C O N T E X T 1 2 1 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 1 29 population already exceeded 200,000. This provided non-conformists with a free rein. Even the city’s Anglican vicar,Walter Hook, conceded in 1837 that ‘the de facto established religion is Methodism’. Both cities’ religious buildings do more than just record social history. In the highly plural world of 19th century religion, architectural styles became a stamp of identity and a mark of competition between rival denominations. Catholics and high-church Anglicans, like Walter Hook in Leeds, considered religious buildings to be tools for shaping society as much as the services that were conducted within them. Perhaps the most famous 19th century Catholic convert,Augustus Pugin, wrote in 1843 that reforming church architecture was an ambition ‘not inferior to the rescuing of the Holy Land from the Infidels: for the artists of the latter centuries who have travestied the temples and altars of God are little better’. At the same time Protestant non-conformists also developed an idiosyncratic architectural language, albeit on a smaller scale. Chapels were intentionally located in close proximity to rival denominations, and vivid architecture was both means of luring in passersby and underlining denominational differences. It is hardly surprising that in 1850 the influentialWesleyan minister FJ Jobson encouraged fellowWesleyans to ‘place chapels in such situations as will most extensively command attention’. In places like Roundhay in Leeds, where Methodist, Anglican and Congregationalist churches all surround a single junction, the legacy of the religious rivalries of earlier centuries is preserved in stone. A knowledge of the interconnections of these buildings leads to an appreciation of the significance of the protestant box chapel located next to the gothic revival parish church. The collated data from the OS maps and subsequent physical survey are shown on the two maps. To put it mildly, the decline has been dramatic. Of the 265 places of worship in Liverpool in 1900, only 83 survive today, including those now in alternative uses. In Leeds just 61 of the city’s 201 places of worship in 1900 remain standing. Despite a growing interest in conservation nationally since the 1960s, the rates of loss remain different in the two cities. In recent decades the number of losses in Leeds has been curtailed, while it remains high in Liverpool. c1900 c1930 c1950 c1970 c1990 c2010 Liverpool 265 253 214 178 138 119 Leeds 201 197 173 137 119 112 The number of religious buildings in each city over the last century, including those built after 1900 This local difference reflects the mixed effectiveness of national conservation initiatives. While listing has largely prevented demolition (only four listed religious buildings have ever been demolished in either city), it applies only to a small minority of religious buildings. Equally, national funding and tax benefits such as the The gothic revival parish church of Leeds, commissioned byWalter Hook The ‘usual’ nonconformist chapel, as illustrated by FJ Jobson in 1850 Maps based on Ordnance Survey data
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