The monument to soldiers that has outlasted church

The First World War memorial, seen here, shows the names of 230 parishioners killed during the four and a half years of the 1914-18 War.

Their names, in black on marble tablets, are situated behind a blue and white statue of Mary, the Mother of Christ, below a painting of the Crucifixion.

But who created it? The memorial runs across the north wall of the building, separating the church from a cinema, The Scala Picture Hall, which lasted from 1913 to 1923. From 1926 the Scala became St Mary’s Parish Hall.

As everyone knows, the deconsecrated building now serves as home to Bradford Metropolitan Food Bank, but is to be developed by the non-religious charity Emmaus into accommodation and workshops for the homeless.

Expatriate Bradfordian Vincent Finn, who now lives in the United States, grew up in the area around St Mary’s.

On one of his periodic visits to Bradford he brought in photographs of the memorial, fearing that it might be either demolished or removed and put somewhere else.

We understand, however, that the memorial will remain in the grade II-listed building, which was given to Emmaus by the Leeds RC Diocese.

Before the church was deconsecrated, the last priest, Father John Abberton, permitted Bradford Metropolitan Foodbank to store its food donations there.

The building’s use as a place of worship ceased a few years ago, but the writing was on the wall in the 1960s.

In August 1971, the-then parish priest, Monsignor Thomas A Ronchetti, told the T&A that in his nine years there the number of parishioners had been halved to 2,000.

He said: “When they pulled down Tennyson Place, Exeter Street and Ripon Street they cut the heart out of this parish, and there has not been a transplant. It is still a wilderness, and just when Pollard Park will have people living there is apparently some time off.”

St Mary’s was decommissioned as a place of worship six years ago.