After the dismantling of the shrine of St Chad at Lichfield Cathedral in 1538, a box of bones of the seventh century saint was salvaged. This passed through a series of Catholic owners, ending up in the chapel at Aston Hall, Aston-by-Stone. They were rediscovered here in 1839 and taken to Oscott. In due course Pope Gregory XVI authenticated the relics and instructed that they should be enshrined in A.W.N. Pugin’s church, the future cathedral, which was then under construction in the gunmakers’ quarter of Birmingham.

In 1808-9 a chapel dedicated to St Augustine (or Austin) had been built by William Hollins on the sloping site in Shadwell Street. ‘Though it was valuably large and roomy it seems to have been gaunt and unattractive’ (Little, 52). In the 1830s a larger and more worthy replacement had been mooted, and plans were prepared by Thomas Rickman, who had an office in Birmingham. These came to nothing and it fell to Pugin, then at the height of his powers and influence, to prepare a scheme for Thomas Walsh, Vicar Apostolic. The church was built between 1839 and 1841, an early collaboration of Pugin with his builder George Myers. Brick was chosen for economy, allowing more resources to be deployed on the more important task of fitting out. The fittings were furnishings designed or procured by Pugin, with the support of the Sixteenth Earl of Shrewsbury (who donated the stalls and a brass lectern, acquired abroad and the latter later sold by the cathedral) and John Hardman father and son (who contributed towards the cost of the rood screen, and high altar). Bishop Walsh contributed £14,000 towards the total cost of just under £20,000. A house was built (also from Pugin’s designs) opposite the church, described by its architect as of ‘solid, solemn and scholastic character’ and by his biographer as ‘Pugin’s first, and one of his most successful attempts, to create an urban Gothic idiom’ (Hill, 233).

St Chad’s was consecrated by Bishop Walsh amidst great ceremony and splendour on 21 June 1841. The brick design, of Baltic or Germanic character (which choices later embarrassed Pugin), took full advantage of the sloping site, with a crypt below the east end. This was originally intended as a school, but became a burial place, in Pugin’s words, ‘the first fully Catholic place of sepulture to be revived’. Here Bishop Walsh was laid to rest in 1849. Here also are buried Louisa, Pugin’s second wife (d.1844) and four generations of the Hardman family.

With the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy by Pope Pius IX in 1850, St Chad’s became the cathedral church of the new Diocese of Birmingham, and Dr William Ullathorne was enthroned as the first bishop on 27 October 1850. The Chapter of Canons was established in 1852, Mgr Henry Weedall being the first Provost. Pugin’s short sanctuary was insufficient for the building’s new status and functions, and in 1854 was extended under the crossing by E.W. Pugin, bringing forward A.W.N. Pugin’s rood screen. E.W. Pugin also oversaw the addition of the southwest spire in 1856.

The next significant addition was in 1933, when the northwest St Edward’s chapel was added, from designs by Sebastian Pugin Powell (A.W.N. Pugin’s grandson) as a memorial to Archbishop Ilsley.

In 1941, on the occasion of its centenary, St Chad’s was made a minor basilica by Pope Pius XII.

Sadly, in 1959, Pugin’s Bishop’s House was demolished to make way for the City Council’s inner ring road. A chimneypiece and two chairs from the house are displayed in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington.

From 1964 a major programme of repair, relighting and reheating was instigated by Archbishop Dwyer (architects Weightman & Bullen of Liverpool and York). More controversially, the sanctuary was rearranged to allow for more active participation by the congregation. ‘For this purpose the sanctuary was remodelled and extended to the chancel crossing. Much anxious consideration was given to retaining the rood screen designed by Pugin, in particular, to restoring this to the original position in the sanctuary […] Unfortunately this compromise inhibited the free circulation around the new high altar and sanctuary, thus the retention of the rood screen was found to be impossible’ (architect’s account in Catholic Building Review, 1968). Incongruously, Pugin’s tiled floors were replaced with polished marble. Other changes included the relocation of the organ from the sanctuary arch to the west end, leaving a small choir organ adjoining the sanctuary.

The demolition of the house and Archbishop Dwyer’s reordering no doubt prompted the characterisation of the cathedral and its setting as ‘mutilated’ in the revised list entry of 1982 (the cathedral had been first listed in 1952). The internal damage was ameliorated in reordering and redecoration carried out from 1992 for Archbishop Maurice Couve de Murville by Duval Brownhill (now Brownhill Hayward Brown). ‘It is certainly the most colourful restoration of a Pugin cathedral since that of Nottingham by F. A. Walters in 1926-7’ (O’Donnell, 62). The corpus from the rood has been rehung (photo lower left, above), albeit without the attendant figures of Our Lady and St John. The screen itself is now in the Anglican church of Holy Trinity, Reading.

In 1995 Archbishop Couve de Murville arranged for fresh examination of the relics venerated as those of St Chad. The report by the Oxford Archaeology Unit concluded that five of the six bones were of mid-seventh century date. A Decree issued by the archbishop in 1997 required that the bones should be kept together and venerated collectively.

Description

The following is an expanded version of the list entry (below), taking account of more recent alterations, and remedying some omissions. The cathedral is oriented northwest-southeast, but this description assumes conventional orientation, as if the high altar was to the east.

The church was built in 1839-41 from designs by A.W.N. Pugin. It is built of brick laid in Flemish bond, with Bath stone dressings and slate roofs. The style is derived from north German churches of the thirteenth century e.g. St Elizabeth, Marburg. The plan consists of an aisled nave, western towers with spires, shallow transepts, short apsidal chancel flanked by Lady Chapel and sacristies, north baptistery with steps down to the crypt below and northwest chapel (added in 1933, architect Sebastian Pugin Powell). Pugin’s intended spire at the crossing was not built.

The west front is symmetrical, with two thin towers with equally thin broach spires, that to the southwest completed in 1856 (architect E.W. Pugin). The northwest tower has a ring of five bells originally cast by Mears of Whitechapel and augmented by three by Blews of Birmingham in 1877, all recast by Taylors of Loughborough in 1940. The central main entrance has a doorway divided by a stone pier and carved tympanum with the Virgin and Child and censing angels. Above this, a large six-light window with Geometrical tracery and in the gable a spherical triangle window with trefoils. In the towers, the height of the paired windows is accentuated by integral niches, with statues of English saints. To the northwest, the apsidal St Edward’s chapel of 1933 and beyond this to the east, the entrance to the crypt and the former baptistery. The transept has a tall six-light window. The east end takes advantage of the sloping site, ‘a sublimely successful … massing of slate roofs and gables rising over a massive crypt’ (O’Donnell), with a three-sided apse flanked by the Lady Chapel to the north (in English fourteenth century style) and sacristies to the south.

Entering the church, the high nave and aisles and absence of clerestory gives the impression of a hall church. The nave arcade is of five bays, with immensely tall slender clustered shafts; a sixth, taller and broader bay marks the crossing. The aisle and chancel windows are all of two lights. The steeply pitched roof has slender timbers and embraces both the nave and aisles and suggests a crossing by means of lateral hips. In the nave, the roof has a high queen-post truss with arched braces to an upper collar, supported by curved braces to wall posts which are the continuation of stone wall posts which rise from the capitals and link the roof and arcade. The aisles have purlin and rafter roofs, supported by struts from the nave arcade. The chancel roof has moulded rafters supported by curved brackets and a ridge purlin. A staircase from the north aisles leads down to the crypt, which is of Norman design, evoking the accretive nature of many a genuinely medieval church. This includes a chapel and the Hardman Chantry, the latter with painted decoration of 1877 (restored 1998).

Many of the original furnishings have been lost, but A.W.N. Pugin’s high altar of 1841 survives. Paid for by John Hardman Senior and Junior (who also paid for Pugin’s rood screen), this has riddel posts and an elaborately carved gable with cusped arch enclosing the relic chest of St Chad, with the crowning spire added in 1933 (by Gerald Hardman). Below this, the tabernacle is by J. H. Powell (1878). The oak choir stalls and Pugin’s oak archbishop’s throne incorporate late medieval carved woodwork, traditionally (and in the list entry) said to come from St Mary im Kapitol, Cologne but now thought to be more likely Netherlandish, with carved figures and linenfold panelling. The nineteenth century-style encaustic tile floors of the sanctuary are by H. and R. Johnson, 1992, replacing the 1960s marble. The stone forward altar, pierced with cusped openings, is of c.1992.

