Church of St Saviour

Details

SE3132NW
714-1/82/178
26/09/63

LEEDS
ELLERBY ROAD
(South West side)
Church of St Saviour

GV
I

Anglican church. 1842-45. By John Macduff Derick. Dressed
stone with ashlar dressings, Gothic Revival style.
PLAN: nave, chancel, north and south aisles, transepts and
north porch, on a sloping site with orientation nearer
north-south than east-west.
EXTERIOR: tall and narrow, with crossing tower with quatrefoil
pierced parapet and pinnacles, 5-light windows to both
transepts and the west and east ends, 3-light chancel windows,
2-light aisle windows, clerestory. Bellcote over west end has
small flying buttresses and crocketed pinnacles.
INTERIOR: reputed to contain tall octagonal piers to nave
arcades, aisleless chancel, Pusey chapel by GF Bodley, 1890.
Reredos by Temple Moore, 1921.
STAINED GLASS: the four 5-light windows described by Pevsner
as 'of great merit, in the style of the C13 and in glowing
colour, nothing yet of Victorian insipidity'; designed by
Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin and executed by O'Connor to
Pusey's directions worked out with Benjamin Webb of the
Cambridge Camden Society. The windows of the north end of
the north aisle and the north porch are by Morris and Co and
were made between 1875 and 1880; single figures of saints,
and Fra Angelico.
The church was built just after the completion of the rebuilt
parish church for Dean Hook and was the centre of a major
controversy over church ritual.
Dr Pusey, Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University and
a leading member of the Oxford Movement was the leading patron
of the living, together with 3 other Tractarians; he financed
the building anonymously as the earliest Tractarian parochial
experiment outside London. The building is of a high standard
of craftsmanship but was not completed: the tall spire,
(modelled on St Mary's, Oxford), and pinnacles along the eaves
were not built; the corbel tables, crocketed pinnacles and
stops to the window hoodmoulds were left uncarved.
HISTORICAL NOTE: attacks on the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement
in Leeds reached extreme proportions between 1845 and 1851,
led by both Anglicans and Non Conformists, St Saviour's Church
being considered an 'obnoxious influence'; it was to become a
typical and successful ritualist church of the late C19 during
the incumbency of John Wylde, 1877-1929.
(Pevsner, N: The Buildings of England: Yorkshire West Riding:



1967-; Fraser, D (Ed): A History of Modern Leeds: 1980-: 263;
Thoresby Society Publication: Yates, N: Leeds and the Oxford
Movement: 1975-: 27-31).

Listing NGR: SE3129132953

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

466296

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Fraser, D, A History of Modern Leeds, (1980), 263
Yates, N, Leeds and the Oxford Movement, (1975), 27-31
Pevsner, N, Radcliffe, E, The Buildings of England: Yorkshire: The West Riding, (1967)

End of official list entry

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