Our first church was a mission church on Chapel Street, a daughter church of St Mary at Whitkirk. The first building was erected in 1888 and dedicated as the temporary church of St Wilfrid in 1917. (It is now the Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah’s witnesses, which was demolished and rebuilt in 2003.)

A conventual district was assigned in 1936 and the new parish was formally constituted on 28 July 1939. The foundation stone of the current building was laid on 6 November 1937 and the new church was consecrated on 13 May 1939. The two-manual organ, a gift from the redundant church of St Alban on York Road, was fitted circa 1940 by Binns, Fitton & Haley at a cost of £347.

FURTHER READING:

George E Kirk and C Ian Pettitt, Past and Present: An adventure in pioneering (St Wilfrid’s Church, Halton, Leeds 1940)

Arthur Randall Wells (1877-1942) had previously worked on notable Arts and Crafts churches, principally with WR Lethaby at All Saints, Brockhampton-by-Ross, Herefordshire (1901-2) and ES Prior at St Andrew’s Roker, in Sunderland (1912). But his church of St Wilfrid, Halton (1937-39) is equally influenced by modernism. The visitor is impressed by tremendous space. Large expanses of clear glass within tall, stepped lancet windows allow light to flood high vaults and cast shadows on the plastered interior. ‘The result is memorable, though disturbing. It is possible to point to its indebtedness to the cubic form used by Lutyens in the 1930s, to German expressionism in the interior, and to a touch of the ubiquitous Scandinavian taste that was so admired’ (Linstrum 1978). Wells also furnished much of his interior, notably with lively woodwork, incorporating shuttle and bobbin patterns.

The church interior has been successfully reordered (1981-87, under the architect Peter Hill) but many of Wells’ original fittings have survived.

FURTHER READING:

D Linstrum, West Yorkshire: Architects and Architecture (Lund Humphries 1978)

Nikolaus Pevsner & Enid Radcliffe, ‘Randall Wells’, Architectural Review, November 1964

Nikolaus Pevsner (revised Enid Radcliffe), The Buildings of England: West Riding (Penguin 1989)

Of note in the building is a statue by Eric Gill of St Wilfrid (ca 1939).

Other artists who have contributed to furnishing the church are:

Sculpture: Jesus Offering the Church to his Mother (ca 1951)

Sculpture: Our Lady (1947)

Relief panels: Mysteries of the Rosary (1947)

Relief panel: Our Lord’s Transfiguration (1950)

We are currently seeking further information about this artist who was active at St Wilfrid’s in the 1940s and early 1950s. Please contact us if you have any information.

Painted icon: Madonna and Child (1987)

Hand-woven fabric screen (1989)

FURTHER READING:

Graham Atherton & Evelyn Ross, ‘The Woven Screen in St Wilfrid’s Halton, Leeds’, Church Building, Summer 1990

Graham Carey, ‘God’s Darling’—Eric Gill in Yorkshire (Henry Moore Institute 1997)

Judith Collins, Eric Gill: The Sculpture (Herbert Press 1998)

Names of Vicars of Halton can be found here.