Pugin’s altar also survives in the Lady Chapel, 1841, with carvings of the Presentation in the Temple, Nativity and Adoration of the Magi, and a contemporary reredos carved with the Virgin and Child flanked by the Annunciation and Visitation. The chapel also retains Pugin’s screen and parclose screen, and a fifteenth century statue of the Virgin and Child given by Pugin. The fibreglass statue of St Joseph is by Michael Clarke, 1969.

In the north transept is Pugin’s elaborate canopied Bath stone monument to Bishop Walsh, made by Myers and a ledger brass to John Bernard Hardman, d.1903.

Pugin’s font is now in the north aisle, octagonal and carved with the symbols of the evangelists. In the south aisle is a war memorial of 1921 by Gerald Hardman, with a relief of the Deposition and a memorial tablet to Archbishop Williams, d.1946, by G. B. Cox. Along both aisles, the Stations of the Cross are by Albrecht Franz Lieven de Vriendt of Antwerp, 1875.

In the nave, the hexagonal oak pulpit is now placed against the northwest crossing pier, moved from the south side in 1968, when it lost its tester. Incorporating statuettes of Doctors of the Church, it was made by Pugin from one of circa 1520, obtained probably from St Gertrude’s Abbey, Leuven and given by the Earl of Shrewsbury in 1841. The pews, of Japanese oak, date from 1940 and were designed by G.B. Cox.  On the south side, a nineteenth century wooden statue of St Chad, holding a model of Lichfield Cathedral. At the west end of the nave, the organ (built by J. W. Walker & Sons in 1993) has a dazzlingly painted Gothic case by David Graebe.

At the northwest corner, in St Edward’s chapel, an altar of 1933 by Gerald Hardman.

Stained glass by Pugin (notably in the chancel apse, made by William Warrington and in the former baptistery, made by William Wailes); the rest largely by the Hardman firm, ranging in date from 1848 to 1928.

Finally, monuments in the crypt include that to Archbishop Ullathorne, by Peter Paul Pugin, 1890, with a reclining effigy in episcopal vestments under a four-centred canopy.

List description

II*

Roman Catholic. 1839-41, by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin but very much mutilated both in itself and in its setting. Red brick; slate roof. In a C14 German style with a short chancel with flanking small north Lady Chapel and south vestries, an aisled nave apparently with shallow transepts, a north baptistery with stairs down to the crypt below and a north-west chapel of 1933 and 2 thin west towers with needle spires. Arcade of 5 bays with immensely tall slender clustered shafts; a sixth, taller and broader bay marks the ‘crossing’, Modern west gallery with organ. Their steeply pitched timber roof embracing nave and aisles and suggesting a crossing by means of lateral hips. Tall 2-light windows to chancel and nave. The furnishings now mostly gone. The concave-sided hexagonal pulpit with statuettes of Doctors of the Church is a piece made by Pugin from one of circa 1520 obtained probably from St Gertrude’s Abbey, Louvain. The Archbishop’s Throne and the stalls incorporate late C15 carved woodwork from St Mary in Capitol, Cologne. Still surviving some of Pugin’s stained glass made circa 1845 by W Warrington and there is other glass by Hardman and Co of circa 1865. Also by Hardman and Co, brass to the Rev John More +1856; he stands but has a pillow behind his head. In the crypt only the arch of the easternmost chapel now has any of Pugin’s painted patterning. In the crypt, too, monument to Bishop William Ullathorne OSB+1889. He lies in episcopal vestments with, on the wall behind him, a large painted tablet showing him being presented to the Virgin and Child by St Bernard and an angel.

Listing NGR: SP0696687522

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In penal times Catholics in Glamorgan persisting in the practice of their faith were served by priests resident at Llanarth Court, Monmouthshire, and by itinerant priests, mostly Jesuit. Many recusants were imprisoned or died in Cardiff gaol, amongst them the Rev. Philip Evans S.J. and the Rev. John Lloyd, who were executed at Gallows Field, Roath, in July 1679. In the eighteenth century Catholics were served from Pyle, then Bristol and (from 1804) Usk.

By 1830 the Catholic population of Cardiff had grown to about 1000, driven in large part by Irish immigration. The Rev. Patrick Mellua was the first resident priest, appointed in 1839 and taking up residence at 38 Bute Street, where he converted the ground floor into a chapel. In 1841 Bishop Brown OSB, Vicar Apostolic of the Welsh Vicariate, described the ‘densely crowded ground floor of the cottage, from which the window frame must be removed on Sundays in order that hundreds exposed to the weather in the roofless backyard, may discharge their religious duties’. Efforts began to secure a site for a permanent church and presbytery, and eventually one was acquired on Bute Terrace, where a church dedicated to St David opened on 19 October 1842. A major donor was Lady Catherine Eyre of Bath, who gave £3000 for the building of churches in Swansea and Cardiff, with the stipulation that they should be dedicated to the patron saint of Wales. The church was a plain neo-Norman design by J. J. Scoles (Little). A presbytery was built alongside the church in 1843.

In 1853 Bishop Brown entrusted Cardiff to the care of the Institute of Charity (Rosminian Order). By 1860-1 the Catholic population of the town had grown to 10,000, a third of the total population, and the church of St Peter at Roath (qv) was built. In 1882 the Rosminians handed care of the St David’s mission to the diocese, and with the help of the Marquess of Bute, a new church was built on Charles Street by the Rev. (Mgr) W. Williams. This was built from designs by the London firm of Pugin & Pugin, and the contractor was John Devlin of Glasgow. It was opened and consecrated by Bishop Hedley on 24 May 1887. The church was built without aisles or a chancel arch, to afford an unobstructed view of the enormous high altar and reredos, made by Boultons of Cheltenham at a cost of £1,000. On either side of the sanctuary arch were side altars to Our Lady and the Sacred Heart, also with tall gothic canopies. The total building cost was just over £11,000. The old church became a parish hall (it was later demolished).

In 1897 the hitherto plain walls of the interior were painted with a comprehensive cycle of murals by R. J. Hopkins. At the same time new stained glass windows depicting saints were installed in the chancel, in memory of Mgr Williams, builder of the church, who died in 1895 (The Tablet, 1897).

In March 1920 St David’s became the cathedral of the Archdiocese of Cardiff, created in 1916. In January 1925 a seated statue of St Peter, a copy of that in St Peter’s in Rome which had been displayed in the Catholic Oratory at the British Empire Exhibition, was presented to the cathedral (The Tablet, 31 January 1925). (This is no longer in the cathedral, but a similar statue – possibly this one – is now in St Michael’s, Newport, qv).

On 3 March 1941 the cathedral was seriously damaged by incendiary bombs, necessitating the requisition and adaptation of the old church/parish hall to serve as a temporary pro-cathedral.

In the immediate post-war years consideration appears to have been given to building a new cathedral on a different site in the city. In 1947 the fifth Marquess of Bute gave Cardiff Castle and Bute Park to the City of Cardiff, stating that the Catholic community should be allowed to build a new cathedral in the park, alongside the castle. In the early 1980s the wealthy Catholic philanthropist Julian Hodge offered to underwrite the cost of such a project and designs were prepared for a centrally-planned circular church. The possibility was taken sufficiently seriously for a foundation stone to be blessed by Pope John Paul II on the occasion of his Cardiff in June 1982. However the foundation stone and plans remain in store and the proposal, which was highly controversial, has not been pursued (although the archdiocese still owns the land).

Post-war building restrictions meant that reconstruction did not become possible until 1953, under the direction of Thomas Price of F. R. Bates, Son & Price of Newport. The War Damage Commission stipulated that reconstruction should be in two phases, each separately tendered. First was the roof, reinstated in 1953 by Messrs Graham, while the remaining work was undertaken by E. Turner & Sons of Cardiff between February 1956 and late January 1959. The second phase included the completion of the tower to Pugin & Pugin’s original unexecuted design, with a bell stage (built as a reinforced concrete box with a thin stone cladding), rebuilding of the chancel (with a new round window) and new and enlarged sacristies. Austerity and timber shortages necessitated the use of steel in the roof structure, with laminated mahogany trusses. The internal decorative scheme and fitting out was modern in form and spirit, with plain painted plaster walls replacing the former polychromy.

The new high altar, like its predecessor, was made by Boultons of Cheltenham, but was much simpler in form, with a tall geometrically-patterned reredos; a vast corona in the form of an inverted cone was suspended over it. A carved oak bishop’s throne was brought from Belmont Abbey. Wrought iron screens separated the central part of the sanctuary from the side altars, which were furnished with statues by David John. In the nave, a futuristic-looking pulpit was placed in front of the communion rails, and a fine set of ceramic Stations of the Cross by Adam Kossowski was added. An organ built by the John Compton Organ Company was installed at the liturgical west end, and an electronic carillon fitted in the new bell tower. The building was solemnly re-opened on 2 March 1959, almost exactly nineteen years after the bombing.

