Remember When? reader VINCENT FINN looks at the history of St Mary's Church in Bradford, now up for sale but once the centre of a network of organisations serving a large community

A SIGN bearing the words 'For Sale: Church buildings and all adjacent properties' stands outside St Mary's Church in East Parade, Bradford.

The posting of the sign heralds the end of an era, not only for the church but also for a once thriving neighbourhood.

St Mary's Church stands on the corner of East Parade and Barkerend Road. The present building was completed in 1875 but the original church dated back to an original building in Stott Hill which opened as the city's first Catholic Church in 1825.

St Mary's was the 'mother church' in Bradford, and from it over the next 125 years grew all other Catholic parishes in the city.

The church was once the centre of a network of institutions serving a large neighbourhood which included a parish hall, a boys' school and a girls' school, a convent, a large house where priests of the parish lived, and a large building (Bank House) providing accommodation to single women of all ages. It also included a street of about 100 houses, Heap Street.

The nuns housed in the convent on Barkerend Road were members of the Cross and Passion order which provided teachers for the elementary and girls school in Jermyn Street and staffed the hostel for single women at the bottom of Nutall Road.

Until 1947-48 the boys' school was staffed by the Vincentian Brothers, who lived in a house in Southey Place, off Butler Street.

St Mary's closed as an active parish church in 2006 but the decline can be traced back to the 1957-1962 era when the city began a programme of urban renewal and the entire area which once formed the heart of the parish fell under the wrecker's ball.

By the early 1970s almost the entire parish - Otley Road as far as Peel Park and Barkerend Road as far as Hanson school - had been levelled.

People were re-housed away from the locale of the church, an ageing population took its toll and mass attendance began to decline.

One more factor that contributed to the decline of the parish was that in the 1960s-70s a new Catholic school, St George's, was built at Cliffe Road, marking the end of St Mary's boys' school. The girls' school continued to be an elementary school until it closed in 2005.

All these factors spelled the end of what had been a viable social anchor for that part of the city.

There was on political event in the 1970s that probably signalled the end for the church building. A new ring road was in the planning stages. It would travel from Canal Road to Wakefield Road, passing the front of St Mary's, and it was proposed that the road strike a straight line from the point where it met Barkerend Road to where it joined Leeds Road. This would involve the demolition of the priest's house and the boys' school. There seemed to be opposition to this plan and the new ring road took a wide turn, skirting the two properties but coming within a few feet of them. This left the church and its adjoining properties almost like an island stranded at what became a busy traffic junction.

Since its official closing in 2006 the church buildings have been empty and, with the exception of the girls' school which was sold for commercial use, began to fall into disrepair.

In a letter from the Bishop of Leeds, published in the parish bulletin at St Clare's in September 2015, he outlined the financial position of the diocese in relation to St Mary's and its attempts to sell the complex of buildings on East Parade and accompanying land which was once Heap Street, which contained 100-plus houses, rented to families. In his letter the Bishop explained that an offer had been made to buy the property and convert it to commercial use.

The parish hall is in a poor state of repair and may soon have to be demolished. As decisions are made for the future of the buildings, the Bishop has stated that the interior, and possibly exterior, of the church hall fall under a protected building clause.

This raises the question of what will happen to some of the more important contents of the building. It contains a lot of statutory and artwork, probably its most significant pieces of artwork that should be protected are the memorial at the back of the church bearing the names of all the men of the parish who died in the Second World War. This is sometimes referred to as the war memorial; in fact the parish priest in 1927, Cannon Schreiber, raised £700 to erect a marble alter rail as a memorial to the parish war dead. The marble panels bearing their names were installed later.

The other pieces that should be protected are the main alter, the carved pulpit and the 14 paintings depicting the Crucifixion of Christ which hang on the walls.

Sometime around 2004-2005 I contacted Bill Lee, who dealt with the Telegraph & Argus ex-servicemen's column, and updated him on the possible closing of the church and the question of what would become of the panels containing the names of the parish war dead. At that time a charitable organisation, Emmaus UK, was drawing up plans to use the church building. The proposal called for the demolition of the parish hall and to cut an opening into the rear wall of the church, destroying the marble tablets. This plan failed, and the organisation that proposed it ceased to use the church.

Bill wrote to the office of the War Memorial Commission and a representative visited the site and undertook to explore alternatives for the tablets. What became of these discussions is unknown.

As the pending sale of the church and its buildings looms large, we are watching the end of an era for a once thriving neighbourhood and one of its institutions. The sale will spell the final act to the 40-year decline of what was once a vibrant social centre of Bradford.

* In December the Telegraph & Argus revealed that Sunrise Radio had made an offer to buy St Mary's Church, and that the church's owners, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Leeds, was in talks with the radio station.