Church Of St Saviour

The Church of St Saviour is an Anglican church dating from 1842-45, designed by John Macduff Derick in the Gothic Revival style. It is constructed of dressed stone with ashlar dressings. The church’s plan includes a nave, chancel, north and south aisles, transepts, and a north porch, situated on a sloping site with a north-south orientation.

The exterior is characterized by its tall, narrow form and a crossing tower with a quatrefoil pierced parapet and pinnacles. Key features include five-light windows within the transepts and at the west and east ends, three-light chancel windows, two-light aisle windows, and a clerestory. A bellcote over the west end incorporates small flying buttresses and crocketed pinnacles.

Internally, the church is rumored to feature tall octagonal piers to the nave arcades, and contains a Pusey chapel designed by GF Bodley in 1890, along with a reredos created by Temple Moore in 1921.

The stained glass is of particular note. Four five-light windows, described as being of great merit in the style of the 13th century and featuring vibrant colors, were designed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin and executed by O’Connor under the direction of Pusey, with input from Benjamin Webb of the Cambridge Camden Society. Windows within the north end of the north aisle and the north porch are attributed to Morris and Co, dating from between 1875 and 1880, and depict single figures of saints and works in the style of Fra Angelico.

The church was commissioned shortly after the rebuilding of the parish church for Dean Hook and became the center of a significant controversy surrounding church ritual. Dr Pusey, a leading member of the Oxford Movement and Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University, served as the anonymous primary patron, funding the building as an early Tractarian experiment outside of London.

The building demonstrates a high standard of craftsmanship, though it remains incomplete. Planned elements such as a tall spire (modelled on St Mary's, Oxford), pinnacles along the eaves, corbel tables, and carved window hoodmould stops were never realized.

Between 1845 and 1851, attacks against the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement in Leeds escalated, with St Saviour’s Church viewed as an “obnoxious influence.” However, it subsequently became a typical and successful ritualist church under the incumbency of John Wylde, from 1877 to 1929.