St. Paul's Parish Church - Shipley, UK
Posted by: 
dtrebilc
N 53° 50.036 W 001° 46.993
30U E 580074 N 5965732
This church was built at a time when the town of Shipley was expanding due to the expansion of the wool trade during the industrial revolution.
Waymark Code: WMTY03
Location: Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 01/21/2017
Views: 1
Welcome to St. Paul’s Shipley! We are the original parish church of Shipley: the church was built in 1826 and we have been worshipping and serving the community in the same building ever since.
Our congregation has a wide age-range, trusting in the One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We seek to:
worship the living God,
love our neighbours and our world,
be a welcoming Christian community.
The Church Building
The building is a Historic England Grade II Listed Building and is a Commissioner's Church.
The church's website has a detailed history of the parish of Shipley and the church, but this extract tells the story of Commissioner's Churches.
"The growth of Methodism under the inspiration of John and Charles Wesley in the 1700s, and the rise of other free churches, had produced a revival in church going that crossed denominational and class of society boundaries. The result was a transformed England. This time saw the beginnings of social reform as evidenced by the founding of agencies for the relief of the poor, prison reform, anti-slavery societies, the founding of schools and hospitals and the formation of missionary societies. It is suggested that one effect was that England was saved from the horrors of a revolution like that which had but recently broken out in France. Certainly the established clergy had a part in persuading the population that support of the war was a duty and other interests should be set aside. Furthermore, the structures of the Church of England had been little modified to meet the increasing populations of cities and there were few churches in major centres. So in 1818 the government of Lord Liverpool passed the Church Building Act. This provided the sum of £1 million for the building of new Church of England churches in the expanding cities and created a Church Building Commission to allocate funds and oversee the process. These churches are often called “Commissioners Churches” or “Waterloo Churches” though the money was given to thank God for the blessing of peace rather than in gratitude for the victory at Waterloo. The Act also made it easier to split up large parishes and it was expected that additional local funds would be raised to augment the Commissioners grants. This money was supplemented in 1824 with another £0.5m. The result was the sudden expansion of church building (it is suggested that this was competitively and fashionably driven with little regard for the demand for these churches.) Interestingly at a time when a significant parish income came from pew rents (pewage) the 1818 Act laid down that no fewer than one fifth of the seats were to be for the poor of the parish without payment (free-seats)."
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