The procession on 25 April 1905
The numerous niches on the outside of the vast east wall never held the figures for which they had been designed. The new chancel was consecrated on 27 December 1905.
The clerk of works was a Mr Crooks from Bristol Cathedral, and the main contractors were Armitage and Hodgson. The extension furnishings, including carpets from the East, were overseen by a ladies’ committee headed by the bishop’s wife, Constance Mary Eden. An altar cloth was worked by the Sisters of St Peter’s Convent. A monument to How in the form of a white marble tomb chest with a recumbent effigy by J. Nesfield Forsyth was placed in the south transept.
The memorial to Bishop How
Later memorials to the successive bishops and to some archdeacons have been placed within the extension. A memorial window to the diocese’s first registrar, William Francis Lovell Horne, who died in 1911, was added to St Mark’s Chapel.
Prior to the completion of the extension, Bishop Eden set up a committee to consider ‘the mutual relations of the diocesan and parochial authorities in Wakefield Cathedral’. A memorandum of 1905 focused on the lack of endowments, the adjustment of the legal position of cathedral and parish church, and the liabilities for the maintenance of the extension which could not ‘fairly be met by the parish only’. In a lecture in 1908 on the cathedral, William Donne claimed that the extension cost £110 a year to maintain but that there had not been much support from the diocese.
A Cathedral Management Committee was set up in 1910 under the chairmanship of the bishop, with equal representation from the cathedral and from the diocese
The Sanctuary was enhanced in 1912 by the addition of stone canopied sedilia and a credence on the south side with a bishop’s and chaplain’s seat opposite them. The bishop’s seat was flanked by the figures of St Paulinus and William Walsham How. Designed by Frank Loughborough Pearson and executed by Nathaniel Hitch, they were given as a memorial to the baronets Robert and Tristram Tempest of Tong Hall.
The Cathedral Sanctuary, Harriet Evans
It is thought that a great stone cross was erected towards the end of the tenth century close to the cathedral site, marking a preaching station. Such a cross was found in 1861 at a butcher’s shop in Westgate where, lying on its side, it was used as a doorstep. It was taken some years later to the Yorkshire Philosophical Society’s museum in York. In 1933 a replica of the cross was provided by Wakefield Historical Society and placed in the south transept.
Unlike the old cathedrals, Wakefield was and is a parish church as well as the mother church of the diocese. The Vicar of Wakefield had to serve as a parish priest, with attendant civic as well as pastoral responsibilities, but was also a significant figure at diocesan level. In the early years, both Norman Straton and his successor, William Donne, had the diocesan status of archdeacon. No subsequent vicars of Wakefield did. Under the Cathedrals Measures of 1931 and 1934, and an Order in Council of 1937, the Vicar of Wakefield gained the title of Provost, adopted at the time by the heads of all the new cathedrals, defining an office ‘which would be distinct from that usually associated with Crown patronage’.
Before the Reformation, the parish church had had a Lady Chapel, founded in 1322. When this was revived in 1935 it was fitted up with an altar provided as a memorial to Canon McLeod who had been the Vicar of Wakefield from 1919.
St Mark’s Chapel gained new features in 1943, making use of a bequest by Miss Margaret Percy Tew. The beaten-metal altar front and carved and gilded reredos were designed by Sir Charles Nicholson. The altar rails, again designed by Nicholson, were made by Robert Thompson of Kilburn and bear his trademark mouse.
A House for the Bishop
At the suggestion of Bishop William Boyd Carpenter, a separate fund was established in 1885 to provide a house for the bishop. Fund-raising was led by Carpenter’s wife who enlisted an impressive team of other women to canvass individual rural deaneries and run bazaars. By February 1888, a little over £10,000 had been raised. It was an open question as to whether a house would be bought or built. The purchase of Thornes House, Wakefield, was an early suggestion.
When Bishop How first came to Wakefield, he stayed at Thornhill Rectory, which had been made available to him by his old friend, Canon Brooke. He moved quite soon to a house in South Parade, Wakefield, rented from Michael Edwin Sanderson, later to be the diocese’s greatest benefactor. In 1889, he moved to Overthorpe, Thornhill. He found living in either Wakefield or Thornhill inconvenient as almost every journey across the diocese meant changing trains at Mirfield junction, described by his son as ‘the gloomiest and draughtiest of all stations’. How would have liked to live in Mirfield and a substantial property, Hall Croft, became a candidate but the Ecclesiastical Commissioners were anxious for the bishop to live nearer to, or in, his cathedral city. By 1890, a three-acre site had been acquired in the highly respectable St John’s area of Wakefield. William White, a colleague of George Gilbert Scott, was commissioned as the architect, and the foundation stone of the new brick Gothic ‘palace’ was laid on 24 October 1891. How moved into the mansion in 1893. The name Bishopgarth was chosen by the four men who had guaranteed to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners that a house would be provided. The term ‘garth’, derived from a Norse word for a yard and could mean an enclosure or a Manor House. The name was given to a hymn tune composed in 1897 for Queen Victoria’s jubilee by Arthur Sullivan to How’s words ‘O King of Kings whose reign of old hath been from everlasting’.
Bishopgarth
Bishopgarth was fitted with electric lighting in 1908, long before many of the parish churches.
Bishop How’s successor, George Rodney Eden, lived at Bishopgarth for some twenty years. However, in August 1918, he announced that high taxation and the high cost of living made it impossible for him to continue in residence there. It was immediately requisitioned by the Ministry of Pensions but was later let to the West Riding County Council. Eden moved to the Manor House at Heath where he remained for the rest of his period as bishop. A chapel was created there and, inter alia, was used for at least one confirmation service. James Seaton, Wakefield’s third bishop, lived at Heath for a short while but in April 1929 he declared his intention to move to Bishopgarth. He died there in 1938. As Archdeacon of Pontefract, Campbell Richard Hone had bought Woodthorpe Lodge with nine acres of grounds, a paddock, some woodland, a lawn and both flower and kitchen gardens. When he followed Seaton as Bishop of Wakefield in 1938, he insisted on remaining there. He described Bishopgarth as ‘a most inconvenient and badly planned house’, with ‘dark passages and small cubicle rooms for ordination candidates, a range of necessary rooms under the roof and awkward larders and kitchens’. His wife said that it was ‘quite impossible’ and that she could not manage it with all its inconveniences and the shortage of servants. Renamed Bishop’s Lodge, the house at Woodthorpe was bought by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. All subsequent bishops have lived there. Bishopgarth was sold to the West Riding County Council.
The Principal Administrative Bodies
In October 1888, Bishop How held a meeting of clergy and laity in the Wakefield Church Institute to establish the principal Diocesan societies: these were the Wakefield Diocesan Church Extension Society (which was to assist with funding both churches and parsonage houses), the Diocesan Board of Education