Leeds Minster Revisited

 

A view east along the nave

In October 2018, using my newly purchased Building Stone Heritage of Leeds by Francis. G. Dimes and Murray Mitchell, I had a walk around Leeds to look at some of the buildings mentioned in this – including Leeds Minster on Kirkgate, a part of the city that I had not visited before. 

 

The Building Stone Heritage of Leeds

 

During this visit, much of the time was spent being shown the main points of interest at the east end of the church, including the Leeds Cross and an effigy of a knight, but I didn’t have the time to properly explore its interior. 

 

The floor of the sanctuary

 

In the sanctuary, the floor is laid with a mixture of encaustic tiles, mosaic and various decorative stones, some of which I recognised as being Italian Carrara marble and serpentinite, with Connemara marble, Cork Red marble and Kilkenny marble from the Republic of Ireland. 

 

The stone library in the Redmires Building

 

My experience as a building restoration contractor in London, where the stone is imported from elsewhere, provided with me experience and interests in stone identification and matching – to satisfy an architect’s specification “to match the existing as closely as possible” – resulting in the production of the Triton Stone Library, which has since been transferred to Sheffield Hallam University and is now housed in the Redmires Building. 

 

London Illustrated geological Walks by Dr. Eric Robinson

 

With our work being very largely concerned with the external fabric, using publications such as the Natural Stone Directory and Dr. Eric Robinson’s London Illustrated Geological Walks - which was illustrated with black and white photographs but identified buildings where the large scale characteristic of a given stone could be clearly seen – I learned to identify the principal granites that had been used in the buildings that we were restoring. 

Decorative Stone The Complete Sourcebook

 

My experience of marbles, however, is quite limited and this prompted me to purchase Decorative Stone the Complete Sourcebook by Monica T. Price, which is largely based on the Corsi Collection at Oxford Natural History Museum. 

 

The standard layout in Decorative Stone The Complete Sourcebook

 

Although it provides a good introduction to decorative stones, is too large to easily read and it has more of a character of a coffee table book. Furthermore, the specimens in the collection are typically 145 mm x 75 mm in size and these provide very little idea of the true pattern and variation of colours and textures that can seen in a large slab used for panelling or columns in an interior. 

 

Various details of the sanctuary floor

 

Having walked from Swinegate to Kirkgate, as part of my British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge for Leeds, I visited Leeds Minster again to take some more photos of the sanctuary floor, but I could not identify any more stones than during my previous visit. 

 

The sanctuary floor

In the part of the chancel to the east of the sanctuary floor, several ledger stones are set into the floor and some of these appear to be polished Carboniferous Limestone, although I did not get down on my knees to look for fossils that would confirm this. 

 

Ledger stones to the west of the sanctuary

Walking along the nave, there are more of these ledger stones, including some with deeply carved family crests set into a roundel, which are very similar to those that I had previously seen at St. Mary’s church in Sprotbrough and quite recently at St. Mary’s church in Beverley and at Hull Minster. A guide at the latter informed me that the limestone for these ledgers was supplied by quarries at Tournai in Belgium – the source of the black ‘marble’ seen in many C12 fonts. 

 

A ledger stone in the nave floor

 

At the east end of the nave is a font (1883) which, in her Pevsner Architectural Guide to Leeds, Susan Wrathmell states was designed by William Butterfield, but which the Historic England description or Pevsner do not even mention. 

 

The Victorian font

 

The platform upon which the font is set is composed of veined 'Sicilian' variety of Carrara marble and a polished red stone that may also be Cork Red marble, but the lighting wasn’t particularly good in this part of the church and I was more concerned with trying to obtain a few decent record photos than studying the various stones in detail. 

 

Gastropods in the Kilkenny marble step

 

The second step is a polished black Carboniferous Limestone, which contains numerous gastropod fossils and is very similar to the stone seen in the steps of the pulpit at St. John’s church in Ranmoor and which I think is Kilkenny marble. 

 

The base of the font

 

I didn’t take a good photo of the first step but, looking at the base and main body of the font, which looks to me like the Belgian Rouge Royal limestone that features in my reference book, the Stones and Marbles of Wallonia, I think that it may also be made of this stone. 

 

The font

 

The upper part of the font is made out of a stone that reminds me of a polished Carboniferous Limestone from the Duke of Devonshire's estate, which I saw at St. Martin's church in Stoney Middleton, but there is nothing in Monica Price’s book that looks anything like this. As with the stone used for the colonnettes, I will have another look when I am next visiting this part of Leeds. 

 

An unknown stone used in the font