Perp Revival i'the North

When I did some research into the history of the Anglo-Catholic movement some years ago I ended up lamenting the fact that so little information existed about the role of the movement in the North of England. There was the story of St Saviour's, Leeds, paid for by Dr Pusey and others; Fr Ommanney and his work at St Matthew's Carver Street in Sheffield; and that was about it. All the talk otherwise was about the great Papalist churches in north and east London; the shrine churches of the West End; and the seaside strongholds in Bournemouth, Brighton, and other such places. But I knew it couldn't be the whole story. My old vicar in High Wycombe came from South Yorkshire and referred to the 'Biretta Belt' of churches there - Temple Newsam, Goldthorpe, Swinton, and others - and I kept coming across other references. There was precious little written about them, though.

Now there is, gradually. This week I was in receipt of a very welcome bundle of books and pamphlets from the Anglo-Catholic History Society, including Stephen Savage's Mission Accomplished: Five Lost Churches of Leeds, published a couple of years ago. This contains the astonishing picture you can see to the right:

This is Fr Nicholas Greenwell, first vicar of St Barnabas Little Holbeck, probably in the mid-1860s. The reason I find it so astonishing is the juxtaposition of vesture and clergyman. Fr Greenwell is wearing the full Eucharistic vestments, including maniple, at a time when doing so was something liable to get a priest into trouble (and, a few years later, in prison in some cases). He is also a very Victorian looking gentleman in his whiskers and slick hair, quite unlike his clean-shaven and Popish contemporaries in the South such as Fr Lowder of Wapping. It's that combination that I find interesting, and surprising. I can't remember seeing anything of the sort elsewhere.

Fr Greenwell had been curate at Leeds Parish Church under the great old-fashioned High Churchman Walter Farquhar Hook, but in churchmanship St Barnabas galloped far ahead of the mother church in the city centre and became an inspiration to other churches in the area. From the same milieu - the church of St James, in fact - came Fr Richard Twigg, who moved to Wednesbury and became known as 'The Apostle of the Black Country'; him I knew about, but I had no idea of his background. Slowly the story gets pieced together, it seems.