In 1979-81 a new clergy house was built on Charles Street from designs by F. R. Bates, Son & Price (main contractors Noel T. James of Newport). This provided accommodation for the curia and domestic accommodation for cathedral staff, and was linked to the cathedral by a cloistered walkway.

Post-Vatican II reordering has involved the removal of most of the 1950s sanctuary furnishings as well as the nave pulpit, and has seen the installation of a forward altar and new sanctuary floor. More recently, the choir stalls at the east end of the nave have been removed, and the 1950s paint scheme (for example in the high altar reredos) toned down.

In 2010 the former Ebeneser Chapel of 1855 opposite the cathedral was acquired, repaired and adapted to serve as a community facility for St David’s, with a grant of £1.2m from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The building was opened by HRH Prince of Wales in December 2016.

Description

The list entry (below) provides a fairly full architectural description, but says little about the furnishings. As described above, the interior was fully refurnished in the 1950s, but most of the sanctuary furnishings and the nave pulpit have been removed in subsequent reordering.

The church is not conventionally orientated, but this description follows liturgical convention (assuming the main altar is to the east).

The sanctuary has a polished marble floor and forward altar of circa 1990 (the Boulton one of the 1950s cut down and brought forward?). Against the east wall within a shallow chancel, the geometrical 1950s reredos survives, with the tabernacle placed against it and a pointed monstrance recess above, reached by a projecting external staircase. The bishop’s throne was brought from Belmont Abbey after the war, and is now placed against the right hand respond of the chancel recess, minus its oak canopy. To either side of the chancel, pointed triangular reredoses of the side altars remain, but the altars have been removed. There is a disused elaborate timber gothic altar in the chapel to the right of the sanctuary.

Five recesses give off either side of the broad, aisleless nave. Until recently the three western recesses on each side contained confessionals, and were given paired lancet windows, while the two eastern bays contained altars and were provided with circular windows. There is now only one confessional on each side, in the westernmost bay before the gallery. Working from east to west, the recesses contain:

North side:

1. Sacred Heart altar: a stone gothic altar by Boulton of Cheltenham, surviving from the original Pugin &Pugin church, with 1950s painted stone low wall at chapel entrance (this was previously the St John the Baptist chapel; the Sacred Heart altar was in the sanctuary).
2. Altar of Our Lady of Penrhys: formerly St Joseph’s altar, another stone gothic altar by Boulton from the Pugin & Pugin church, with carved panels of the Flight into Egypt and the Carpenter’s Shop. Under the raised central canopy is an oak statue of Our Lady of Penrhys, by Mother Concordia OSB of Minster Abbey, Kent, installed in 1992. 1950s painted stone low wall at the chapel entrance.
3. In former confessional recess, an oak statue of St David by Beatrice Fannon, 2015.
4. In former confessional recess, a pieta.
5. Confessional.

South side:

1. Archway to ambulatory leading to sacristies (where a fine brass eagle lectern –by Hardman? – is placed in a corner).
2. Carved Gothic stone altar to the Cardiff martyrs Saint John Lloyd and St Philip Evans S.J. with modern statues of the saints under canopies on the outer pedestals. Made by Boulton for the Pugin & Pugin church, in memory of the Rev. Stephen Bruno I.C. and originally dedicated to St Anne.
3. In former confessional recess, a statue of Pope (St) John Paul II, made for the Pope’s 1982 visit to Cardiff by the apprentices of Wimpey Construction UK (South Wales region). (They also made the ambo in the sanctuary).
4. In former confessional recess, reproduction of Rubens’ painting of the prodigal son.
5. Confessional.

Placed on the square piers between the recesses and the gallery front are Adam Kossowski’s fine coloured ceramic Stations of the Cross.

The baptistery at the west end (base of the tower) retains its original encaustic tile floor, and a tapering font of the 1950s, repeating the lozenge pattern found elsewhere in the cathedral. The baptistery also contains a large and powerful bronze sculpture of St John the Baptist, by Sir William Goscombe John, signed and dated 1895.

The cathedral contains much stained glass: in alternating clerestorey windows, in the chapel recesses, in the baptistery, and at the west end. Much of this glass predates (survived) the bombing. The finest is at the large five-light, two-tier window at the west end, in memory of Alderman Patrick Carey, Mayor of Cardiff 1894-5 (d. 1910), the central panel depicting Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, with Old Testament figures, Popes Pius IX and X, and numerous other figures. Published sources give no artists or dates for the stained glass windows of the cathedral; they merit further study.

The building retains its 1950s light fittings and nave seating.

List descriptions

Cathedral

Reference Number: 13671
Grade: II  
Date of Designation: 19/05/1975  
Date of Amendment: 30/04/1999  
Name of Property: St David’s Roman Catholic Cathedral  
Unitary Authority: Cardiff  
Community: Castle  
Easting: 318569  
Northing: 176430  
Street Side: W  
Location: Opposite Ebeneser Chapel.  

History: 1884-1887 by Pugin and Pugin, architects. Built as RC parish church and raised to cathedral status 1920; gutted after incendiary bomb attack, 1941. Restoration in 1950s by F R Bates, Son, and Price; reopened 1959.  

Exterior: Gothic building of serious, severe Early English design. Normal alignment reversed, with entrance to E gable end. Coursed rock-faced Pennant stone with red sandstone ashlar dressings; slate roofs. 8-bay nave; windows of 2 lights with cinquefoils over. On ground floor, stepped buttresses break forward; doorway to L, then 3 confessionals, and then 3 gabled chapels; taller gable to R end bay. East front has low 2-centred doorway with flat head to doors and Gothic traceried tympanum; flanked by side-lights and then by tall buttresses; tall 5-light window with geometric tracery; statue in niche over. Four stage tower to L has low spire (originally bellcote), angle buttresses, 2 louvred lancets to bell stage, canopied statue of saint in niche between 2 windows; polygonal stair turret to S. In R (north) angle between front and nave has polygonal bay enclosing stair; lancets, slate roof; 2-light window to nave, above. Sanctuary of 2 bays (tall windows with quatrefoil heads); west end (ritual E end) has round window with honeycomb tracery, and projecting stair bay below.  

Interior: Spidery arch-braced and hammer-beam roof of timber and steel has tall wall posts on stone corbels. Front entrance to lobby with baptistery to S, stair to N; above lobby, stone gallery with 3 segmental arches to nave; arcaded parapet, organ chamber to S. In aisleless nave of 7 bays, square piers form superarches over clerestorey windows; side chapels and confessionals. Tall sanctuary arch, diapered reredos below round window with honeycomb tracery, marble floor to sanctuary. Late C19 stained glass in every other side window: W window has Visions of the Immaculate Conception witnessed by popes.  

Reason for designation: Included despite consequences of war damage as rare example of large-scale Roman Catholic church by important C19 Catholic architect.  

Ebeneser Chapel (Cornerstone building)

Reference Number: 13668
Grade: II  
Date of Designation: 19/05/1975  
Date of Amendment: 30/04/1999  
Name of Property: Ebeneser Chapel (URC)  
Unitary Authority: Cardiff  
Community: Castle  
Easting: 318611  
Northing: 176465  
Street Side: E  
Location: Opposite St David’s Cathedral.  

History: Opened in 1855 as the Charles Street Congregational Church. Designed by R G Thomas of Newport. Became Ebeneser when old chapel demolished to make way for St David’s shopping precinct, circa 1976, when buttresses dramatically reordered to keep wall-foot dry. The romantic story that the many coloured stonework was the result of the architect’s writing to every head of state in the world for stone as a symbol of God’s dominion over the whole world is less likely to be true than that the stone was imported as ballast in returning coal ships (See ‘The Building Stones of Cardiff’).  

Exterior: Gothic style church above school hall. Faced in many coloured rubble with Bath stone dressings; slate roof. Main entrance to church via wide flight of steps in western elevation which has Gothic doorway with ball flower ornamentation and columns and doors with elaborate iron hinges; over the doorway, a large window of five cusped lights and circular foil; window and doorway flanked by slender full height ashlar buttresses with octagonal pinnacles with gablets. A single light window in each end bay of western elevation. A curved flight of steps rises from each side of Western light windows to doorways in sides. Nave of five bays, with porch and gallery in westernmost bay; large buttresses in side elevations of nave, pierced by arches at their base. Windows of side elevations of two-lights with daggers or foils over. Entrances to church hall also in side elevations.  

