A ground-breaking study of the place of the Christian religion in an industrial city. Wickham's book offers a close investigation - both historical and sociological - of Sheffield in the vital years of its nineteenth-century industrial growth, and considers the plans and practice of organised religion in the city at that time. Where did it fail with the Broad Churchmen 'working classes'? What were the reasons? And what do the lessons of the past mean for today?

The book is as important for those involved with urban ministry as it is for historians of religion and of society.