Created as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972, it consists of five metropolitan boroughs, namely the City o ...
* List of church restorations and alterations by Temple Moore
*
*
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint John the Evangelist's Church, Leeds
Religious buildings and structures completed in 1638
17th-century Church of England church buildings
John the Evangelist
John the Evangelist ( grc-gre, Ἰωάννης, Iōánnēs; Aramaic: ܝܘܚܢܢ; Ge'ez: ዮሐንስ; ar, يوحنا الإنجيلي, la, Ioannes, he, יוחנן cop, ⲓⲱⲁⲛⲛⲏⲥ or ⲓⲱ̅ⲁ) is the name traditionally given t ...
Leeds, John
English Gothic architecture in West Yorkshire
Churches preserved by the Churches Conservation Trust
1638 establishments in England