Interior: Interior of Church has plastered walls, a hammer-beam nave roof with scissors trusses, tall and slender chancel arch, lattice boarding to gallery front and to ground floor partition at west end of nave. West gallery supported by single cast-iron column with foliage capital. Stained glass, W window of 1855 with angels in tracery lights; “Light of the World”, by W Davies & Son of Cardiff; War Memorial window by Daniells & Fricker.  

Reason for designation: Attractive and early example of Gothic Revival chapel. Group value.  

Boundary walls and piers to churchyard of Ebeneser Chapel

Reference Number: 13670
Grade: II  
Date of Designation: 19/05/1975  
Date of Amendment: 30/04/1999  
Name of Property: Boundary Walls & Piers to Churchyard of Ebeneser URC  
Unitary Authority: Cardiff  
Community: Castle  
Easting: 318588  
Northing: 176466  
Street Side: E  
Location: To front and side of Chapel.  

Exterior: Small churchyard enclosed by boundary walls of C19, probably contemporary with the church. On Western side, before main elevation, a low dwarf wall of stone with deep moulded coping. Piers in centre and at ends, each with four gablets. Centre gates of wood, incorporating cusped metal panelling. Most of northern boundary wall of stone rubble with brick coping; western part of northern wall as western boundary wall. Two piers at eastern end of northern boundary wall.  

Reason for designation: For group value with chapel and former school room.  

School room to rear of Ebeneser Chapel

Reference Number: 13669
Grade: II  
Date of Designation: 19/05/1975  
Date of Amendment: 30/04/1999  
Name of Property: Former School Room to Rear of Ebeneser Chapel  
Unitary Authority: Cardiff  
Community: Castle  
Easting: 318629  
Northing: 176473  
Street Side: E  
Location: To rear of Ebeneser Chapel.  

History: 1871, by W D Blessley.  

Exterior: Rectangular block with Gothic motifs built against apsidal end of church and connected to it on its northern side by a short corridor wing with a six-light unglazed opening in its front wall. Schoolroom faced externally in stone. Slate roof. At northern end of south-west elevation, facing towards Charles Street and to north of corridor wing there is a tall narrow gabled porch flanked to each side by a narrow single light window. At the south end of the same elevation there is a further gabled porch. Church parlour of 1889 built against southern elevation; gabled south-west elevation of church parlour has a flat-roofed ground floor projection with a blind rectangular centre panel flanked to each side by a short paired lancet window. From north to south, rear elevation of schoolroom has two-light windows with daggers over, blocked doorway, two external stone chimneys and a single window.  

Reason for designation: Listed for group value with chapel.  

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With the Restoration of the Hierarchy, the city centre church of St Nicholas became the pro-cathedral.  In 1853 Bishop Brown started giving thought to the provision of a purpose-built and more befitting  cathedral,  and  he asked  E.W.  Pugin to prepare plans for a large Gothic church at St Edward’s College, Everton, on a high point at the northern end of the city. It was intended that this building, opened initially as the parish of Our Lady Immaculate by Bishop Goss in 1856, should be expanded to become the cathedral.  However, this project was not to be advanced, and St Nicholas continued in use as the pro-cathedral and Our Lady as a parish church. The idea of a new cathedral was not to be revived until the time of Archbishop Keating in 1921 when it was advanced as a memorial to Archbishop Whiteside.

The Lutyens scheme

Archbishop Keating identified  a site at the top of Brownlow  Hill, the site of  the former Liverpool Workhouse, as more suitably commanding than that of the pro- cathedral. The site was owned by the West Derby Board of Poor Law Guardians, and was also being coveted by the University (for expansion) and the City Council (for housing). Keating died before the site could be secured, but this was achieved at a cost of £100,000 by his successor Archbishop Downey in 1930, in the teeth of sectarian resistance. The Rev Harry Longbottom, a prominent local Protestant, said he would prefer the site to be used for a ‘poison germ factory’ than a Catholic Cathedral, prompting Downey to comment that although he had only acquired the site ‘by a short nose’, this was better than ‘being beaten by a long bottom!’ (quoted in Doyle, 294).

Downey approached Sir Edwin Lutyens to design the new Cathedral, and a classical style was chosen, possibly to avoid comparison with Giles Scott’s Anglican Cathedral then rising. In scale, Lutyens’ design would trump Scott’s, and indeed that of any other English Cathedral. Architect and Archbishop obtained Pope Pius XI’s approval of the plans, and the Pope suggested the dedication, to Christ the King.

Lutyens developed his plans in the early years of the 1930s, and in 1934 his great model was exhibited at the Royal Academy. The design was for a great domed structure which at 510 feet would be notably higher than those of St Peter’s in Rome (450 ft) and St Paul’s in London (366 ft). The estimated cost of £3m dismayed many in the diocese, but Downey pressed ahead with fundraising (‘We need a cathedral, we need it urgently, and it must be a vast one’, quoted in Doyle, 297). The foundation stone was laid on Whit Monday 1933 and by October 1936 the Archbishop was able to say Mass in the shell of the crypt. Work continued steadily until 1941, when the Ministry of Works put a stop to them, since the builders were needed for urgent war work.

The Scott scheme

Lutyens died in 1944 and was replaced as architect by Adrian Gilbert Scott, younger brother of the architect of the Anglican cathedral. Scott estimated that it would cost £27m to complete Lutyens’ design, and the dream was looking increasingly distant. Finally, in 1953 Downey’s successor Archbishop Godfrey took the decisive step of abandoning the scheme.   Scott prepared a new design, still with a dome, but on a much reduced footprint (with a piazza in front over the western end of the crypt). The estimated cost of this design was £4m. Although clearly more affordable, the design did  not  find  favour  with  the  architectural  establishment;  the  Royal  Fine  Arts Commission condemned it as a ‘caricature’ (Doyle, 304). Progress was slow, and in 1957 the new Archbishop, John Heenan, sacked Scott as architect for the new Cathedral, but did instruct him to complete Lutyens’ crypt.  The crypt was formally opened by Archbishop Heenan on 26 October 1958, the Feast of Christ the King.

The Gibberd design

In 1959 Archbishop Heenan announced a competition for the new cathedral, to cost no less than £1m. The assessors were Sir Basil Spence and the Catholic architect David Stokes. Designs prepared by Frederick Gibberd, then known chiefly as the builder of Harlow New Town, were chosen from 299 entries.

Building of Gibberd’s striking circular, centrally planned design started in October 1962.  The building was placed towards the east end of Lutyens’ crypt, with a piazza in front, an idea first proposed by Scott. The structure was simple, consisting of two great ring beams supporting the main roof and tower, and in turn supported by sloping concrete buttresses. The interior was a single uninterrupted space, with a ring of outer chapels between the buttresses. The sloping design rose to a central funnel- shaped tower, placed over the central altar and filled with stained glass. Designs from major national as well as local artists were obtained for the glass and other furnishings.

The cathedral was opened in May 1967. It normally seats 2,200, and the final cost was £2.5m.

Technical problems, renovation and development

Technical problems began to develop soon after the completion of the cathedral. Chief amongst these was a failure in the surface of the piazza (causing ingress of rainwater into the crypt), leaks in the aluminium roof of the cathedral, the leaning outwards of the walls surrounding the podium and the delamination of the glass mosaic cladding of the buttresses. The Archdiocese took the architects to court with a claim for £6m. This was settled out of court.

Serious thought was given to the demolition of the cathedral. However 1992 saw the introduction of English Heritage cathedral grants, and these acted as the catalyst for the repair and renovation of the building. To start with the piazza was taken up, a new waterproof membrane inserted, and new paving and drains provided (architect Richard O’Mahony of Derek Cox OMF Architects). Work then proceeded on the superstructure,  under  the  supervision  of  W.J.  Vis  of  Derek  Hicks  and  Thew Architects. The mild steel pinnacles at the top of the corona were replaced in stainless steel, the lantern glazing restored, the aluminium roof stripped and replaced in stainless steel, the mosaics on the buttresses stabilised and covered with grp panels and the perimeter walls rebuilt. This programme of repairs was concluded in 2003; the total cost was £8m, of which £2m came from English Heritage and £3m from benefactors.

In 2002 Gibberd’s plan for a great flight of steps from the main entrance down towards Hope Street was finally realised, with the help of European Union grant aid. This flight is flanked on one side by the new visitor centre and restaurant and on the other by the Science Park building (architect Mark Dring of Falconer Chester).

