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 elderly to activities for the whole family, such as Messy Church, or ones directed particularly at children, such as Kidz clubs.
Map of the diocese in 1888
Map of the diocese in 1926
Part I: The First Fifty Years, 1888–1938
The Origin of the Diocese
The Diocese of Wakefield was established in 1888, taking in a substantial area from the southern end of the Diocese of Ripon. It had been a long time coming!
Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, no new bishoprics had been established in the Church of England. Then came the Dioceses of Ripon (1836) and Manchester (1845). By 1875, the population of the Ripon Diocese had doubled, from 800,000 at its inception to 1,600,000. With a vast distance to cover and with so many parishes to visit, the health of the second Bishop of Ripon, Robert Bickersteth, was under strain. Moreover, Nonconformity was flourishing. It was later said that the immense success of early Methodism in the Calder valley owed something to the deadness and dullness of church life in the area, but it must have owed considerably more to the influence of the ‘wealthy capitalists and employers of labour’ who, Francis Pigou, Vicar of Halifax in 1875–88, observed, were a strong influence on the spread of Nonconformity in the area. Evidence suggesting that smaller diocesan units resulted in greater numbers of men coming forward for ordination and in more candidates for confirmation was a further incentive to create additional dioceses.
The genesis of the Diocese of Wakefield falls into two distinct phases: the first culminating in the Act of Parliament of 1878 which authorized the establishment of a Wakefield see; the second, dating from 1884, bringing the Diocese into being by the Order in Council of 17 May 1888.
For any new diocese to be created a very substantial capital sum was needed to endow the bishopric. The Bishoprics Act of 1878 specified a minimum income of £3,500 a year.
Although there had been earlier suggestions that a new see should be created with Halifax as its cathedral city, it was the death of Charles Musgrave, Vicar of Halifax and Archdeacon of Craven, in April 1875 that prompted moves to create a further bishopric in southern Yorkshire with Halifax parish church as the cathedral. It was thought that some £100,000 would be required. The Halifax living was a substantial one. There seemed a possibility that some of the endowments of the benefice could be appropriated, by means of an Act of Parliament, towards financing the bishopric. A leading advocate of a Halifax diocese, industrialist Sir Henry Edwards (1812–86), who had represented Halifax in Parliament in 1847–52, suggested that, rather than appropriating funds from the living, the diocesan of the new see should also be the Vicar of Halifax. The idea was canvassed at a meeting in London attended by several Members of Parliament, but the scheme came to nothing and later in 1875 Francis Pigou was appointed to the Halifax benefice. However, when the Ecclesiastical Commissioners set up a committee to define the boundaries of the proposed bishoprics of Truro and St Albans, it was asked to look at the need nationally for other new bishoprics. The committee included the Conservative West Riding Member of Parliament, Lieutenant Colonel Walter Spencer Stanhope. Its initial recommendations were for sees centred on Liverpool, Newcastle and Southwell. When, following its deliberations, the Bill was first drafted in 1877, a diocese of South Yorkshire had been added which would have included Sheffield (not part of the Diocese of Ripon) as well as Halifax and Wakefield and places between. The prospect of being severed from York did not appeal to the church people of Sheffield and, when the bill finally came before Parliament, Sheffield had been dropped from it but the South Yorkshire scheme remained. The Government’s first intention was to identify Wakefield as the cathedral city. Following an intervention from Sir Henry Edwards, the Bill proposed either Wakefield or Halifax as the cathedral city, leaving the final decision to the Queen in Council.
There was what the Wakefield Herald described as a ‘monster meeting’ in Wakefield on 23 May 1877, with leading civic as well as church figures there, to seek formal support for ‘the superior claims of the town’. The Mayor of Wakefield, Alderman W. H. Gill, took the chair. The Vicar of Wakefield, Norman J. D. Straton, and Wakefield’s Conservative Member of Parliament, Thomas Kemp Sanderson, were on the platform together with Lieutenant Colonel Stanhope. Alderman Gill referred to his meeting with the Home Secretary to press the claims of Wakefield. Stanhope expressed concern that, if the see were centred on Halifax,
