The Church of St Mary in the Wood

 

A view of the ruined interior of the Church of St. Mary in the Wood

Leaving Scatcherd Park, having spent an hour in Morley after alighting from the No. 51 bus on Victoria Road, I headed off towards the Church of St. Mary in the Wood (1878), 12 Grade II Listed tombs and a mausoleum were part of my British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge. 

 

The Historic England map of St. Mary in the Wood's churchyard

 

The church became redundant in 2008 and, after being purchased and a planning application submitted to convert it into a luxury hotel, a devastating fire in 2010 left it in ruins, with the site since being left unmanaged and becoming heavily overgrown. 

 

The main entrance to the Church of St. Mary in the Wood

Arriving at the entrance to the churchyard on Commercial Street, I found that the gates were secured by a padlock and chain and, hoping that I might find another way to get into the churchyard, I retraced my steps and headed along Troy Road. Having caught several glimpses of the ruins from the footpath, I eventually came to another entrance to the churchyard where the aluminium gate was easily surmounted. 

 

Views from Commercial Street and Troy Road

 

Following a path that was not actually thickly overgrown, I soon obtained my first good view of the church, which was designed in a Gothic Revival style by the architects Lockwood and Mawson from Bradford, whose work I had seen before at Salts Mill, its associated housing and Saltaire Congregational Church. 

 

A view of the north elevation

 

With the benefit of the map from the Historic England website, which pinpoints the listed tombs much better than the map on the British Listed Buildings website, it wasn’t long before I was able to find a pair of chest tombs belonging to members of the Asquith family. 

 

The Asquith chest tombs

I took a few general photos of the west end of the church from a distance, but the churchyard in places had very dense undergrowth that prevented easy access to the structure and I didn’t get close enough to make out any details of the masonry. 

 

Views of the north and west elevations

When I found that my anticlockwise traverse around the exterior of the church could not go any further, I made my way back towards the north side and next encountered the raised grave slab of William Havden (1699), which wasn’t that easy to locate beneath the nettles, ivy, algae and sycamore seeds that were partially obscuring it. 

 

The raised grave slab of William Havden

 

The chest tomb of Anne Lister (c.1735) is one of four set very close together, which all have a similar simple form without any obvious distinguishing features. Although the Historic England records its inscription, I had to clamber on to the most accessible of these and scrutinise the group closely before I could make out her name. 

 

The chest tomb of Anne Lister

 

The table tomb of Sarah Jubb (d.1790) was quite easy to find, with it described as “approximately 1 metre east of north-east corner of church”, although knowing that the Historic England descriptions are not always very accurate and sometimes quite wrong, I again had to stand on the slab so that I could read the inscription.

 

The table tomb of Sarah Judd

Next on my list of tombs to photograph is named by Historic England as: “Group of 3 Raised Tomb Slabs Set Between Central Buttresses to North Aisle of Church of St Mary”. As with the Havden and Lister tombs, the listing description cites the inscriptions on the three separate tombs as a single block of jumbled up text. 

 

The presumed site of the group of three raised tomb slabs

 

I was really quite surprised to see that these have passed through their editorial process without being corrected but, given that their descriptions typically consist of endless lines of text that are not broken down into paragraphs – a basic skill that children are taught at a very early age – they don't seem to give much thought to how these come across to the end user. 

 

Vegetation and saplings growing through a grave slab

On this occasion, this was actually quite academic, because the tombs have become so overgrown by bracken, ivy, grass, dandelions, moss and saplings growing through a fracture in the only slab visible and I couldn’t see any inscription and, based on their position in relation to the north aisle, I can only presume that I had located the grave slabs in question. 

 

Another view of vegetaion on a grave slab

 

For my Photo Challenges that include tombs and gravestones, it is impractical to print the full listing description and I rely on the maps and plans that are available and take enough photographs of them to enable me to refer to the Historic England descriptions when I get home and have access to my computer. The grave slabs of Martha Balmforth (1795) and Benjamin Hopperton (1785) were relatively easy to find, but the recording of their inscriptions by Historic England are again a jumble of words that make little sense. 

 

The worksheet for my Photo Challenge

 

With time moving on, I walked round to the south side of the church to quickly look for the remaining 7 tombs on my list to photograph but, seeing that they were also covered in moss and other vegetation that had accumulated over the years and with nothing at hand to remove them, I decided not to spend any more time looking for them. 

 

Various tombs on the north side of the church

 

Even in a well maintained churchyard, I have usually found it quite difficult to track down listed tombs and gravestones for a Photo Challenge, due to the lichen, moss and algae that accumulates on them and also that the inscriptions are often weathered and barely legible. I am usually quite diligent in my investigations but on this occasion, after taking a few general record photographs of the Scatcherd Mausoleum, I headed off towards the centre of Morley. 

 

The Scatcherd Mausoleum