St Paul's Church in Shipley has recently commemorated its 200th anniversary with a weekend of celebration and worship. I went along to the morning service on Sunday, which was led by our vicar Rev'd Natasha Thomas and the Right Rev'd Dr Toby Howarth, currently Area Bishop of Bradford and soon to be the new Bishop of Leeds diocese.
St Paul's was built as a 'Waterloo Church', by a grant from the British government in thanksgiving for peace after the victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The new churches were intended to provide accessible places of worship for the rapidly growing industrial and suburban towns.
Some years later, the vicar of St Paul's decided to raise funds for the construction of a daughter church, St Peter's, on the edge of Saltaire village, which was consecrated in 1909. Again, this was deemed necessary at the time to serve the needs of the growing population in Saltaire and the new housing developments in the Moorhead and Nab Wood area. Ironically, now, our congregations are dwindling and there is a plan to merge the three existing parishes of Shipley (St Paul's, St Peter's and Windhill).
There was a service of Holy Communion, after which the Bishop buried a Time Capsule in the churchyard, full of our prayers for the next 200 years of Christian presence and ministry in Shipley. Then, of course, coffee and cake was served!
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