Each of Wakefield’s first three bishops set up a Commission of Enquiry into the ‘wants and requirements’ of the diocese, How in January 1889 within a year of his installation, Eden in 1907 when he had already been in the diocese for nine years by which time many of the proposals of How’s Commission had been met, and Seaton in 1929 when, with a somewhat changed brief, the Commission was asked to report on cases where existing churches and mission rooms appeared to be unnecessary.
How’s Commission included both his archdeacons, all six rural deans, a further member of clergy from each of the deaneries, and a number of lay people. It considered not only the need for more churches but the situation in regard to church schools, and the question of whether there were advowsons which could be transferred to the bishop. Its report, which was published in March 1890, noted that it was always difficult to secure the endowments required for new parishes and that the funds at the disposal of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to contribute to them had been seriously diminished. Hence the Report, published on 5 March 1890, recommended the formation of only a modest number of new parishes. Two further parishes were needed in the Dewsbury Deanery, where steps had already been taken to create one at Bruntcliife, to serve Purlwell, and Gawthorpe with Chickenley Heath. In the Halifax Deanery they were needed to serve a rapidly developing suburb in the Queen’s Road area, and in the centre of Todmorden. Both Marsh and Crosland Moor, in the Huddersfield Deanery, warranted new parishes. St Jude’s, a newly built chapel of ease at Salterhebble, which was almost ready for consecration, might also serve a new parish. Adjustments were suggested to the boundaries of other parishes and the Report recommended the creation within existing parishes of further chapels of ease, mission churches and mission rooms. A new parish of Horbury Junction had been formed, with services held in a mission room, but a new church was needed.
Bishop How, in a rather low-key manner, issued an appeal for £50,000 to meet the recommendations in the Report. Typically it met only a modest response. In its first year it raised £13,670 but by the time of the 1898 conference it had realized only £27,000. It was wound up the following year.
Very gradually most of the recommendations were met. St Jude’s was consecrated on 30 November 1890 and the area became a district chapelry in January 1891. The church of St Mary the Virgin, Horbury Junction, the third Anglican church in the village of Horbury, was consecrated on 10 October 1893. The new parish of Crosland Moor was established by Order in Council in 1893 after Sir Joseph Crosland offered £1,000 towards building the church. Bishop How did not live to see the church itself, however. The memorial stone for St Barnabas was laid by Bishop Eden on 4 August 1900. The church was consecrated on 4 October 1902. (Its west end was completed, although without its planned tower, in 1958.)
Before his death in 1897, Bishop How had licensed or consecrated more than twenty chapels of ease, mission churches or mission rooms. Some were merely rooms within a church school, as at Northowram, some were temporary iron churches erected cheaply in the hope that, in due course, a new church would be built and possibly a new parish established, and some were handsome daughter churches like St Aidan’s, Skelmanthorpe. This had been designed by George Frederick Bodley (1827–1907) for the parish of Scissett. It was consecrated on 28 September 1895 and became a separate parish in 1900. The last church that How consecrated, in 1896, was St Saviour’s, Heckmondwike, which was provided by Edward Wheatley-Balme as a chapel of ease, and which replaced an iron church. Iron churches, popular and cheap, were eminently capable of recycling. This one had come from St Luke’s Cleckheaton in 1889 and went on to Jeremy Lane, Heckmondwike, for use as a Sunday School room.
One of How’s last acts was to agree with Edward Simpson of Walton Hall the site for St Paul’s mission church in Walton. It was another iron building and had been constructed in London and brought in sections by rail to Walton. It was dedicated on 10 January 1898 by Bishop Eden.
In August 1900, Lord Savile laid the memorial stone of All Saints, the chapel of ease at Elland. It was the new peer’s first visit to the diocese since he had acceded to the title, and a formal address of welcome was given. The architect was E. H. Fellowes Prynne but the intention, not unusually, was to build just the chancel, with vestries below it, and the first part of the nave. The north and south transepts would follow when finances permitted. For a time in 1903 work came to a standstill because of lack of money but in November 1903 the chancel and transepts were dedicated by Archdeacon Brooke. A debt of £5,000 meant that there could be no consecration. When consecration came, in May 1912, the church was spoken of as ‘a noble ideal pursued with faith and tenacity, through almost unspeakable difficulties’.
In the Halifax Deanery, a separate scheme for church extension in the town and district was inaugurated at a meeting on 6 November 1900. Its objects were to obtain sites, build and enlarge churches and mission churches, and make grants towards the stipends of additional clergy. It was accepted that in regard to the last item it would co-operate with the Diocesan Spiritual Aid Society. In consequence, in 1902, the Halifax and Rural Deanery Church Extension Society was formed and proposed the creation of a new parish carved out of King Cross and Mount Pellon (already mooted by How’s Commissioners), a new parish near Brighouse Station carved out of the parish of Rastrick, and a stone church to replace the iron one at Siddal. It identified the need for mission rooms at Bailiff Bridge, Norwood Green, Hove Edge, Wainstalls, Luddendenfoot and Midgley.
In some few places, new churches were provided without struggle by individual benefactors. How’s Commissioners’ Report had noted the desire for a mission church at Cornholme, Harley Wood, at the north-western end of the diocese. An iron chapel opened there in 1896. The handsome stone church of St Michael and All Angels, which replaced it, designed by C. Hodgson Fowler, was consecrated on 27 September 1902, the full cost being borne by Mrs A. Master-Whitaker, wife of the Vicar of Helme, who secured an endowment of £120 to provide for a Curate in Charge. Cornholme became a district chapelry a year later.
At Thurlstone, in the geographically vast parish of Penistone which covered thirty-four square miles and had a population of over nine thousand living in scattered hamlets, a chapel of ease was, the Commissioners had said, ‘much needed’. It had to await benefactors. The sisters Mary and Hannah Bray, who died in 1895 and 1897, left the residue of their estates in trust to the Vicar of Penistone and the Bishop of Wakefield (in all some £5,000) towards it. Captain Vernon Wentworth of Stainborough Hall (Wentworth Castle) made a grant towards the provision of a Curate in Charge. St Saviour’s was another of the churches designed by C. Hodgson Fowler. Its foundation stone was laid on 5 November 1904. The church was consecrated on 9 December 1905. Fowler’s plan had been for a tower at the west end of the church. However, this was never built and the west end was ‘temporarily’ completed (it still is) with a brick wall where the rest of the church is in the local millstone grit.