St Wilfrid Halton interior 14 Sep 2014 01

St Wilfrid's Church, Halton was designed by Albert Randall Wells and built between 1937 and 1939. It is situated in the 1930s suburb of Halton in

Leeds Leeds is a city in West Yorkshire, England. It is the largest settlement in Yorkshire and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds Metropolitan Borough, which is the second most populous district in the United Kingdom. It is built aro ...

, England. The site on Halton Hill was given by Viscount Halifax and the building was paid for by Sir John Priestman. The foundation stone was laid on 6 November 1937. The church is Grade II* listed. It bridges the gap between the

Arts and Crafts style The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the Decorative arts, decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and ...

and

modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

. It has Early English gothic inspired details, such as the triangular-headed windows. The concrete vaulting within the interior in

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'' (195 ...

's words "remind one of

German Expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radi ...

in recent church architecture rather than that of England". The church was built at a cost of £11,700. It still has many of the original fittings designed by Wells as well as contemporary art by

Eric Gill Arthur Eric Rowton Gill (22 February 1882 – 17 November 1940) was an English sculptor, letter cutter, typeface designer, and printmaker. Although the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' describes Gill as "the greatest artist-craftsma ...

. Congregational seating was made by Edward Gardiner who, earlier, had a partnership with

Ernest Gimson Ernest William Gimson (; 21 December 1864 – 12 August 1919) was an English furniture designer and architect. Gimson was described by the art critic Nikolaus Pevsner as "the greatest of the English architect-designers". Today his reputat ...

References

External links

St Wilfred's Church website

Flickr images
{{DEFAULTSORT:Halton, Saint Wilfrids Church Church of England church buildings in West Yorkshire Grade II* listed churches in Leeds Churches completed in 1939 20th-century Church of England church buildings

See also

References

External links