Details
919/28/792 LEEDS ROAD
29-SEP-78 (West side)
FORMER CHURCH OF ST ANDREW
(Formerly listed as:
LEEDS ROAD
CHURCH OF ST ANDREW)
II
Former parish church of 1870 by W.H. Crossland.
MATERIALS: Coursed sandstone with graded-slate roofs.
PLAN: Aisled nave with south porch, south transept and west choir vestry, chancel with south vestry and south transeptal organ chamber, and north chapel continuous with nave aisle.
EXTERIOR: Decorated style. The nave aisles have 3-light windows, and the clerestorey has 2 pairs of lozenge windows with curved sides and quatrefoil tracery. Original tracery has been removed from the west window, above which are the corbels of a former bellcote. Below the west window is an added choir vestry, flanked by 2-light aisle west windows. The porch roof is steeply pitched, has an entrance arch with 2 orders of shafts with foliage capitals, above which is a sculpted figure of Christ in a mandorla, surrounded by vines in low relief. The buttressed south transept, housing the organ, has a rose window over a panelled frieze incorporating emblems of the Evangelists and other symbols in relief on shields. The east end has diagonal buttresses to chancel, vestry and chapel. The chancel has a 5-light east window and the north chapel a 3-light east window. A stone stack rises from the chancel eaves above the south vestry. Pevsner's dismissal, `of no architectural interest', is very much open to challenge.
INTERIOR: Not accessible at the time of visit (June 2009). A visit in 2003 recorded: Three-bay nave arcades, of which the first bay is narrow, of round piers and foliage capitals to double-chamfered arches. The chancel arch is similar, with foliage capitals on corbelled shafts. The nave has a hammerbeam roof with tracery above the hammerbeams, and plastered panels. The chancel has a closed polygonal roof with moulded ribs and bosses. Walls are plastered. The nave has plain tiles, the chancel encaustic patterned tiles.
PRINCIPAL FIXTURES: Some fixtures had been removed by 2003. Other fixtures of note included the following items: Font with hemispherical bowl on a stem with attached shafts and carvings in roundels around the bowl. Nave benches with fielded-panel backs and shouldered ends; polygonal stone pulpit with lavish decoration, simpler benches in the north chapel, some choir stalls on the south side of the chancel, with tracery frieze along the backs, and shouldered ends. The early C20 wooden reredos and altar table form a pair. The reredos has blind tracery panels and central nodding-ogee canopy. The wooden 1914-18 war memorial in the north aisle consists of 2 panels with roll call. The east window is probably by Ward & Hughes. The south-aisle west window is by Kempe or Bacon, and another south-aisle window is by Heaton, Butler & Bayne.
HISTORY: Parish church built in 1870 by W.H. Crossland (1823-1909), architect of Leeds. Crossland, who began his career as a pupil of Sir George Gilbert Scott, built several Yorkshire churches in the Decorated style, and also undertook important secular commissions, including Rochdale Town Hall and Holloway College at Egham, Surrey. The west choir vestry was added in 1914 by William Cooper, architect of Huddersfield. The church was declared redundant in 1975, after which it was used by a local Roman-Catholic congregation until c2001. Its current future is uncertain.
SOURCES:
Pevsner, N., The Buildings of England: Yorkshire, The West Riding (1959), 271.
Lambeth Palace Library, Incorporated Church Building Society Archives.
Report by Council for the Care of Churches, 1974, in NMR.
REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The former church of St Andrew, Leeds Road, Huddersfield, is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* It is a well-designed and prominently sited former parish church retaining C19 character and detail.
* The church is in the Decorated style characteristic of the work of W.H. Crossland, a successful regional architect.
This List entry has been amended to add sources for War Memorials Online and the War Memorials Register. These sources were not used in the compilation of this List entry but are added here as a guide for further reading, 21 August 2017.
