St Leonard's Wortley

The Church of St Leonard, Wortley is located in the Parish of Wortley and forms part of the United Benefice of Tankersley, Thurgoland and Wortley within the Diocese of Sheffield.

The church of St Leonard’s stands in the centre of the village of Wortley. The parish includes several small hamlets.

The history of the building is fairly poorly documented with much of its history lost before a fire in 1947 and after gale damage in 1956.

There are records for a small chapel in Wortley during the reign of Henry III (1216) with a definite mention of a church in 1318.

The church was originally a chapel of ease and part of the Parish of Tankersley. Wortley became a separate parish in 1753 the time the church in its present form dates from.

St Leonard’s Church is a place of worship used for religious services, funerals, weddings and blessings. It is also used for coffee mornings, village fetes, concerts, talks, presentations, meeting space, heritage tours, private prayer and contemplation. The church building is used as a polling station for local and general elections. It has and still does play a significant role in the life of the village. The church is the focal point of the village visited by many people for pleasure outside of worship.

The church has a ring of 8 bells and an active team of bell ringers who ring the bells for Sunday morning service, weddings by arrangement and for practice on Thursday evenings.

In 2017 St Leonard’s faced a new challenge. The roof of the Nave was found to be failing in several places and rainwater was entering and endangering both the heritage of this Grade 2 listed building and the artifacts contained inside. During the summer of 2017 the PCC have ensured emergency repairs repairs are carried out to protect the building. These repairs are the first stage in securing the building fabric to enable greater work to be done from the building in the near future.

More information can be found at:
www.wortleychurch.org.uk
@wortleytower
@wortleychurch
@wortleychurchbellringers