Description

The Cathedral was upgraded to Grade I in June 2025. For a full description, see the amended list entry at Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Non Civil Parish – 1070607 | Historic England

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A Catholic chapel was built in St George’s Fields in 1790, at the time of the passing of the Second Relief Act. The architect was the London surveyor and builder James Taylor. Here was reportedly celebrated in January 1793 the first High Mass in England since the days of James II (apart from in the embassy chapels), for the repose of the soul of the late King Louis XVI of France.

By the 1830s this Georgian chapel was inadequate for the numbers attending, prompting Fr Thomas Doyle, the priest in charge of the mission, to develop ambitious plans for a significant new church. In 1838, after extensive fundraising, A.W.N. Pugin was asked to develop plans for a large cruciform church with a central tower and spire, cloister, chapter house, convent and schools. However, these were rejected as too expensive and instead designs for a new church, clergy house and two schools were sought in competition from Pugin, John Buckler, Edward Foxhall and J.J. Scoles. By this time the Georgian design of the 1790 chapel was decidedly unfashionable (although it had been internally Gothicised in 1808); the brief called for ‘pointed architecture’ and ‘solidity of construction’ while at the same time emphasising economy and maximum size. Pugin’s design was chosen, the site in St George’s Road purchased (purported to be have been that from which Lord George Gordon had led a march on Parliament in 1780), and builders chosen (Pugin’s favourites, Myers & Wilson). The foundation stone was laid in May 1841, with building continuing intermittently (on account of further fundraising difficulties) until July 1848, when the completed church was opened by Vicar Apostolic Nicholas Wiseman.

Pugin’s second design, although modified from that of 1838, was nevertheless the largest Catholic church in England at that time. The church relied for its effect on its volume; of necessity there had to be economies in the construction (it was built of yellow stock brick, with stone used only for the dressings) and fitting out. One of its chief original furnishings was a double stone rood screen, or jubé, at the chancel arch. Pugin’s intended 320 ft western tower and spire were not realised, and the tower remained a 60ft stub.

Two highly personal events in Pugin’s life are associated with St George’s and its environs. His third marriage, to Jane Knill, took place in the church in 1848. Less happily, four years later, after his descent into psychosis, he was briefly admitted to the Bethlem Hospital (now the Imperial War Museum), opposite the cathedral.

With the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy in 1850, the church was the natural choice for the cathedral church of the new Diocese of Southwark, with Pugin’s adjoining clergy house (with schools and convent) becoming the residence of the first bishop, Thomas Grant.

The cathedral was furnished and enriched over time. A.W.N. Pugin added the Petre Chantry in 1848-9 and his son Edward Welby Pugin the Knill Chantry in 1856-7. The chapel of St Joseph, off the south aisle, was built in memory of Samuel Weld (d. 1851) and finally opened in 1890 (designs by Joseph Seed, clerk of works to J.A. Hansom).

In 1887-8, under Bishop Butt, Pugin’s clergy house and schools were largely subsumed within a larger and grander building housing a residence and offices for the bishop, clergy accommodation and a small convent (the schools having by then relocated to new buildings nearby, designed by Leonard Stokes). The architect for the rebuilding was F.A. Walters.

In 1889 Bishop Butt relocated Pugin’s rood screen to the west end, below the tower gallery. The cathedral and its various altars were consecrated on 7 November 1894.

In 1938-40 Amigo Hall was built alongside the cathedral, from designs by Robert Sharp. It was named after Archbishop Amigo, Bishop of Southwark from 1904, on whom the personal title of Archbishop was conferred by Pope Pius XI in 1938.

In April 1941 Pugin’s cathedral was gutted by a German incendiary bomb. Worship took place in Amigo Hall until rebuilding was completed. Work began on this in 1953, under the direction of Romilly Craze FRIBA, with Higgs and Hill the builders. The design of the rebuilt cathedral, which reopened in 1958, departed from Pugin’s in a number of respects. A great west tower (this time without a spire) was proposed but, like Pugin’s, was never completed. Other changes were the addition of a tall clerestory and associated flattening of the roof pitch (although Pugin had intended a clerestory), the replacement of the nave column shafts with piers and the formation of short transepts out of the aisles. New furnishings included stained glass in the east and west windows by Harry Clarke Studios of Dublin. In 1961-3 a large Lady Chapel was added, giving off the south aisle at its east end; this with the baptistery at the west end of the south aisle (1965) completed the reconstruction.

In 1982 Pope John Paul II celebrated a liturgy of the sick at the cathedral during his visit to the United Kingdom, an event subsequently commemorated by a stained glass window in the north transept. In 1988-9 the sanctuary was reordered by Austin Winkley. More recent works overseen by Jonathan Louth architects have included the refurbishment of Amigo Hall, the refitting of the space between the chapels of St Joseph and St Patrick as the Archbishop Romero Chapel, with a large painted cross by Fernando Llort, alterations at the west end to facilitate wheelchair access and the formation of a holy door at the west end of the north aisle.

In 2023-4 two altars designed by F.A. Walters for the chapel of the diocesan seminary at Wonersh (which had recently closed) were relocated to St George’s Cathedral: the altar of Our Lady, a baroque design of 1900 with opus sectile panels, was installed in the Lady Chapel (photo above), while the marble altar of St John the Evangelist (1925) was set up in the north transept. A 1922-3 copy of the famous painting of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour (the original in the Redemptorist church of St Alphonsus, Rome), in a marble frame designed by Walters, was also relocated to St George’s and the earthly remains of Bishop Butt (1826-99), who had founded the seminary and been buried in the chapel at Wonersh, were transferred to the crypt.

Description

The building is described in the list entry (below). The Blessed Sacrament Chapel is incorrectly attributed to E.W. Pugin rather than A.W.N. Pugin, and the descriptions of this chapel and the Knill Chantry appear to be muddled. Features not mentioned or insufficiently described in the list entry include:

• The painted ceiling panels of the nave and of the ribs and panels in the aisle roofs are by Robert Hendra and Geoffrey Harper.
• The Harry Clarke Studios west window depicts the Coronation of the Virgin and the nine-light east window the Crucifixion and various saints.
• Table tombs in the north aisle to Provost Doyle (d.1879, by Farmer & Brindley) and Archbishop Amigo (d.1949, photo above).
• Above Archbishop Amigo’s tomb in the north aisle is a window by Goddard and Gibbs recording the papal visit to Southwark Cathedral in 1982.
• In the north aisle, one of the confessionals has been adapted to form a shrine to St Francis Xavier Cabrini, with a large bronze roundel by the Gillick brothers in an arched recess (2010).
• Austin Winkley’s chancel reordering involved a new altar and ambo in marble and stone, the ambo incorporating a panel of the Four Evangelists by David John, and a wrought iron screen and painted fabric by Alan Evans and Sue Ridge.
• The Stations of the Cross, 1960, are low-relief stone panels by Harold Youngman, in the manner of Eric Gill.
• In the chapel of St Joseph are displayed the conserved remains of Pugin’s 1848 high altar frontal (photo above).
• Two altars from Wonersh were introduced in 2023-4, as described above.

Text amended by AHP 19.05.26

List descriptions

Cathedral

II

Catholic cathedral. 1841-48. By Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin; restored and redecorated 1888-1905 by FA Walters; largely rebuilt and extended following war damage, 1953 by Higgs and Hill to designs of Romilly B Craze based on Pugin’s plans.

MATERIALS: yellow stock brick with Portland stone dressings. Slated roofs.

STYLE: C20 Gothic Revival style, mixed with fragments of Pugin’s Decorated Gothic; only the east end, the lowest part of the west tower, the aisle walls and a few internal details remain of Pugin’s work.

PLAN: western tower, tall nave of 8 bays with clerestory (an addition to Pugin’s design), aisles and pseudo-transepts. Large tower and spire intended for west end never built.

EXTERIOR: parapeted west front has full-height buttresses with statues in stone niches at bases flanking central ashlar doorcase with moulded pointed arch; large C20 6-light traceried window. Baptistry north of entrance, completed 1966, has 3- light window and pyramidal roof. Southern return with single-storey, buttressed aisles with traceried windows and parapet. Gabled transepts formed by heightening the east bays of the aisles. East end flanked by small stone turrets with conical roofs.

INTERIOR: has massive stone piers (replacing Pugin’s original ones) designed to support elaborate stone vault over nave, simplified when built to transverse arches with a boarded ceiling in between. Aisles with chapels at east ends have flying ribs, creating illusion of vault. Series of small chapels as extensions to south aisle, with larger Lady Chapel extension (1961-3) at south east. Crossing in 7th bay and sanctuary now extended into last bay of nave. Gallery with gabled pseudo-transepts created by heightening of aisles. Sanctuary now extended into last bay of nave. Gallery at west end. Large Decorated chancel windows and north aisle windows, the remains of Pugin’s work.

