The Ecclesiological Society, in partnership with the Leeds Civic Trust, are pleased to announce the launch of an important conference in Leeds Minster on Saturday, September 11 celebrating the building’s unique and influential heritage.
Organisers have been working hard to ensure attendance at the conference is available either ‘live’, in the Minster, or via Zoom, and are proud to present an all-day programme of six speakers who will talk on various themes from the Minster’s multifaceted history.
At 5.30pm, there will also be a specially arranged service of Evensong, sung by the outstanding choir of Leeds Minster, led by Master of the Music, Alex Woodrow.
Further information and how to book can be found here.
If you have any questions please contact Rob Andrews from the Education and DAC Teams in the Diocese of Leeds at rob.andrews@leeds.anglican.org. Rob is assisting the Ecclesiological Society as a part time conference director for the event.
Leeds Minster, formerly the parish church of St Peter, was rebuilt in 1837 to 41. It was the largest new church since St Paul’s in London and ‘as grand as any cathedral’.
Leeds Minster is also the most important church erected in England around 1840, at that heady moment when Anglicanism was moving in a Higher direction thanks to the Tractarians, and Gothic authenticity was being promoted energetically by the Cambridge Camden Society. And it remains almost entirely unchanged.
However, Leeds Minsters importance goes beyond its architecture; it had profound liturgical influence by promoting alternatives to Georgian auditory worship and here, probably for the first time outside the cathedrals, was a robed choir placed in the chancel.
The project was led by the new vicar, the dynamic Dr W.F. Hook, and Anglicans across the country watched with anticipation, seeing this as the first serious attempt by the Church of England to reassert itself in an industrial town and challenge the worrying spread of Nonconformity.
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