The Church of St Mary the Virgin in Middleton,

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 is an active

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 ...

parish church A parish church (or parochial church) in Christianity is the church which acts as the religious centre of a parish. In many parts of the world, especially in rural areas, the parish church may play a significant role in community activities, ...

in the Armley deanery in the archdeaconry of Leeds and the Diocese of Leeds. The church and its

lych gate A lychgate, also spelled lichgate, lycugate, lyke-gate or as two separate words lych gate, (from Old English ''lic'', corpse), also ''wych gate'', is a gateway covered with a roof found at the entrance to a traditional English or English-style ch ...

are

Grade II listed buildings 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 ...

History

In 1494, a

chantry chapel A chantry is an ecclesiastical term that may have either of two related meanings: # a chantry service, a Christian liturgy of prayers for the dead, which historically was an obiit, or # a chantry chapel, a building on private land, or an area in ...

dedicated to St Mary the Virgin was endowed by Gilbert Leygh in Middleton It closed at the time of the

Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...

. Middleton was part of the parish of Rothwell. In 1845, R.H. Brandling of Middleton Lodge gave land on Town Street on which to build a church and parsonage. The Brandlings owned the Middleton Collieries and built the

Middleton Railway The Middleton Railway is the world's oldest continuously working railway, situated in the English city of Leeds. It was founded in 1758 and is now a heritage railway, run by volunteers from The Middleton Railway Trust Ltd. since 1960. The rail ...

. The Incorporated Society for promoting the Enlargement, Building and Repairing of Churches and Chapels made a grant of £350 towards the cost of building the church, on condition that all the seats were declared free, and public subscriptions raised more than £1,000. There is a tradition that Middleton miners gave either a week's wages or a week's work towards the cost of the building. The church was built in the Early English style to designs by R. D. Chantrell, who also designed

Leeds Parish Church Leeds Minster, or the Minster and Parish Church of Saint Peter-at-Leeds (formerly Leeds Parish Church) is the minster church of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It stands on the site of the oldest church in the city and is of architectural and l ...

, in 1846. The church was consecrated on 22 September 1846 by Bishop Longley of Ripon, with the sermon preached by W. F. Hook, Vicar of Leeds. The Middleton Estate and Colliery Company was granted a licence to mine a seam of coal under the church in 1917 resulting in subsidence and damage to the tall spire which was taken down in 1939.

Structure

Exterior

The church is built in coursed

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...

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 ...

with

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. ...

roofs in the Early English

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

style. The

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 ...

s have two-light

lancet window A lancet window is a tall, narrow window with a pointed arch at its top. It acquired the "lancet" name from its resemblance to a lance. Instances of this architectural element are typical of Gothic church edifices of the earliest period. Lancet wi ...

s between

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 and the

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 ...

single light lancets. There is a three-stage south west tower with an embattled

parapet A parapet is a barrier that is an extension of the wall at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony, walkway or other structure. The word comes ultimately from the Italian ''parapetto'' (''parare'' 'to cover/defend' and ''petto'' 'chest/breast'). Whe ...

, angle buttresses and a porch with a Gothic arch and planked door with ornate hinges. There are three-light belfry windows; the outer windows are blocked.

Interior

The east window depicts Christ and the west window is on the theme of the evangelists. Windows in the chancel contain stained glass by

William Wailes William Wailes (1808–1881) was the proprietor of one of England's largest and most prolific stained glass workshops. Life and career Wailes was born and grew up in Newcastle on Tyne, England's centre of domestic glass and bottle manufacturing. ...

of Newcastle made between 1848 and 1852. There are two late-Victorian windows made by Barnett of Newcastle and the rest of the church is glazed in clear leaded lights. The vestry was formed in 1882 by partitioning the north west corner with solid oak screens. The tower holds a single bell made by C & G Mears of the

Whitechapel Bell Foundry The Whitechapel Bell Foundry was a business in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. At the time of the closure of its Whitechapel premises, it was the oldest manufacturing company in Great Britain. The bell foundry primarily made church bells a ...

in 1846 and is hung for swing chiming. The clock by

Potts of Leeds Potts of Leeds was a major British manufacturer of public clocks, based in Leeds, Yorkshire, England. History William Potts was born in December 1809 and was apprenticed to Samuel Thompson, a Darlington clockmaker. In 1833, at the age of 24, ...

dates from 1862.

Lych gate

The

, in the Gothic Revival style by R. D. Chantrell, dates from about 1846. It is built of coursed squared stone with a stone roof. It has a steeply pitched roof with stone coping to the gable ends and crosses at the apex. The flanking walls have pointed coping with shallow pyramid caps to the end piers. The walls and lych gate have Grade II listed status.

References

Notes Bibliography * *

External links

The Parish of Rothwell, Genuki
{{DEFAULTSORT:Middleton, St Mary The Virgin Grade II listed churches in Leeds Anglican Diocese of Leeds Church of England church buildings in West Yorkshire Churches completed in 1846 19th-century Church of England church buildings