I would like to give my warmest thanks and pay tribute to Kate Taylor, who has gained some distinction as a local historian, particularly in the field of theatre history. She has completed this history as ‘a labour of love’ with enormous energy and great skill – not to mention fun. Her visits to Bishop’s Lodge to read through records have been a pleasure for us all. We offer this history both as a contribution to this coming anniversary and also to the wider knowledge of the growth and development of the Church of England in this part of West and South Yorkshire.
+Stephen Wakefield
Easter 2012
Acknowledgements
My thanks must go first to Bishop Stephen Platten for inviting me to write this history and for his unfailing encouragement and support. I am grateful too to Anne Dawtry and June Lawson for reading the draft manuscript and for their constructive comments.
I have been privileged to see the material held by Bishop Seaton’s family and to read the unpublished memoir of Bishop Hone. I am grateful to both their families for their kindness.
The greater part of this account has been distilled from primary source material, including the Bishops’ Acts Books, held at various premises in Wakefield, and my thanks must go to the staff at Bishop’s Lodge, Church House, Messrs Dixon, Coles and Gill, Huddersfield Library Local Studies Department, Wakefield Library Local Studies Department, and the West Yorkshire Archive Service, who have all been tirelessly helpful. I have also made considerable use of local newspapers. Further points have come from very many people, within the diocese and beyond, who have provided information and insights. They include John Allen, James Allison, David Andrew, Janice Barker, Jane Bower, Linda Box, Margaret Bradnum, Paul Brier, Maureen Browell, Christine Bullimore, John Bullimore, Matthew Bullimore, Gill Butterworth, Ian Byfield, Jane Chesman, Roy Clements, Helen Collings, Mary Cooper, +Stephen Cottrell, Paul Crabb, Martyn Crompton, Jane Dickinson, Patrick Duckworth, Margaret Dye, +Christopher Edmondson, Ashley Ellis, Bryan Ellis, Lesley Ennis, David Fletcher, Brenda Frank, +Robert Freeman, Brian Geeson, Richard Giles, John Goodchild, Lisa Grant, Jonathan Greener, Pamela Greener, Irene Greenman, George Guiver, John Harris, Ruth Harris, Robert Hart, Steven Haws, Anthony Howe, Freda Jackson, Brunel James, Guy Jamieson, Alison Jewell, Adrian Judd, Celia Kilner, Felicity Lawson, John Lawson, Bryan Lewis, Jenny Lowery, Tony Macpherson, +Nigel McCulloch, Robin Mackintosh, John Maiden, Deidre Morris, Diana Monahan, George Nairn-Briggs, Peter Needham, David Nicholson, Catherine Ogle, Howard Pask, Elsie Peace, Philip Pearce, Matthew Pollard, Brenda Ratcliffe, Michael Rawson, Malcolm Reed, Mother Robina CSPH, Catherine Robinson, +Tony Robinson, Martin Russell, Tim Sledge, +Brian Smith, Christine Smith, Susan Starr, Christine Stearn, Richard Steel, Michael Storey, Dick Swindell, Isabel Syed, Barbara Tom, Timothy van Carrapiett, David Ward, Philip Wells, David Wheatley, Susan Whitwam, Michael Wood, Vicki Yates, and Michael Yelton. I am immensely indebted to them all. A substantial debt is due to Bishop Platten and Jane Butterfield for devising the index.
Kate Taylor
2012
Introduction
The 125 years since the Diocese of Wakefield was formed have seen immense changes both within the Established Church and within society. They have seen two world wars, a proliferation of faiths (in particular of Islam within the diocese), a decline in people coming forward for ordination, a radical change in the status of women within the Church, and an accelerating decline in church-going. The Church has moved from being relatively inward looking to a position where community involvement of many kinds has become something of an imperative. Among the many remarkable changes it is worth noting that a suggestion in 1907 for intercessions ‘to stay the advance of Moslem activity and its false teaching by the missionary zeal of the Church’ would have been wholly unacceptable as an official recommendation a hundred years later.
There has been a substantial increase in mission focus. Before the Second World War, churches devoted considerable time and money in efforts to support the various missionary societies which undertook work overseas. In 1981 Bishop Colin James remarked, ‘Not so long ago we used to think of mission as something we in the west did to others in foreign parts. Then we awoke to the need of mission in de-Christianized England too.’
Writing at the time of the ninetieth anniversary of the founding of the diocese, John Lister, Provost of Wakefield Cathedral, said that its history had seen ‘a complete revolution in thought and social patterns’.
The first fifty years of the diocese saw a steady drive towards the provision of more churches – some with their own new parishes – and mission rooms. They also saw the struggle to retain church schools and press the claims of religious education. Later years have seen considerable retrenchment with the union of benefices, the creation of team parishes and group ministries, and the redundancy of no small number of church buildings.
In 1973, Eric Treacy, Bishop of Wakefield since 1968, looked back on forty years in the ministry to identify some of the changes he had seen in that comparatively short period. In 1933, the majority of clergy were from public schools and the ancient universities, he said. The Church was unselfcritical and, he argued, only a little sensitive to issues of human welfare. There had been an ‘astonishing change’ in the relationships between the different Christian denominations, and prejudice had gone. There had, even forty years earlier, been a lack of understanding between the Catholic and Evangelical wings of the Established Church itself. Now he found mutual respect. In the 1930s there was still an earnest desire to convert the heathen in foreign parts. Forty years later there was an acceptance of peaceful co-existence with the ‘other great religions’, though Treacy regretted that this had robbed missionary work of some of its dynamic. He discerned a change, too, in the relationships between bishops and their clergy. Bishops had been remote figures, ‘inaccessible and often incomprehensible’. Motor cars and telephones, he thought, had been among the catalysts for change. In the 1970s bishops had become ‘everybody’s men’. They were to be ‘grabbed’ for every kind of occasion, perhaps because of the lack of other public figures to take a place on platforms. But in the 1970s he also found the Church in flux. ‘Forty years ago men were ordained to a Church which was stable, which had a well-established place in the life of the community,’ he said. And went on, ‘Men who seek ordination today are entering the ministry of a church in which nothing is certain, which is far from well-established, in which things are constantly changing. They give themselves to the service of a Body which offers less security than almost any other field of employment.’ In his Memoir, written in 1955, Wakefield’s fourth bishop, Campbell Richard Hone, spoke of the problems he encountered in the 1940s when the majority of candidates for ordination were ‘from lower middle-class homes, good and sincere for the most part but with little evidence of outstanding ability, or theological knowledge’.
The 125 years saw a gradual but marked change in the role of lay people in the Church nationally which was reflected in the diocese. This has included the introduction of lay ministers and the emergence from parish laity of those seeking ordination as self-supporting priests. Recent years have seen, too, a broader embrace of cultural forms, in particular wider styles of music, and art (including art installations), and a widening of cultural and social concerns.
The major problems facing the diocese at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first were those facing the Church nationally: declining congregations except (perhaps) in evangelical churches, the lack of clergy and certainly the lack of money to pay them, the refusal of some Anglo-Catholic parishes to accept women priests and their insistence on having a separate bishop, a diminishing liberal influence and the difficulty and reluctance of some parishes to pay the parish share.
On a much more positive note, many churches which were once open only on Sundays are buzzing with activity throughout the week. Provision ranges from lunch clubs for the