Patrick Comerford
The churchyard of Saint George’s Church is a green island in the centre of Leicester, between Colton Street and Queen Street. Saint George’s Church is a 200-year-old church that gives its name to the Saint George’s Cultural Quarter. It was built in 1823 and 1827 as a Church of England parish church, and was once one of the largest churches in Leicester. Today it is the parish church of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Leicester.
Saint George's was the first Church of England church to be built in Leicester since the Reformation. It was built under the Church Building Act of 1818, set up to mark the victory at Waterloo by providing churches in places where they were most needed.
With the Industrial Revolution and rising populations in rapidly expanding towns and cities, new parishes had to be formed. In Leicester, Saint George’s parish was formed for part of the ever-growing Saint Margaret’s parish.
Commissioners’ Churches represent the largest church building initiative in England since the Reformation, and constitute the greatest state-funded wave of church building ever seen in England. Commissioners’ Churches were built with the aid of parliamentary grants administered by the Church Building Commissioners between 1818 and 1856. The first Church Building Act passed in 1818 granted £1 million, and a second act, passed in 1824, granted a further £500,000.
The churches were built in areas with expanding populations where the largely medieval churches provided inadequately for new congregations. The new churches were intended to be spacious and economical with a substantial proportion of free seats for the poor.
Saint George’s was the first Church of England parish church built in Leicester since the Reformation. It was built in 1823-1827 with a grant of £16,600 from the Church Building Commissioners. This was a substantial amount, given that nationally the average cost of a new church between 1800 and 1830 was £6,000, and it was the largest sum spent on any church in Leicestershire and Rutland in the 19th century.
Saint George’s is predominantly in the Decorated style and was built in 1823-1827 to designs by the County Surveyor, William Parsons (1796-1857), a leading local architect with eight listed buildings to his name. Parsons was also responsible for Leicester Gaol, Leicestershire Lunatic Asylum, now the Fielding Johnson Building at Leicester University, and six Midland Railway stations in Leicestershire, including Brooksby Station.
Saint George’s originally accommodated 801 people in pews and 999 in free seats. A drawing of the church interior ca 1827 shows two raised pulpits at the east end of the nave, box pews, and galleries in the aisles that had plastered ceilings. A contemporary account suggests that the nave may have been vaulted.
Saint George’s is an especially elaborate example of a Commissioners’ Church in the Gothic style which has impressively proportioned elevations enriched with a multitude of stone-carved embellishments. One of the most notable features of the church is the use of cast iron for the window tracery, an important surviving feature of a rare architectural detail.
After a severe lightning strike, Parsons rebuilt the tower to a slightly higher design in 1846.
The pulpit, tower screen and font are finely carved, highly decorated examples of fittings of their kind. The font and cover by H Goddard & Son, an important Leicester-based architectural practice was installed in 1865. The west gallery was removed in 1879, and the small sanctuary was replaced by a large chancel with a side chapel and vestry to the designs of Sir Arthur Blomfield (1829-1899). He was a prominent Gothic revival architect whose works include the Royal College of Music, London, Selwyn College, Cambridge, Saint Barnabas Church, Jericho, Oxford, and Saint Luke’s Chapel, Oxford, and he rebuilt the nave of Southwark Cathedral.
A fire broke out at the neighbouring spinning factory of R Rowley & Co in 1911 and burning material landed on the roof of Saint George’s, destroying much of the nave and damaging the chancel and tower.
Saint George’s was rebuilt and restored in 1912-1914 by William Douglas Caröe (1857-1938), who had been appointed Senior Architect to the Church Commissioners in 1895. He was a major figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement and a pioneer of building conservation, restoring many churches as well as designing domestic and commercial buildings.
Caröe’s finely detailed design for the nave ceiling and the lofty piers, unusually embellished with sculpted figures in niches, contributes significantly to the architectural distinction of the church. His drawings show that only the external walls and windows of the nave survived the fire. He rebuilt the arcade and the roof to a different design, and removed the damaged galleries. The tower was restored and a timber screen costing £400 was inserted but the spire was removed. The seating was replaced and a memorial pulpit costing £110 was installed.
Caröe also designed the war memorial in the churchyard, commemorating the dead of World War I.
After slum clearance in the surrounding area in the mid-20th century, the congregation dwindled and Saint George’s was closed for Anglican worship in the early 1970s. The Serbian Orthodox Church began holding services in the church in 1973 and it was formally transferred to the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1983.
However, the building suffered from dry rot and water ingress throughout the second half of the 20th century, leading to much of the chancel roof and ceiling being replaced in the 1960s. The south slope of the nave roof was re-covered in Welsh slate in 1987. Further roof repairs are being carried out to the nave.
The church gives its name to Saint George’s Cultural Quarter, a 26-acre area on the east side of Leicester City Centre. It was established in 1989, and transformed the former textile and shoe manufacturing hub into a thriving area for artists, designers and craftspeople.
Once the industrial hub of the city, the area fuses together elements of the city’s more historic architecture with sensitive and award winning regeneration projects, creating an exciting, cosmopolitan and creative place.
Saint George’s is a solid building and some people say it looks like a mediaeval castle with its elegant, tall towers. Its green yard is an oasis of tranquillity in the busy heart of Leicester.
Thousands of people pass by the church every day but few ever get to see inside it. It is largely closed because of the constant struggle to find the money needed for repairs and the threat of anti-social behaviour in the surrounding area. Many people say the immediate area is gloomy, unsafe and used by drug addicts.
Leicester City Council wants to revamp the area around the church with a £900,000 scheme for the churchyard, which it says will prevent water run-off from leaves and branches damaging the Grade II* listed church and open out the area.
The plans also included remodelling Saint George’s churchyard to create a ‘garden gateway’ connecting the rail station to the area around Curve. However, a proposal to fell 21 mature lime trees was opposed by environmental campaigners and by the Serbian Orthodox church which owns the land.
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