All Souls' in Backman Lane, Leeds was the last church designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott with furniture and fittings by many of his favourite craftsmen. But the church also contains an unusual hidden treasure: a series of eight panel paintings by Emily Ford (1850-1930), presented to the church along with a towering font canopy to commemorate her baptism at the age of 39.

Emily Ford in her studio, ready for the off

The West Yorkshire Group of the Victorian Society is currently organising a campaign to raise £6000 to restore the paintings which haven't been cleaned since they were placed in All Souls in November 1891. The once-grimy atmosphere of Leeds and the general ravages of time have taken all their toll: formerly vivid colours are faded, the gilding is tarnished and details barely visible and in some cases whole figures have disappeared.

Why are the paintings important? Although for many years, Emily Ford was a largely forgotten artist, recently there has been a resurgence of interest in her work. Next year along with other lesser-known Pre-Raphaelite artists, she will feature in an exhibition in the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands. The paintings are also fascinating objects in themselves. Executed in an Italian primitivist style, although the subjects are Biblical, the heads of the figures are portraits of her friends and contemporary Anglican clerics and reveal to the viewer a microcosm of the social networks that shaped Emily's life.

Although now overshadowed by her more famous sister, Isabella Ford, the trade union activist, early socialist and suffragists, Emily is an interesting woman in her own right. One of 'the Slade Girls', she trained at the world-famous art school soon after its opening in 1871 and despite never having to make a living from the sale of pictures, she enjoyed some artistic success, exhibiting at the Royal Academy and the Grosvenor Gallery.

Mrs Frances Brocklehurst, a member of the the All Souls congregation and the witness at Emily Ford's baptism

Emily also shared many of her sister's political interests; she campaigned for women's rights to education and was an early supporter of votes for women, founding along with her sister, the Leeds Suffrage Society in 1890. Later the artist and the campaigner came together when she became the Vice-President of the Artists Suffrage League, an organisation which produced posters for the suffrage movements and the banners, shields and sashes that added so much to the spectacle of their marches.

The family home in Adel was an alternative salon of radical figures, including the celebrated Russian anarchist Prince Kropotkin. He taught the young Arthur Ransome, later to report for the Manchester Guardian during the Russian revolution, how to skate on Tile Lane ponds.

There was a more mystical side to Emily Ford. Although she had been born into a Quaker family, in the 1880s she dabbled in spiritualism, and remained a member of the Society for Psychical Research until 1914. However in 1890 she was received into the Church of England. Leeds Anglicanism was of High Church persuasion with many of its churches including All Souls' adopting Anglo-Catholic forms of worship quite different from the quietism of the Society of Friends.

Lady Mount Temple as Our Lady and E.J. Arnold, the Leeds printer and publisher whose business was eventually asset-stripped by Robert Maxwell, as Nicodemus

Yet despite these religious differences, Anglo-Catholicism in Leeds worked alongside the Quakers amongst the poor, championing their interests and supporting a raft of progressive causes. Many of Leeds' High Church clerics are depicted in Emily's All Souls' paintings along with members of the All Souls' congregation, and a significant number of women, some of national renown and others, local figures who have been long-forgotten. Researching the latter brought to mind E.P. Thompson's famous phrase about rescuing the unremembered 'from the enormous condescension of posterity'.

Apart from her work for the suffrage movement, following her conversion Emily primarily devoted herself to religious art, painting frescoes and designing stained glass windows in Anglican churches in many parts of the country. Church demolitions and changing fashions in church decoration means that little of this work survives, though a number of her later paintings now hang in the Great Hall of the University of Leeds.

Prince Kropotkin. One of Adel's best beards

The West Yorkshire Group of the Victorian Society will be launching their Restoration Campaign this Saturday, 19 January at 11.30am at All Souls' Church, Blackman Lane, Woodhouse, Leeds. All are welcome. You can find out more, or make a much-appreciated donation, via the Victorian Society online here.

Janet Douglas lectures in modern history at Leeds Metropolitan University and chairs the Victorian Society's West Yorkshire branch.