St. Wilfrid

Introduction

A Mass centre was first established in Ripon in 1850. The elaborate arcaded reredos was designed by Edward Welby Pugin, with sculpted scenes from the life of St Wilfrid in high relief.

History

In Ripon itself a warehouse in Heath's Court, Low Shellgate was used as a chapel throughout the 1850s. In 1858 the priest Father Robert Garstang bought the site of St Wilfrid's. The church was not consecrated until 1912. The Catholic community in Ripon gained considerably in prestige with the conversion of the 1st Marquess of Ripon in 1878. In 1909 fittings from the private chapel at nearby Studley Royal were transferred to St Wilfrid's following the death of the Marquess of Ripon.

Architecture and furnishings

The church has a nave and aisles, west transepts with polygonal ends and hipped roofs, and a chancel raised much higher than the nave with a polygonal apse. The source for the unusual and dramatic elevation of the chancel roof may be Pugin's chapel at Alton Castle and ultimately the C12 church of Les Saintes de la Mer in Provence. The nave has four bays and a west gallery; the choir has three shorter bays. The bowl-shaped font is on a thick central column with four thinner ones, each of pink marble.

The pulpit has a simple balustrade of pink marble columns. The communion rail is of brass and delicate wrought iron ornament. The altar to Our Lady of Fountains in the south aisle used to be in the 1st Marquess of Ripon's private chapel at Studley Park, given to St Wilfrid's by the 2nd Marquess in 1909.

Ten stained-glass windows dating from 1878 were installed along the north and south aisles. The sanctuary was remodelled following the Second Vatican Council, but the ornate reredos designed by Edward Pugin remains unaltered. The interior details are in earliest French Gothic style, with pointed arches, geometrical ornament, and foliate capitals with some crockets.