Church Architecture in Leeds 1700-1799
Terry Friedman


Twenty-four new Anglican churches, Nonconformist and Catholic chapels were built in Leeds and its villages within a radius of five miles between 1700 and 1799, of which today only one, Holy Trinity, Boar Lane, remains. Nor is there hardly any trace of important remodelling work carried out during this period on nine other older houses of worship. A few of these buildings had already vanished by 1800; many more fell victim to Victorian improvement, while others disappeared in the twentieth century (the last as recently as the 1950s) to official and public indifference. By no means an attractive record. Moreover, Holy Trinity, architecturally the most distinguished of the new churches, was in serious danger of demolition in 1954 and survived only by the skin of its teeth. This is an episode worth recalling in detail because it became a local and a national cause celbre which attracted wide press coverage.

In addition to Holy Trinity, Terry Friedman examines in detail, St Peter’s, Kirkgate, St Mary’s, Whitkirk, St John’s Briggate, as well as new Anglican chapels in the Classical Taste, 1723 – 1762, Nonconformist chapels, 1750 – 1789 and church building in the 1790s.