Leeds Minster

Cruciform in plan, the minster is built in ashlar stone with slate roofs, in an imitation of the English Gothic style of the late 14th century, a period of transition from the Decorated to the Perpendicular. The church is 180 ft long and 86 ft wide, its tower rising to 139 ft. The chancel and nave each have four bays of equal length with clerestories and tall aisles. The tower is situated at the centre of north aisle. Below the tower on the north side is the main entrance. The tower has four unequal stages with panelled sides and corner buttresses terminating in crocketed turrets with openwork battlements and crocketted pinnacles. The clock was made by Potts of Leeds.

A church at Ledes is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, although it is likely that there had been a church on the same site for much longer, as evidenced by the fragments of Anglo-Scandinavian stone crosses (known as the Leeds Cross) found on the site during the construction of the current church. The church was rebuilt twice, after a fire in the 14th century, and again in the 19th century. Walter Farquhar Hook, Vicar of Leeds from 1837 until preferment as Dean of Chichester in 1859 was responsible for the construction of the present building, and of the revitalisation of the Anglican church throughout Leeds as a whole. The architect was Robert Dennis Chantrell. It was originally…