The Chantry Chapel of St Mary the Virgin is a chantry chapel in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England, and is designated a Grade I Listed building by English Heritage. It is located south of the city centre on the medieval bridge over the River Calder. It is the only survivor of four chantries in Wakefield and the oldest and most ornate of the surviving bridge chapels in England. Others are at St Ives (Cambridgeshire), Rotherham, Derby and Bradford-on-Avon. The chapel has had three west fronts, the original medieval façade having been removed to Kettlethorpe Hall in 1832. The medieval bridge is a scheduled ancient monument. History Wakefield had four chantry chapels, three of which dated from the 13th century. They were built outside the medieval town on the roads leading to Leeds, Dewsbury, York and Doncaster. The Chantry of St John the Baptist was on Northgate, the road to Leeds, where Wakefield Grammar School stands today. The Chapel of St Mary Magdalene was on Westgate where it crossed the Ings Beck on the road to Dewsbury. St Swithun's Chantry Chapel, on the York road, was near Clarke Hall. In the 14th century the Chantry Chapel of St Mary the Virgin was built on the medieval bridge across the River Calder on the road to Doncaster and the south. Wakefield's medieval nine-arched bridge is long, was built in stone between 1342 and 1356. It replaced an earlier wooden structure on the site of an ancient ford. The chapel on the bridge was licensed in 1356. The Battle of Wakefield was fought about a mile south of the bridge in 1460 and the Earl of Rutland was killed near the bridge while attempting to escape. The chapel was used for worship until the Reformation and Abolition of Chantries Acts when all Wakefield's four chantry chapels were closed. The bridge chapel survived because it is a structural element of the bridge. After closure it was used as a warehouse, library, office and cheese shop and survived bridge widening in 1758 and 1797. The bridge and its chapel were painted by artists including J.M.W. Turner whose watercolour dates from 1793. Restoration and rebuilding The chapel was transferred to the Church of England in 1842 and the Yorkshire Architectural Society, influenced by the Oxford Movement, persuaded to undertake its restoration. The society, keen to restore medieval ecclesiastical remains, adopted designs by George Gilbert Scott. Restoration costing