ST JOHN THE EVANGELIST

Mission Street, Horbury Bridge, Wakefield, WF4 5NU

Contact: Mrs Valerie Crowther, Churchwarden

Tel: 01924 262614

1864 the Rev. Sabine Baring Gould was sent by Canon John Sharp, Vicar of Horbury, to open a mission at Horbury Bridge.  His brief was to work among the people who had been wholly neglected even by the dissenters and to do what he could towards the building of a school-chapel there.  A three-roomed cottage was rented where services were held and a night school for reading, writing and arithmetic.

Baring Gould is remembered locally for two things.  Firstly, an Annual Whitsuntide Procession to St. Peter’s Church was a popular event.  It was for this procession that Baring Gould wrote the hymn ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ for the Bridge children to sing whilst marching up the hill to Horbury (he also wrote the equally popular hymn, ‘Now the Day is Over’).  Secondly, he caused a stir when he fell in love with a local mill girl, Grace Taylor, and sent her away to a fellow Vicar’s house in York to learn the manners and ways of the upper classes.  He left Horbury in 1866 but returned in 1868 to marry Grace in St. Peter’s Church.  Their marriage lasted until her death 48 years later, and the couple had 15 children, all but one of whom lived to adulthood. When he buried his wife in 1916 he had carved on her tombstone the Latin motto Dimidium Animae Meae ("Half my Soul"), and when Baring Gould himself died on 2 January 1924 at his home at Lew Trenchard, he was buried next to his beloved Grace.

The Church of St. John the Divine was built by subscription at Horbury Bridge in 1884 for a cost of £2,500.  After the death of Baring Gould in 1924 the community of the Bridge collected donations and built a rood screen in St. John’s Church dedicated to his memory.

The church is tucked away, together with the school, in the centre of the small community of the Bridge.  It has been reordered; the work began in 2001.  It is now a clean and light multi purpose building serving our congregations and community, yet managing to keep its essential character.  The lovely rood screen is still in place and the Processional Cross, used by Baring Gould on the Whitsun Walks, can be seen in the church.

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