The Chantry Chapel and the Bridge
"It is located south of the city centre on the medieval bridge over the River Calder. It is the only survivor of four chantries in Wakefield and the oldest and most ornate of the surviving bridge chapels in England. Others are at St Ives, Cambridgeshire, Rotherham and Bradford-on-Avon. The chapel has had three west fronts, the original medieval façade having been removed to Kettlethorpe Hall in 1832. The medieval bridge is a scheduled ancient monument.
History
Wakefield had four chantry chapels, three of which dated from the 13th century. They were built outside the medieval town on the roads leading to Leeds, Dewsbury, York and Doncaster. The Chantry of St John the Baptist was on Northgate, the road to Leeds, where Wakefield Grammar School stands today. The Chapel of St Mary Magdalene was on Westgate where it crossed the Ings Beck on the road to Dewsbury. St Swithun's Chantry Chapel, on the York road, was near Clarke Hall. In the 14th century the Chantry Chapel of St Mary the Virgin was built on the medieval bridge across the River Calder on the road to Doncaster and the south.
Wakefield's medieval nine-arched bridge is 320 feet (98 m) long, was built in stone between 1342 and 1356. It replaced an earlier wooden structure on the site of an ancient ford. The chapel on the bridge was licensed in 1356. The Battle of Wakefield was fought about a mile south of the bridge in 1460 and the Earl of Rutland was killed near the bridge while attempting to escape.
The chapel was used for worship until the Reformation and Abolition of Chantries Acts when all Wakefield's four chantry chapels were closed. The bridge chapel survived because it is a structural element of the bridge. After closure it was used as a warehouse, library, office and cheese shop and survived bridge widening in 1758 and 1797. The bridge and its chapel were painted by artists including J.M.W. Turner whose watercolour dates from 1793.
Restoration and rebuilding
The chapel was transferred to the Church of England in 1842 and the Yorkshire Architectural Society, influenced by the Oxford Movement, persuaded to undertake its restoration. The society, keen to restore medieval ecclesiastical remains, adopted designs by George Gilbert Scott. Restoration costing approximately £2,500 (equivalent to £220,000 in 2016), was carried out, resulting in the complete reconstruction of the chapel above pavement level. The new west front differed slightly from its medieval predecessor. Scott is perceived as having made two errors, the first was being persuaded to completely replace the old west front. The second was having the new façade carved from Caen stone, which crumbled in the polluted urban atmosphere and was completely replaced in 1939 in gritstone by ecclesiastical architect Sir Charles Nicholson. The original richly carved medieval façade was moved to Kettlethorpe Hall, where it became the frontage to a folly boathouse.
The chapel opened for Anglican worship in 1848 and was used as the parish church of the newly formed ecclesiastical district of St Mary until a church was built in 1854. The bridge chapel became a chapel-of-ease and services were held irregularly. St Mary's merged with St Andrew's, Eastmoor in the 1960s and the impoverished parish struggled with the chapel's upkeep. In the 1980s it seemed likely the chapel would be declared redundant by the Church of England. In January 2000 a parish boundary change brought the chantry into the care of Wakefield Cathedral.
Structure
The chapel which projects to the east side of the bridge is built into on a small island in the river and its base is a structural element of the bridge. It is rectangular in plan and was built of ashlar sandstone possibly from a quarry at Goodybower. The chapel measures 50 feet (15 m) by 25 feet (8 m). It measures 36 feet (11 m) to the top of the battlements at the eastern end. The chapel is at street level and has a lower chamber, the sacristy, accessed by a spiral staircase at the east end."
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"Bridge believed to have been built in the early-mid 14th century and originally about half the width of the present structure, which has been twice widened on the upstream side in 1758 and 1797. It consists of nine arches, five to the south and four to the north of the chapel. They are pointed in shape, and most of them still retain their chamfered ribs, three under each arch. Superseded by a new bridge constructed in 1931-33 as the old bridge was too narrow to accommodate modern traffic."
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