Horbury Church - and more besides

A new book about the eighteenth century Yorkshire architect John Carr prompted Christopher Howse to write in his regular column in the Daily Telegraph about his work, and notably the very impressive church he built in his home village of Horbury, to the west of Wakefield. The tower and spire are quite a landmark in the area. It lies quite close to my home ground although it is not of itself a place I know very well.

The Church of St Peter and St Leonard Horbury by John Carr and built in 1790-94

Image: Wikipedia 

Howse’s article from his ‘Sacred Mysteries’ column can be read at sacred-mysteries-a-country-house-architect-and-his-church/

There is an illustrated online introduction to Carr and his work as an architect at John Carr

Horbury parish has a great history as an Anglo-Catholic centre. Very early on in the Tractarian movement it was having celebrations such as a Christmas Midnight Mass. Canon Sharp as incumbent at Horbury was I imagine similar to the  future  Dean Butler at Wantage or Canon Chamberlain at St Thomas’ in Oxford. In the best tradition of Victorian extreme or ‘advanced’ - depending on one’s viewpoint - High Church practice, there was the establishment of a Sisterhood based at St Peter’s Convent, rather like those at Wantage or St Thomas’ in Oxford. This had impressive buildings from the 1860s. The Sisters ran a House of Mercy from 1858. There are online articles about the Community and its buildings at Horbury House of Mercy and at House of Mercy / St Peter's Training School, Horbury, near Wakefield, West Riding of Yorkshire

There is a reminiscence by Lord Hope, bring a local boy, about his connections with the Sisterhood from New Directions at St Peter’s Convent, Horbury and a piece from the Church Times about its final dissolution as a community in 2020 at ‘I am sad, but it’s the right time’

I must admit to a real sense of loss at seeing yet another religious community go out of existence and to feeling that this is a great loss to the life of both the parish and the wider community in Horbury, just as the loss of the St Thomas’ Community was in that parish in Oxford. This is a problem facing both the Catholic Church and the Anglicans, and a regrettable change.

The hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers” was written in 1865 by one of the parish’s assistant curates, Sabine Baring-Gould, to stimulate the children participating in procession on the long trudge up the hill from the recently established mission room at Horbury Bridge to the mother church built by Carr for the Whitsun parish celebrations.

The Wikipedia account of Baring-Gould, who is more usually associated with his native Devon, can be seen at Sabine Baring-Gould

From the same source there is a history of the hymn at Onward, Christian Soldiers

Wikipedia has an account of the history and character of the village at Horbury