Shortly after the 1926 extension of the diocese, the Archdeaconry of Huddersfield became the Archdeaconry of Halifax, and the hitherto Archdeaconry of Halifax became the Archdeaconry of Pontefract. The extension of the diocese provided an entitlement to six further honorary Canons.
The Bishops
Wakefield had three bishops in its first fifty years, William Walsham How in 1888–97, the long-serving George Rodney Eden, who was bishop in 1897–1928, and James Buchanan Seaton who died as the diocese celebrated its jubilee in 1938. After its major extension in 1926 made the assistance of a suffragan bishop highly desirable, Campbell Richard Hone, already the Archdeacon of Pontefract. became the first Bishop of Pontefract in 1931.
Wakefield’s first bishop, William Walsham How (1823–97), had spent twenty-eight years as Rector of Whittington, Shropshire (his father had purchased the advowson) before, styled Bishop of Bedford, becoming a suffragan to the Bishop of London and Rector of St Andrew Undershaft in 1879. He was consecrated in St Paul’s Cathedral on 25 July. In 1888, at sixty-four, and now a widower, How recoiled from the prospect of ‘spending his declining years in a region of smoke, of coal pits, and mill chimneys’ and shrank from the heavy task of organizing a new diocese, but regarded it as his simple duty to accept the challenge. He had a friend there already in Joshua Ingham Brooke, the Rector of Thornhill, whom he promptly appointed as his Archdeacon of Halifax. Another friend, William Foxley Norris, was presented by Sir John Ramsden to Almondbury in 1888. How’s son Henry became Vicar of Mirfield in 1889. How had been educated at Shrewsbury School and Wadham College, Oxford, before going on to Durham for a course in Theology. He was, for a new diocese, primarily a safe pair of hands. He was of high-church leanings but was not an out-and-out Tractarian: he conducted retreats and held quiet days, but he abhorred some of the ritual associated with the Oxford Movement. The education and welfare of children were among his prime concerns and he was one of the original figures named as a trustee for the National Society for the Protection of Children when it gained its royal charter in 1895. It was under his influence that the Church of England Society for Waifs and Strays founded a boys’ home, Bede House, in College Grove Road, Wakefield in 1892. He died on 10 August 1897 while on a fishing holiday in Ireland. Today he is best known for his hymns, in particular ‘For all the saints who from their labours rest’, which he wrote at Whittington and which was first published in 1864 in Hymns for Saints Days and other Hymns.
Bishop How
Unlike Bishop How, George Rodney Eden (1853–1940) had an accelerated career, at least until he reached Wakefield. He came from what used to be termed ‘a good family’, his grandfather, Sir Robert Eden, being the third baronet of West Auckland. He was educated at Richmond (Yorkshire) and Reading and gained a scholarship to Pembroke College, Cambridge. In 1879, shortly after his ordination as a priest, he was invited to serve as the chaplain to Joseph Barber Lightfoot, Bishop of Durham. Four years later he was presented to the living of Bishop Auckland. In 1890, he was consecrated at Canterbury as the Suffragan Bishop of Dover. He was still only forty-four when he was enthroned at Wakefield on 4 November 1897. He took his seat in the House of Lords on 27 February 1905 where he was regarded as an authority on education. He was for a time chair of the Education Committee of the Church of England National Assembly. In Wakefield, Eden was in the forefront of some of the social movements. With Walter Moorhouse, he established the Wakefield Sanitary Aid Society. Pressure from this body contributed to the local authority’s decision to clear the slums and build housing estates. With Edwin Hirst, he set up the Wakefield Garden Suburb Trust, acquiring a tract of land to the north of Dewsbury Road and then selling individual plots at modest prices to artisans or men from the lower middle class. An able administrator, he served at least once as secretary of the Lambeth Conference, staying for some weeks at Lambeth Palace. He retired in 1928 and spent some time in voluntary ministerial work in Egypt. An obituary in the Cathedral News in February 1940 spoke of the ‘keenness and shrewdness of that fine face and clear-set eyes’. A memorial was unveiled in the cathedral at the time of the Diocesan Conference on 8 October 1942.
Bishop Eden
Wakefield’s third bishop, James Buchanan Seaton (1868–1938), a bachelor and a moderate Anglo-Catholic in the Lux Mundi tradition, died in office. Seaton was a Yorkshireman to the extent that during the summer, he followed the fortunes of the county cricket team closely. He was born in Leeds and was educated at Leeds Grammar School where he gained a scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford in 1886. He took a Second in ‘Greats’ in 1890, and returned for a period to teach at Leeds Grammar School. He was made deacon in 1892 and priest in 1893. In 1893–96 he was a curate at Oswestry parish church. For the next four years he was the Vice-Principal of Leeds Clergy School (Leeds Theological College) before becoming Vicar of Armley in 1905–09. He spent the next five years in South Africa as Rector of St Mary’s and Archdeacon of Johannesburg before returning to Oxfordshire in 1914, as the Principal of Cuddesdon Theological College and Vicar of Cuddesdon. He was made an honorary Canon of Christ Church, the Oxford cathedral. Appointed as Bishop of Wakefield in 1928, he was consecrated on 1 November in York Minster and enthroned on 30 November. Spoken of as a man of ‘deep humility and boundless kindness and thoughtfulness’, Seaton was able to relate easily to the miners and mill workers of his diocese as well as to the professional classes, and made himself readily accessible to all. Seaton’s contribution in all his different spheres of work was not that of great achievements conceived and carried through, nor yet original enterprises in any particular direction. It was always and everywhere the same, namely himself and his personality. At the enlargement of the diocese in 1926, he set out to recruit more clergy and to obtain a suffragan bishop. He knew all his clergy well and entertained them at Bishopgarth. It seemed that he hated committees but loved working with young people. He held youth weekends at Bishopgarth for both males and females, hosting up to fifty at a time. He lived simply. He used to have his meals at a window in his study. He loved the Bishopgarth garden and enjoyed weeding the lawns. He ‘seldom said or did things that interested the press’, and was not a good platform speaker. He was, however, a keen supporter of the work of the church overseas and the translation of one of his young clergy to the See of Gambia must have given him immense pleasure.
The Cathedral
Under the Order in Council of 17 May 1888, Wakefield’s medieval parish church became the cathedral of the new diocese. Bishop How’s first ordination, of four deacons and two priests, took place there ten days later, even before his enthronement.
The installation and enthronement of the first bishop on 25 June 1888 was a major event both for the town and for the diocese, celebrated by the Mayor and Corporation as well as by the churches. It included a reception in the Town Hall when a series of illuminated addresses were read, and a lunch, presided over by the Archbishop of York, William Thomson, in the Corn Exchange before the procession to the new cathedral.
As a consequence of now having a cathedral, Wakefield became a city by Letters Patent dated 11 July 1888.
Wakefield Cathedral about 1900
At Bishop How’s enthronement, the Archbishop of York pointed out that the cathedral was inadequate for its new purpose and also urged the church people from across the diocese to support it financially. The first of his points was met when the extension to the east was completed in 1905 as a memorial to How. The second remained a perennial problem.
Planning for the cathedral extension began within two months of How’s death. An appeal was launched for £50,000, and John Loughborough Pearson, architect of the new cathedral at Truro, was commissioned to provide the designs, although the work was completed after his death under the direction of his son Frank. The slope of Kirkgate allowed Pearson to provide a crypt with