St Marys Convent Church

St Mary's Convent Church, also known as Mount St Mary's Church, is a Roman Catholic church located on Church Road in Richmond Hill, Leeds. Built in 1852 by architects Joseph Hansom and W Wardell, with the chancel and transepts added in 1866 by Edward Welby Pugin, it is designed in the Gothic Revival style. The church features coursed rock-faced masonry and a steep-pitched slate roof.

The plan includes a tall nave and chancel, north and south transepts, and tall north and south aisles with four-light Decorated windows, but no clerestory. The exterior showcases high gables over the aisle windows and over the tall narrow windows of the polygonal apse, with decorated window tracery, a rose window in the transepts, and a very large west window consisting of two four-light sections with geometric tracery. Below this window is a wide moulded arch entrance, with hoodmould stops and uncarved column capitals. Greek crosses adorn the apices of the gables.

Inside, many fittings have been removed and the church was not in use at the time of the survey, but it retains fine proportions and important features. The nave is very high with seven bays and clustered columns, although the capitals are uncarved. There are arched recesses for side chapels in the south aisle, one of which contains a marble altar and reredos. The north aisle features triple-arched confessionals with trefoil decoration. The two-bay transepts have polychrome tiled floors and remnants of altars on the east walls. The nave has a wooden floor and an arch-braced roof, with seven steps leading up to the choir, rib-vaulting, and attached columns with elaborately carved capitals. The altar has a plaster frieze on the frontal, and there are three crocketed arched niches in the windows, with a plaster frieze depicting church and lay leaders worshipping the Blessed Sacrament. Although the windows are boarded, stained glass by John Hardman Powell survives. This church is an important building situated prominently in its location.