FITTINGS include: Petre Chantry of 1848-9 in Perpendicular style by Pugin with vaulted roof and angel finials, has original furnishings including table tomb and carved altarpiece with Virgin and Child and angels. The Blessed Sacrament Chapel, 1856-7 by Edward Welby Pugin in refined Gothic with vault supported by thin internal piers linked to the outer walls by transoms; well carved capitals with birds and frieze; with original fittings including altar, reredos and encaustic tiles; gates by Hardman. Knill Chantry, St Patrick’s Chapel begun 1845 as a chantry for George Talbot, completed as relics chapel in 1905 and largely reconstructed after the war. St Joseph’s Chapel, converted from the Weld Chantry of 1890, with stone vault. The Lady Chapel, 1961-3, contains a small C18 Flemish Virgin and Child. STAINED GLASS: in east and west windows by Henry Clarke Studios of Dublin.

HISTORICAL NOTE: the Cathedral, although not designed as such, was always intended to be an important church but Pugin’s original grand scheme was rejected as too expensive. A competition was held in 1839 which Pugin won and the current, more modest, plan was accepted, being dictated by the restricted site (there was formerly a built-up road immediately to the north).

Archbishop’s House and Cathedral House

II

Summary:1886-87 bishop’s house and clergy house designed by the architect Frederick A Walters in Gothic style, but incorporating parts of an 1840s clergy house and schools by A W Pugin. Some 1930s and 1950s refurbishing.

Reasons for Designation: The Archbishop’s House and Clergy House, both 1886-87 in Gothic style designed by the architect Frederick A Walters but incorporating parts of an 1840s clergy house and schools by A W Pugin, are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * Architectural interest: Archbishop’s House is a good quality well-articulated asymmetrical design decorated with black brick diaperwork, its two sections separated by an impressive staircase tower and decorative main entrance. Cathedral House is plainer but of good quality with gables, a staircase turret and three arched doorways enlivening the exterior; * Interiors: include original panelled ceilings, panelled doors with elaborate architraves, a number of wood or stone well or winder staircases, elaborate fireplaces, built-in settles and window seats, stained glass windows and a built-in library staircase and gallery; * Intactness: virtually unaltered exteriors and the plan and most interior fittings survive apart from the loss of some fireplaces in Archbishop’s House; * Comparators: comparable in quality with other residential type commissions for the Roman Catholic church by F A Walters, such as religious houses, seminaries and schools, which have been listed elsewhere; * Group Value: part of a complex of ecclesiastical buildings with the adjoining Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. George (Grade II).

History: This building occupies a triangular-shaped corner site at the junction between St. George’s Road and Westminster Bridge Road adjoining St. George’s Roman Catholic Cathedral. In the 1830s a committee was set up to build a large Roman Catholic church to accommodate a great influx of Irish Catholics into the area in the first quarter of the C19. In 1838 A W Pugin, who had been informed of this project by the Earl of Shrewsbury, provided elaborate and detailed plans for a cathedral with chapter house, cloisters and conventual buildings but walked out when the committee enquired about the cost. The north-west view of this scheme is illustrated in Benjamin Ferrey’s ‘Recollections of Pugin’. The following year four architects, including Pugin, were asked to provide designs for buildings to include a church with accommodation for 2,500 on the ground floor, a house for four clergy, and schools for 300 boys and 200 girls, not to exceed an estimated cost of £20,000. A W Pugin’s new simpler designs were selected. In April 1840 the City of London agreed to sell the triangular plot of land opposite Bethlem Hospital for £3,200 provided that the buildings were erected to Pugin’s design, were completed within six years and had no ‘ecclesiastical ornament’ on the outside. The south-west elevation of Pugin’s winning 1839 scheme, which also shows part of the north side and the plan, are preserved in the Cathedral Archives and illustrated as Plate 46 in the Survey of London: Volume 25. The schools are shown located along St. George’s Road in this plan and a house, probably the clergy house, on the north-east side. The Builder of 17 June 1843 stated that ‘An episcopal palace, a convent for the Sisters of Mercy, with spacious sacristies, houses for the clergy, and parochial schools for both sexes are also in course of erection’ (1843, 228). The buildings are shown on the First Edition Ordnance Survey map, which was surveyed in 1872. Schools for boys and girls are labelled in this position, erroneously called National Schools. Trade directories from 1854 include ‘St. George’s Catholic Church and Schools’ in Westminster [Bridge] Road. In July 1869 Provost Doyle reported that the Cathedral Boys’ School comprised two kitchens and a coal cellar. In 1885 Bishop Butt wished to expand the number of priests by enlarging the Clergy House. In 1887 the schools were removed to a new site and the old site used for a new episcopal residence and a clergy house, also including a seminary and convent, designed by Frederick A Walters. However parts of the existing north and north-east wings in particular have a different character so it is likely that some elements of Pugin’s earlier design may survive. Walters’ St. George’s Road elevation and plan of the ground floor were printed in ‘The Builder’ of June 23 1888. The archbishop’s residence was mainly situated fronting St. George’s Road, with nuns originally occupying the top floor, and the attached clergy house and seminary was mainly situated along Westminster Bridge Road and in the north-east wing attached to the cathedral. However there were connecting doors between the two buildings and some vertical mingling of functions between the two buildings. The footprint of Walters’ building, shown on the 1896 Second Edition Ordnance Survey map, is similar to the first edition map, including an internal triangular-shaped courtyard, but a garden area between the cathedral and the new building is shown much reduced in size on the second edition map. The property is now called Archbishop’s House and Cathedral House.

Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852) needs no introduction as the founding architect of the Gothic Revival with numerous works listed, including the adjoining St. George’s Roman Catholic Cathedral. Frederick Arthur Walters (1849-1931) was a prolific Catholic architect who was articled to his father, Frederick Page Walters, and then worked for Goldie & Child for nine years before setting up his own practice in 1880. He was responsible for more than 50 Roman Catholic church or building commissions, including this one, Buckfast Abbey (Devon), Ealing Abbey (London) and the Southwark diocesan seminary at Wonersh in Surrey. His son, Edward John (1880-1947), was taken into the practice in 1924, when it became F A Walters and Son. The practice was continued after F A Walters’ death by his partner S Kerr Bate under the name of Walters & Kerr Bate. Currently a numberof buildings wholly designed by F A Walters are listed, three of them, Buckfast Abbey Church and main block and the Sacred Heart, Wimbledon (London) at Grade II*.

