Robert Dennis Chantrell

Chantrell was born in Newington, Southwark, London. He was a pupil in the office of Sir John Soane from 1807 to 1814, and in 1819 he started a practice in Leeds.

At the beginning of his career he designed a string of classical buildings. After a few years, he reinvented himself as a pioneering Gothic specialist to meet the huge demand of the times for additional church accommodation. He became one of the most accomplished specialists in this area of practice and numerous remaining buildings testify his original skills. The crowning of his career was the building of Leeds Parish Church (1837–1841), the biggest church in England since Christopher Wren's St Paul's and, on a national level, the most important church of the age.

After he moved to London, Chantrell started a second career as surveyor of church constructions. He also became a respected antiquary, writer, lecturer and member of several prestigious London committees.

Surviving buildings by Chantrell include:

• alterations to the Leeds Library, including galleries (1821–36)
• completion of Rudding Park House (c.1824)
• alterations to St Mary-the-Virgin, Hunslet (1826)
• St Stephen, Kirkstall (1828–9)
• Emmanuel Church, Lockwood (1828–29)
• All Saints, Netherthong (1828–9)
• St Peter, Morley (1829–30)
• St Matthew, Holbeck (1829–32)
• partial reconstruction of All Saints, Pontefract (1832–33)
• St Peter, Leeds (Leeds Parish Church) (1837–41)
• Christ Church, Skipton (1837–39)
• Christ Church, Lothersdale (1838)
• St Wilfred, Pool-in-Wharfedale (1839)
• the steeple of Holy Trinity, Boar Lane, Leeds (1839)
• the neo-roman tower of the St. Salvator's Cathedral in Bruges, (Belgium) (1839)
• the neo-Norman bellcote of St John the Baptist, Adel (1839)
• St David, Holmbridge (1839–40)
• St Lucius, Farnley Tyas (1840)
• Holy Trinity, Batley Carr (1841–42)
• St Paul, Shadwell (1841–42)
• St Mary, Honley (1843)
• Holy Trinity, Leven (1843)
• St Paul, Denholme Gate (1843–46, with Thomas Shaw)
• All Saints, Roberttown (1844–46, with Thomas Shaw)
• Holy Trinity, Cowling (1845)
• St Mary the Virgin's Church, Middleton, Leeds (1846–52)
• the tower of St Paul, Halifax (1847)
• St Andrew, Keighley (1847–48)
• St Paul, Armitage Bridge (1848)
• St George's, New Mills (1829-30)

Surviving buildings restored by Chantrell include:

• St Catherine, Barmby Moor, East Yorkshire (1852)[1][2]

• 
  Minster and Parish Church of Saint Peter-at-Leeds
• 
  Upper part of the tower by Chantrell of the St. Salvator's Cathedral in Bruges, (Belgium)
• 
  Church of St Wilfrid in Pool-in-Wharfedale

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Robert Dennis Chantrell.

• Howard COLVIN, Biographical Dictionary of English Architects 1660–1840, John Murray, London, 1954
• Nikolaus PEVSNER & Enid RADCLIFFE Yorkshire: The West Riding, 1959, 2nd edition 1967, Penguin Books, London
• Derek LINSTRUM, West Yorkshire Architects and Architecture, Lund Humphries Publishers, London, 1979, ISBN 0-85331-410-1
• Andries VAN DEN ABEELE & Christopher WEBSTER, Architect Robert D. Chantrell en de kathedraal van Brugge, 1987, Bruges
• Christopher WEBSTER, R.D. Chantrell, architect: his life and work in Leeds 1818–1847, Leeds, 1992
• Christopher WEBSTER & Andries VAN DEN ABEELE, A portentous mass of bastard romanesque frippery: an early ecclesiological export, Leeds, 1999.
• Susan WRATHMELL, & John MINNIS, Leeds, Pevsner Architectural Guides, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2005, ISBN 0-300-10736-6
• Christopher WEBSTER, R. D. Chantrell (1793–1872) and the architecture of a lost generation, Reading, Spire Books, 2010, ISBN 978-1-904965-22-0.