as the latter had some thirty livings in his gift and the new bishop would certainly have far fewer. Wakefield people had already undertaken a major restoration of the parish church. There had been no comparable work at Halifax. Sanderson, pointed out than in 1836 there had been the possibility of Wakefield being the cathedral city rather than Ripon. Moreover, Wakefield was not, like Halifax, merely ‘on a railway branch line’. A sum of £100,000 was again identified as necessary to endow the bishopric. A number of Wakefield people promised individual donations of £1,000. Sanderson proposed, ‘Inasmuch as the Bill empowers Her Majesty by Order of Council to make choice between Wakefield and Halifax as the cathedral city for the proposed new diocese, this meeting desires to express its sense of the superior claims of Wakefield and hereby prays Her Majesty to select the former place.’ It was, of course, carried.
A similar meeting in the New Assembly Rooms in Halifax on 25 May, convened by Sir Henry Edwards, was less well attended. Edwards explained how he had lobbied successfully to have the option of Halifax added to a bill that originally referred only to Wakefield. The meeting secured unanimous support for a motion urging that Halifax be chosen as the cathedral city, citing the possibility of an easy adaptation of the parish church and the strategic situation of Halifax geographically and in terms of railway communication within the projected diocese. But the Halifax Courier noted ‘something like mutiny in the Halifax Camp’ because a number of the poorer vicars in the Halifax area thought that any surplus money that might still be appropriated from the vicar’s endowments should be directed to improving their livings rather than financing a bishop. The paper foresaw that the cathedral would as a consequence be in Wakefield. A committee was appointed, with Edwards among its members, to promote the claims of Halifax. Edward Balme Wheatley-Balme (1819–96) however, who was not at the meeting, sent a message that he would give £5,000 towards the bishopric fund whichever town was chosen.
Wheatley-Balme, who lived at Cote Wall, Mirfield, was ultimately the single most significant donor to the bishopric, giving some £10,000. When, before the diocese could be founded, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners required four guarantors to ensure that a house would be provided for the bishop, he was one of these. When the Wakefield Diocesan Conference was first set up, Bishop How chose him as one of his personally nominated ten members.
Huddersfield was never in serious contention as the cathedral city, and a meeting of Huddersfield clergy, again in May 1877, accepted that the honours would go to Wakefield.
The persistent advocacy of Wakefield’s MP, Thomas Kemp Sanderson, went a long way to furthering Wakefield’s cause where the two Radical Halifax members (James Stansfeld, a radical protestant dissenter, and John Dyson Hutchinson) remained detached. Pigou noted that they were more interested in pursuing the disestablishment of the church than in creating a new diocese. Pigou was asked by the then Home Secretary, Richard Assheton Cross, to give his opinion on the relative merits of the two towns for the see. At their meeting he was told by Cross that the petition of the clergy against Halifax, fearing that money that might have been used to improve their benefices would be diverted to the bishopric fund, sealed its fate. The claims of Wakefield were preferred. When Sanderson was given the Freedom of the City of Wakfield in 1895, the citation referred to its being ‘in great measure’ due to him that Wakefield had been chosen for the cathedral.
The Bishoprics Act, passed in 1878, provided specifically for a Bishop of Wakefield as well as for the anticipated sees of Liverpool, Newcastle, and Southwell. The cathedral would be, ‘Such church at Wakefield as may be determined by order of Her Majesty in Council subject to the rights of the patron and incumbent.’ The new bishopric was to have such a part of the endowment of the Bishopric of Ripon as would bring in £300 a year.
Halifax Minster, Chris Lord Photography
The historic significance of Halifax Parish Church was recognized when in 2009 it was given minster status. The accolade was celebrated at a service in November.
But although an Act of Parliament now provided for the South Yorkshire see, for some years the matter was dropped. There was an economic recession affecting both agriculture and commerce. Although the Diocese of Liverpool was formed in 1880 and that of Newcastle in 1882, there was no progress for some years on the Wakefield scheme.
Two things in 1884 prompted a second campaign to secure the new diocese. The first was the establishment that year of the Diocese of Southwell. The second was the death of Bishop Bickersteth and the appointment of William Boyd Carpenter who was consecrated on 25 July 1884, to the Ripon see. One of the key figures in reviving the scheme and in ensuring a successful conclusion was the Vicar of Wakefield, Norman Straton, who, new to Wakefield in 1875, was by 1884 one of the leading churchmen in the Ripon Diocese and had become a Canon of Ripon in 1883. The other most significant figure was Joshua Ingham Brooke, who had been Rector of Thornhill since 1867, and Rural Dean of Dewsbury since 1871, and was, like Straton, a Ripon Canon.
In 1884, Straton conceived the idea of bringing the (national) Church Congress to Wakefield in 1886 as a means of promoting the Wakefield scheme and adding to the funds. The Congress founded in 1861 in Cambridge, was a voluntary gathering bringing together Anglican clergy and lay people, and embracing Evangelicals, Ritualists and the broad church party. Straton obtained support at a public meeting in August 1884 to request the Bishop of Ripon to secure the next Congress for his diocese.
At Bishop Boyd Carpenter’s first Diocesan Conference, held in Leeds on 11 October 1884, Francis Sharpe Powell, a former Member of Parliament for the West Riding who had strongly supported Halifax’s claims in 1875, raised the subject of the division of the diocese and ensured the carrying of a motion asking the bishop to name a committee to raise the necessary funds.
Boyd Carpenter paid his first visit as bishop to Wakefield on 21 January 1885 to attend the annual Church Institution soiree. The event became not so much a social event as a campaign meeting at which the bishop was urged to exercise his good offices to secure the swift division of his diocese, in particular by driving the fund-raising. That June, Boyd-Carpenter wrote to all his clergy urging them to ‘do all in their power’ to secure the completion of the Wakefield Bishopric scheme. He subsequently visited many centres in the Ripon Diocese to foster the setting up of local fund-raising committees.
By the time of the Ripon Diocesan Conference in October 1885, Straton and Brooke as secretaries of the Wakefield Bishopric Fund had contacted all those who had offered subscriptions during the earlier campaign and succeeded in obtaining promises of £24,365. Straton was able to say, ‘Those who have hitherto regarded the erection of the Wakefield bishopric as an event which might possibly occur in the distant future must now be aware that it has come within measurable distance.’
The Church Congress, held in Wakefield in 1886, amply demonstrated the facilities Wakefield could offer as the diocesan cathedral city. It opened with a reception in the recently built Town Hall on 5 October followed by processions to the parish church, St John’s and Holy Trinity where services were held simultaneously. The trade floor of the Corn Exchange was converted into the Congress Hall. The Music Saloon in Wood Street and the Church Institute in Marygate were taken over by caterers. The offices of the Wakefield Charities in Market Street became a press room and the postmaster ensured that reports could be sent by electric telegraph to all parts of Britain. One of the country’s leading clerical outfitters exhibited his garments in the Co-operative Society’s store in Bank Street.
The Wakefield scheme had nothing like the financial support from wealthy merchants or landowners that other nineteenth-century bishoprics enjoyed. Wheatley-Balme was the only individual to contribute more than £1,000. Much of the money came from subscribers giving no more than a guinea. District Visitors and other collectors brought £645 from people who had little beyond pence to give. Offertories were held in many of the parishes of the Ripon Diocese. The sum from Huddersfield parish church was the second largest and amounted to