Details: DATE: 1886-87 bishop’s house and clergy house designed by the architect Frederick A Walters in Gothic style, but incorporating parts of an 1840s clergy house and schools by A W Pugin. Some 1930s and 1950s refurbishing. MATERIALS: stock brick in English bond, with plinths and some diaper decoration in black brick, and stone dressings. Ornamental iron rainwater goods. Slate roofs, mainly concealed by parapets, with a series of tall channelled and moulded brick chimneystacks. PLAN: the bishop’s, now archbishop’s residence, stretches mainly along St. George’s Road with the clergy house, now Cathedral House, mainly along Westminster Bridge Road. In the archbishop’s house the public rooms are on the ground floor, the archbishop’s private rooms and some offices are on the first floor, originally nuns occupied the third floor and there were service rooms in the basement. The Clergy House has a complicated plan which includes four staircases. It comprised service rooms to the basement and ground floor, accommodation for clergy on the first and second floors, including two communal reception rooms, and originally there was seminary accommodation on the third floor. EXTERIOR: the principal front of Archbishop’s House faces south-west along St. George’s Road. It comprises a south-west block of four storeys and basement and two bays, divided from a lower three-storey and basement seven-bay north-west block by a taller set-back tower behind the main entrance. The south-west block has a crenellated parapet and bands between floors. The third floor windows are triple mullioned casement windows. The other floors have triple mullioned and transomed casement windows with relieving arches above the ground and second floor windows, but the first floor windows additionally have three blank stone panels with cinquefoil carved heads. The south-east return has a tall two-storey canted bay window over two storeys, an external channelled chimneystack and projecting gable. Adjoining the south-west block is the main entrance with gable flanked by buttresses and an arched doorcase with the archbishop’s arms and the date ‘1886’ above: this is flanked by small arched windows with leaded lights. The double door has ornamental iron hinges. The recessed tower behind the main entrance is of five storeys and one bay, with a crenellated parapet, arched windows to the two upper floors and narrow mullioned and transomed windows below. The north-west block is of seven bays with a crenellated parapet and two external channelled chimneystacks. Second-floor windows are two-light mullioned windows with drip moulds. First-floor windows and the two northern ground floor windows are mullioned and transomed with relieving aches, and the five southern windows on the ground floor have more elaborate mullioned and transomed casements and are divided by buttresses. Archbishop’s House terminates in a corner full-height canted bay of three windows, with arched heads to the second floor windows, blank stone cinquefoil-headed panels above the first floor windows, and relieving arches above the ground-floor windows.The principal front of Cathedral House faces north along Westminster Bridge Road and is of three to four storeys with a crenellated parapet, two small gables and a projecting plinth. The irregularly spaced windows are either stone mullioned or mullioned and transomed casements. There are three doorcases, the eastern one an elaborate stone doorcase incorporating an arch with blank shields to the spandrels and a fanlight with three trefoiled arches. The central and western ones are plainer arched doorcases with dripmoulds. A further section, attached to St. George’s Cathedral, faces south-west and is of two storeys with stone paired trefoil-headed lights. It is terminated by a narrow octagonal brick tower with winder staircase on the cathedral side. A gabled section further north-west has taller ground floor mullioned and transomed windows with moulded stone corbel heads. The internal triangular courtyard has a variety of stone mullioned windows including some with gabled heads, some with ogee trefoiled heads and some mullioned and transomed windows with ogee trefoiled heads. The tiled floor has alternate red and black tiles. INTERIOR: an entrance from St. George’s Road into Archbishop’s House leads into a vestibule with an arched ribbed ceiling and two built-in stone settles. This opens onto the main staircase, a stone well staircase incorporating a series of stone arches. In 1935 a lift with ornamental iron grilles was inserted into the well. On the ground floor a passage to the south-west with original doors has a number of small rooms, originally waiting rooms and a large reception room at the south western end, now used as a library, and retaining original cornices and doorcases. Opening off to the north-west of the main staircase is the largest reception room, the dining hall. This is of five bays with a panelled ceiling with moulded tie beams supported on corbels, original arched doorcases and an elaborate carved stone fireplace with end pilasters, five small ogee arches with cinquefoil decorations, and the motto ‘DEUS PROVIDEBIT’. The adjoining room to the north-west, designed to be part of a library and now storing archives, has a late-C19 carved wooden staircase and gallery incorporating book stands. The adjoining north-west corner room, shown as a library on the architect’s plans, has an original stone fireplace with attached colonnettes and patterned tiles. The first floor has a built-in window seat by the staircase and archiepiscopal apartments which include a chapel with stained glass in one window depicting St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher, inserted in 1935 to commemorate their canonisation. A number of rooms retain their original ceilings and one window has stained glass with armorial shields. The top floor formerly housed a convent. The basement, which housed the service rooms, retains original room divisions and red and white floor tiles, but the kitchen was refitted in the 1950s. Cathedral House has an oak main staircase from ground to first floor with a rectangular well, chamfered balusters and moulded posts under a large rectangular glazed lantern. Access to the upper floors is by a smaller well staircase in the north-west corner, of similar character to the main staircase except that alternate balusters have been truncated and linked with a T-bar to adjoining balusters. There is also a narrow stone newel staircase in the north-east corner, a stone staircase in the centre of the north side, which has plain iron balusters and scrolled ends to the handrail to the basement flight, and a blocked narrow newel stair to the octagonal tower facing south-west. The semi-basement towards the north end on the St. George’s Road side has a wide Baronial-style stone chimneypiece to a former kitchen, with circular motifs at the sides, one enclosing a bishop’s mitre, the other the shield of St. George. The adjoining room, formerly a coal cellar, retains two elliptical-headed arches, and the corner room between St. George’s Road and Westminster Bridge Road has a tiled larder with marble shelves and steel hanging racks. The ground floor of the north-east side has a tiled corridor and simple door surrounds, some retaining simple six-panelled doors probably by Pugin. The more commodious first floor accommodation is in the north-west corner with moulded cornices, late C19 wooden fireplaces, one retaining decorative tiles and a metal firegrate, and a corridor with panelled doors with battlemented surrounds. The first and second floors each have a communal room with moulded cornices and tie beams. The clergy dining room retains the original fireplace and the window onto the internal courtyard has re-constituted fragments of C19 stained glass which were rescued from St. George’s Cathedral following wartime bomb damage. The upper floor bedrooms also retain their fireplaces which are smaller and simpler.

Books and journals: Cherry, B, Pevsner, N, The Buildings of England: London 2: South, (1994), 574; Darlington, I, Survey of London: Volume 25: St George’s Fields (The parishes of St George the Martyr Southwark and St Mary Newington), (1955), 72-75 and Plate 46; ‘The Builder’ (June 23 1888). Other:Architectural History Practice, Taking Stock (Archdiocese of Southwark), July 2011.

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With the establishment of the Archdiocese of Westminster in 1850, the church of St Mary, Moorfields in Finsbury Square (previously the seat of the Vicar Apostolic for London) became the pro-Cathedral.

After the death of Cardinal Wiseman in 1865 the idea of a purpose-built cathedral was mooted as a memorial. In 1867 a site in Carlisle Place, closer to Victoria Station than the present cathedral, was acquired and Henry Clutton produced various designs for a Gothic cathedral on an ambitious scale, to compete with the medieval Gothic of Westminster Abbey. However, schools rather than a cathedral were the chief priority of Archbishop (Cardinal from 1875) Manning, Wiseman’s successor (‘could I leave 20,000 children without education, and drain my friends and my flock to pile up stones and bricks?’. Instead (in 1868) he chose George Goldie’s church of Our Lady of Victories, Kensington, then under construction, to be the pro-Cathedral, replacing St Mary Moorfields. This was a more convenient location than Finsbury Square, being closer to the diocesan seminary at Hammersmith. A stock brick palazzo on the corner of Carlisle Place and Francis Street, built in 1867 as the Guardsman’s Institute, served from 1873 (until 1901) as Archbishop’s House.

In 1884 the Carlisle Place site was sold when a larger, four-acre site became available at Tothill Fields, site of the former Middlesex House of Correction. Cardinal Manning’s solicitor Alfred Blount set up a company which acquired the site, sold the western half (site of the present cathedral) to the diocese and sold the eastern half for development.

Plans to build a cathedral were not developed until Herbert Vaughan succeeded Manning as Archbishop, in 1892. Vaughan was from an old Catholic family and his uncle, Bishop William Vaughan, had built the cathedral at Plymouth. At Hertford, he had commissioned a new church in the Gothic style from Henry Clutton in 1859-61 (qv). Without a competition, he appointed John Francis Bentley, a pupil of Clutton, to draw up plans for the cathedral.

Bentley’s initial instructions from Vaughan were to produce a design in the Early Christian style. This was partly on grounds of economy, insofar as the building could be run up relatively quickly with the ornament added later as funds permitted. Vaughan also did not want his cathedral to compete too much with the Abbey, at the other end of Victoria Street. Bentley’s preference was for Gothic, but recognising that this was not going to be accepted, he suggested that the new cathedral should be in the Byzantine style. This he was not unfamiliar with, as demonstrated in his proposals for the virtual rebuilding of the Warwick Street chapel (qv, completed only in part).

In order to inform his design, Bentley travelled to Italy, with the intention of continuing to Constantinople. This was prevented by a cholera outbreak, but Bentley later said that Lethaby and Swainson’s book on Santa Sophia (1894) and San Vitale at Ravenna ‘really told me all I wanted’.

The foundation stone was laid on 29 June 1895. Bentley lived to see the shell (but not the campanile) completed, dying in 1902. Vaughan died in 1903, the year of the cathedral’s opening.  In that year Edward Elgar conducted the first performance of his Dream of Gerontius in the newly-completed cathedral. The cathedral was consecrated in 1910.

Vaughan was buried at Mill Hill, but in 2005 his remains were translated to his chantry chapel to the east of the north transept porch (see below). In 1907 E. W. Pugin’s monument to Cardinal Wiseman was transferred from Kensal Green cemetery to the crypt at the east end of the new cathedral. Here there is also a monument to Cardinal Manning, by Marshall, from 1908. Later archbishops and cardinals have been buried in the main body of the cathedral.

After Bentley’s death, work continued under the successor practice of Bentley, Son & Marshall, John A. Marshall having a much larger role than Bentley’s son Osmond. As a rule, Bentley’s plans and intentions were followed, at least for the major furnishings. Bentley intended that the vaults should be entirely covered with mosaics, but apart from a few sketches, there are no detailed designs. An indication of his desired finish can be seen in the Holy Souls chapel, where he worked closely with the artist W. Christian Symons.

