In 1924, at the time of the revival, initiated by (Alfred) Hope Patten, of the shrine of Our Lady, three Sisters from Horbury went to Walsingham to assist with the new hospice for the anticipated pilgrims. During 1932–47 the work at Walsingham was continued by members of the Laleham community.
The Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield
The way of life and the achievements of the Community of the Resurrection at Battyeford, Mirfield, are told in the account written by Alan Wilkinson to mark its centenary, but the author focuses on its work outside the diocese, and especially in South Africa and the former Rhodesia, rather than on its significance more locally. He refers briefly to its ‘close connections’ with the Community at Horbury but without amplification. The Community of the Resurrection had been founded in 1892 at Pusey House, Oxford, by its principal, Charles Gore, and five other public-school and Oxford men intent on forming a group of celibate priests who would retain their individualism yet share a corporate life of fellowship and prayer and who would engage in pastoral, evangelistic, literary and educational work. In its early years the Community was unsettled, but the idea of having a House in a working-class parish had appealed since its inception. Walter Howard Frere, another founder member, urged the need to settle in a permanent home in the north of England. Although other areas were considered (the Bishop of Manchester made it plain that he did not want the Community in his diocese, presumably because of the controversies that Anglo-Catholicism aroused), when Mirfield was suggested by Henry Walsham How, the Community accepted it. Hall Croft, the great house once preferred by Henry’s father, was still available. It was taken on a lease in 1898 and the Community was able to buy it, with nineteen acres of land including a quarry, in 1902. Henry’s father, Bishop How, died in 1897 but Bishop Eden was happy to countenance its arrival and blessed the house when the Community moved in. Among those present was James Seaton who was at the time a member of the wider body, the Society of the Resurrection.
The quarry at the House of the Resurrection
The Mirfield Community contributed to the work of the diocese in many ways. Members led three of the four Reading Circles which were formed in 1902 for diocesan clergy. In 1903, the Community converted the stable block and founded the College of the Resurrection with the aim of providing training for the ministry for men of little means. It was opened by Bishop Eden on 25 April when he referred to the declining numbers of men entering the service of the Church compared with the increase in the population itself. The following year the College was affiliated to the University of Leeds. While it trained men for work in the Church anywhere, many of its students got their first experience of ministry in local parishes, and good numbers of them went on to serve in the Wakefield Diocese. The quarry, which provided stone for the expansion of the Community’s buildings, formed a splendid amphitheatre. Local people went there in crowds each year for the Community’s annual Commemoration Day. On 19 June 1909, the new Archbishop of York, Cosmo Lang, making his first visit to the diocese, spoke at a great gathering in the quarry which had been lent for the occasion to the Wakefield Diocesan Union of Men’s Bible Classes.
In 1915, the Community opened a retreat wing which served groups from the diocese and well beyond.
Priests at the Community who were licensed to preach within the diocese were de facto members of the Diocesan Conference. They might simply take occasional services or provide pastoral care for a lengthier period: in the last years of the First World War, for example, Father Gerard Sampson took charge of St Saviour’s, Ravensthorpe. Frere, who was the Superior during 1902–13 and 1916–22, before he became the Bishop of Truro, in particular contributed very substantially to aspects of the work and thinking within the diocese. He also drew up the constitution for the Order of the Holy Paraclete. In the period of tension between Seaton and the Superior of the Horbury Community, Frere, then at Truro, was something of a sounding board for the Bishop and offered advice. Priests, including Frere, returning to Mirfield from serving abroad as bishops, proved very useful in assisting the Bishops of Wakefield. In 1934, Bishop Seaton authorized both Frere and James Oakey Nash, formerly Bishop of Capetown, to undertake episcopal duties.
Some members of the Community were keenly interested in the revived shrine at Walsingham; Frank Biggard gave the address when the extension to the Pilgrim Church there was blessed in June 1938. Later, in the 1940s, when he was the Superior at Mirfield, Raymond Raynes gave extensive counsel and support to Hope Patten in his (difficult) negotiations with the Laleham nuns.
Missionary Work Overseas and at Home
There is some justification for including in the same section both the support given to overseas missions and the numerous missions and other initiatives to reach out to people within the diocese, since both had the same purpose – the spread of Christianity – and, at least at one period, both activities came under the remit of the Wakefield Diocesan Board of Missions.
Support in the area for missionary work overseas was well established long before the diocese was formed. Some parishes had their own favourite cause. Others supported the well-known national missionary societies like the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Church Missionary Society and the Oxford Mission to Calcutta.
In June 1905, under the aegis of the new Diocesan Board of Missions, the diocese held it first United Missionary Festival. Bishop Eden spoke of the event as a ‘fresh start’ in the history of missionary efforts in the diocese, emphasizing the need for proper organization at diocesan level. The objects of missionary work, he suggested, should be to bring together different bodies of Christians working abroad, the upbuilding and development of native churches, and more direct organization of native work in Colonial dioceses.
In June 1917, there was a Missionary Pilgrimage to the diocese to enlist support for foreign missions. The Pilgrims were led by Alice Parker, who was on furlough from the mission field in Japan.
The most ambitious and extensive missionary endeavour for work overseas came in 1925–28, with the national World Call to the Church urging each parish across the country to gain more knowledge of the work of the church overseas and to do whatever they could on its behalf. Six reports were issued, each on a different geographical area of the mission field. The expectation was that the reports would be discussed at parish or deanery level and would stimulate giving financially and inspire individuals to find a vocation in missionary work. The Wakefield Diocese was asked to raise an additional £5,000 in 1926 for missionary work and to find twelve more workers for mission fields. Bishop Eden commissioned a team of Messengers to visit individual parishes to further the Call. A group of students came on a ten-day campaign in 1926, visiting each deanery and working in forty-seven parishes in all. They also visited Barnsley and Penistone Grammar Schools, Hemsworth and Pontefract Secondary Schools, and Wakefield Central School in Ings Road. The World Call provided the focus for the Diocesan Missionary Service in the cathedral on 28 January 1928. The Call encouraged more priests to serve overseas. James Blair, who had been ordained in Wakefield Cathedral in 1929, for example, joined the Oxford Mission to Calcutta in 1932 and twenty years later was enthroned as the Bishop of Calcutta.
However, holding missions at home was at least as important as supporting missionary work overseas. These were perennial albeit sporadic. Over the years, many parishes in the diocese held missions, over a long weekend or perhaps for a week or fortnight at a time. The missions were conducted by visiting clergy, university students, brethren from the Community of the Resurrection, or Church Army officers. Alternatively parish clergy might themselves