In 1932, despite the difficult economic climate nationally, Bishop Seaton made an appeal for £35,000 – the report had suggested a figure of £45,000 – to fulfil the new recommendations. In less than three years, on 6 April 1935, he was able to hold a service in the cathedral celebrating the realization of that sum. ‘No appeal in this diocese’, Seaton claimed, ‘has been ever supported by so many individuals, rich and poor, young and old.’ Others attributed its success to Seaton’s friendly personality and ready availability. Many organizations, like the Mothers’ Union, the Girls’ Friendly Society, and the Church Lads’ Brigade, as well as parishes and individuals, had contributed. Addressing the congregation, Seaton outlined what had already been achieved. Holy Cross at Airedale had been consecrated. Building had begun at St George’s, Lupset. St Barnabas, Barnsley had been completed. An iron church, transferred from Pontefract, had been sited at Three Lane Ends, Castleford (and dedicated as St James the Great) as a mission chapel for All Saints, Whitwood Mere (Hightown). It was prompted by changes to the parish boundary and plans by Castleford Urban District Council for a housing estate. There were ‘school churches’ at Lundwood and Wrangbrook, a mission building had been acquired at Rawsthorne, endowments had been provided for six curates, and five further sites had been obtained for church or school building.
The village of Upton had developed as a consequence of the opening of the colliery there. The colliery company provided a site for the church cum schoolroom at Wrangbrook in the parish of South Kirkby. Colonel Sir Maurice Bell, one of the directors of the company, laid the foundation stone of a new, small and modern church building on 4 May 1931. It was dedicated to St Michael.
The building of the vast Airedale estate by Castleford Council brought an urgent need for a new church there. The township had come into existence in 1921. A temporary iron church had been acquired from Castleford in 1922 when the area was still in the Diocese of York. Initially a conventional district, with a Curate in Charge, it became the separate parish of Airedale with Fryston in 1930. Appealing for funds for a permanent church, Bishop Seaton called it ‘the most immediately urgent need in the diocese’ and urged all those who bought Airedale coal to make a donation. The building of the church of the Holy Cross was remarkable! News that Fryston Hall was to be demolished prompted the purchase of its stone for £300. The stone was taken to the site for the new church with the help of volunteer labour, including that of coal miners. The Ionic columns were re-erected at the front of the church. The Marquess of Crewe laid the foundation stone on 18 March 1933 and the church was consecrated on 14 July 1934. The church was designed by Sir Charles Nicholson and the pews were by the ‘mouse man’, Robert Thompson of Kilburn. Many parishioners had come to Airedale from County Durham and the stoup was made of stone from Durham Cathedral.
John Charles Sydney Daly, the energetic young man who had come to Airedale as Curate in Charge in 1929, moved on less than a year after the consecration of the church. He was consecrated as the first Bishop of Gambia and Rio Pongas on the Festival of Philip and James, 1 May 1935, at All Hallows by the Tower, London. Daly had been at King’s College, Cambridge and the Dean of the College preached on the occasion. Fifty people from Airedale attended. ‘All must have felt that they were taking part in a gallant adventure of the Church of England,’ the Dean observed.
The offertory at the 1935 service of thanksgiving for the success of Seaton’s appeal was for the Gambia Diocese.
Holy Cross, Airedale
The Union of Benefices
Rationalizing by uniting benefices has occurred since the sixteenth century. While the spate of unions of benefices in the diocese did not come until the latter part of the twentieth century, some few unions actually took place or were explored much earlier. The union was normally preceded by a Commission of Inquiry and required an Order in Council to confirm it. In rural areas, benefices might be united where the population was too small to warrant the maintenance of separate parishes. In urban areas, already in the 1920s the clearance of housing from town centres might provide a case for uniting adjacent benefices. Under the Union of Benefices Act of 1921, St Mark’s, Huddersfield, was united in 1922 with the mother parish of St Peter, and St Luke’s, Norland, was united with Christ Church, Sowerby Bridge. In 1924, having been overseen by the Vicar of Penistone for at least fifty years, the benefices of Midhope and Penistone were united.
Bishop Seaton promoted a Public Inquiry in the mid 1930s, during the building of the Lupset housing estate, into the advisability of uniting Christ Church, Thornes, with St James’s, Thornes, in Wakefield. The scheme was rejected at the time but Seaton warned that the removal of much of the population of Christ Church (through slum clearance) would mean that the possibility must be revisited.
The Two Religious Communities: the Community of St Peter, Horbury, and the Community of the Resurrection
Although the Community of St Peter, Horbury, and the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield lie within the diocese, neither is a diocesan body. But their contribution to the work of the diocese warrants their place in this history.
The Community of St Peter, the first religious community in the north of England since the Reformation, was founded in 1858 by the high-church incumbent of Horbury, John Sharp. He had been prompted by his cousin, Harriet Louisa Farrer, to bring together women ‘pledged to devote themselves to rescue and preventive work’, who could run a refuge for girls and young women. More will be said of this long-lasting venture later. As the Community grew, Sisters were sent, or daughter-houses founded, to oversee penitentiaries or rescue houses elsewhere, including Carlisle, Chester, Croydon, Freiston in Lincolnshire, Joppa (Edinburgh), Leeds, London, Rushholme (Manchester), Sheffield, and Wolverhampton. Some of their number also worked in more local parishes of high-church inclinations, visiting and teaching. They served in all three Horbury parishes, at Middlestown, and as far afield as South Elmsall, and All Saints, Leeds. At Horbury Bridge, as well as teaching in the Sunday School, they managed a night school for girls. In the early 1920s they also assisted with parish work at two London churches and at St Peter’s, Folkestone. From 1925, invited by the parochial church council, the cathedral staff included two of St Peter’s nuns. They lived in Wakefield at St Gabriel’s House, Rishworth Street, which was dedicated on Lady Day, 25 March. At the cathedral they cared for the altar vessels and the vestments, cleaned the silver, looked after the linen and arranged the flowers. But they also worked with young people in the Sunday Schools and undertook pastoral work in the parish. Between 1900 and 1908, when it ceased to hold women prisoners, nuns from St Peter’s served as visitors at Wakefield Prison. From 1922 they also visited Armley Gaol. In 1900–20, Sisters managed the County Home, Stafford, for discharged women prisoners. The Community of the Holy Paraclete at Sneaton Hall, Whitby, was founded from St Peter’s where a small school, later to be called St Hilda’s, had been started in 1875. Shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, the school was refounded at Whitby by some of the Sisters from Horbury who had taught there and who formed the nucleus of the new Order. During 1905–30 Sisters managed a High School and undertook missionary work at Nassau in the Bahamas.
Retreats for clergy, for their own Associates, and for others, were provided at the Convent from 1865. In 1915, they began offering retreats to working women and girls. In the 1920s they provided a retreat house at Balhousie Castle, Perth.
The nuns served the Church in two other ways. They had begun providing embroidered vestments, altar linen and banners (including some for Miners’ Unions) in 1868 and the work continued until well after the Second World War. They also baked communion bread which was sent to cathedrals and churches all over England and to at least one prison, as well as abroad.
Problems