A chronological sequence of the main furnishings is given below. Chief amongst these are the baldacchino and cathedra, the fitting out of the chapel of St Andrew, and the addition of Eric Gill’s Stations of the Cross, all completed early on, or by the end of the First World War.

In the 1930s there was something of a departure, with mosaics by Gilbert Pownall added in the apse, over the choir arch and in the Lady Chapel. These were in the Italo-Byzantine style of Palermo and Monreale, the model favoured by Cardinal Bourne. A campaign against this programme was instigated by the writer and convert Edward Hutton, as a result of which Pownall’s mosaics in the apse were removed by Bourne’s successor, Cardinal Hinsley, and a Cathedral Art Committee established (in 1936) to approve and oversee all future art works. This committee lapsed with Hinsley’s death in 1943 but was reconvened by his successor Cardinal Griffin in 1945, after criticism in the letters page of The Times of further mosaics approved by the Cardinal. Re-constitution of the committee led to the appointment of the Russian artist Boris Anrep, whose most notable contribution is the mosaics in the Blessed Sacrament chapel.

There was a lull in mosaic decoration after the Second Vatican Council; cash was short and progress towards the completion of the cathedral was not considered a pastoral priority. The cathedral escaped the destructive reordering that befell many historic churches at that time, although various radical schemes were mooted. A forward altar was introduced, but has since been removed. Under Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor a scheme was advanced to move the great high altar forward by twenty seven inches, to allow for westward celebration under Bentley’s baldacchino. This was abandoned primarily on structural grounds; under his successor Archbishop Vincent Nichols, an alternative solution has been realised, whereby the wall behind the high altar has been moved back by about twelve inches. This work, carried out with great care by Nimbus Conservation under the direction of the cathedral architect Michael Drury RIBA (of St Anne’s Gate Architects, Salisbury), was completed in time for Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the cathedral in 2010.

The major change in the post-Vatican II years was external, with the creation in 1975 of a piazza in front of the cathedral, opening up the view from Victoria Street (architects Elsom, Pack & Roberts). In 2010 the piazza was resurfaced and redesigned by Westminster City Council, work which included a new granite ramped approach to facilitate wheelchair access to the cathedral (architects St Anne’s Gate Architects of Salisbury, contractors Cathedral Works Organisation (CWO)).

Apart from a lettered mosaic over the north door to commemorate the Papal visit of 1982, mosaic decoration did not pick up again until the late 1990s. Since then there has been an active and highly successful programme of mosaic decoration in the chapels and perimeter aisles, overseen by the Art and Architecture Committee and enabled in great part by the fundraising efforts of the Friends of Westminster Cathedral.

Description 

On plan, as Bradley/Pevsner point out (p.674), the cathedral is a ‘Byzantine translation of the sixteenth century scheme of the Gesù in Rome’, consisting of a nave with perimeter chapels, domed crossing, non-projecting transepts and raised sanctuary.  There are three large domes over the nave, of massed and unreinforced concrete. The series of domes perhaps owes something to San Marco, Venice, although the building is not centrally planned. The debt to San Vitale lies above all in the intention to adorn the tunnel vaults and domes with mosaic decoration mosaic, a plan still largely unrealised. Outside, the domes are not prominent; the single most prominent external feature being the 284ft campanile. This is more Italian than Byzantine in character, similar in height and design to that at Siena (Bentley wanted two towers, but was overruled by Vaughan, primarily on grounds of cost; aesthetically this was a happy decision). The combination of red brick and Portland stone banding in the external facing is redolent of Italian Gothic in its polychromatic effect, but also has contemporary resonances, for example in Norman Shaw’s New Scotland Yard (from 1887).

The cathedral is 360ft (109.7 metres) long, 156ft (47.5 metres) wide and 117ft (35.7 metres) high (up to the top of the domes). The span of the vaults is 60ft (18.3metres), the height of the main arches 90ft (27.4 metres). The building is described in detail in the list entry below, but this does not include the most recent furnishings. The following is a chronological sequence of the main fittings:

• 1899: Nave pulpit, made in Rome by Aristide Leonori, the design based on medieval Italian pulpits, with marble and inlaid mosaic (altered in 1934 by L. H.  Shattock, when the mosaic of Our Lady of Walsingham, by John Trinick, was added).
• c1900: Enthroned bronze statue of St Peter at the west end, after Arnolfo di Cambio.
• 1901: The huge suspended rood cross at the sanctuary arch, designed by Bentley and painted in 1903 by W. Christian Symons. Also the large marble font in the southwest baptistery, made in Rome from Bentley’s designs.
• 1902: The cathedra, on the Gospel (left hand) side of the sanctuary, modelled on that in the church of the Lateran, Rome, with a walnut canopy of 1906, designed by Bentley, Son & Marshall.
• 1902-04: Mosaics in the chapel of St Gregory and St Augustine, with mosaics by J.R. Clayton of Clayton & Bell, and marbles chosen by Bentley.
• 1902-08: Holy Souls chapel. Bentley had designed the bronze screen and in his last years worked closely with Symons on the design and iconography of the mosaics and opus sectile work.
• 1904-08: Altar, canopy, communion rail and bronze screen to Blessed Sacrament chapel, by Marshall.
• 1905-08: The huge baldacchino, from Bentley’s designs, supported on eight yellow marble columns, the canopy designed by Marshall. The altar below is a twelve-ton Cornish granite monolith. Bentley prepared various more elaborate designs for the high altar, and Vaughan’s decision to have a huge plain granite block instead was a ‘crushing disappointment’ to the architect (de L’Hopital, 137). The altar was consecrated in June 1908.
• 1907: Fitting out of the chapel of St Thomas Becket (the Vaughan chantry), with effigy by Marshall (carved by Henry McCarthy) and screen by Marshall.
• 1908: Alcove conches and altarpiece in Lady Chapel, by Anning Bell; also most of the marbles in this chapel.
• 1909: Delicate iron light fittings by Bentley, Son & Marshall.
• c1910: Confessionals, by Bentley, Son & Marshall. Also altars in chapels of St George and the English Martyrs, St Patrick and St Joseph.
• 1910-16: Design and fitting out of the chapel of St Andrew, ‘a masterpiece of the Arts and Crafts movement’ (Bradley/Pevsner) designed by Robert Weir Schultz, the patron the Fourth Marquess of Bute. Schultz’s collaborators included Ernest Gimson (responsible for the exquisite stalls of 1912) and Bainbridge Reynolds (the screen).
• 1913-17: Marble lining of chapel of St Paul.
• 1913-18: The Stations of the Cross, by Eric Gill, and amongst his finest works. Very low relief square panels in his favoured Hopton Wood stone, with colour sparingly used in the letters and gilding for the haloes. On the floor beneath the fourteenth Station is a small epitaph to Gill, carved by his pupil Laurie Cribb in 1942.
• 1916: Mosaic in tympanum over the west front, by R. Anning Bell.
• 1921-22: Marble work in the apse, by Marshall. Farmer & Brindley were responsible for much of the marble work.
• 1921-32: The organ, by Henry Willis III, behind a screen by Marshall, 1927.
• 1929: A relief of Christ behind the high altar, by Philip Lindsey Clark.
• 1931: Bronze screen to the chapel of St George and the English Martyrs, by Shattock, behind which, in the chapel, is the shrine of St John Southworth, set up here in 1930.
• 1931-35: Mosaics in Lady Chapel, by Gilbert Pownall, influenced by the Norman-Byzantine mosaics of Sicily, the model favoured by Cardinal Bourne.
• 1934: Mosaic tympanum over the choir arch, by Pownall.
• 1947: Installation of stone reredos in the chapel of St George and the English Martyrs, depicting Crucifixion and St John Fisher and St Thomas More (commissioned from Eric Gill in 1938 and completed by Laurie Cribb after Gill’s death).
• 1955: Acquisition of a fifteenth-century alabaster sculpture of the Virgin and Child, now known as Our Lady of Westminster and placed towards the east end of the nave (south side), below the thirteenth Station.
• 1956-64: Marble work in the nave, including gallery balustrades, from Bentley’s designs.
• 1957: Mosaic panel of Blessed (St) Oliver Plunkett in south aisle, outside St Patrick’s chapel, by Boris Anrep.
• 1958: A bronze plaque of St Thérèse of Lisieux in the south transept, by Giacomo Manzù (replacing a mosaic panel of St Thérèse).
• 1960-61: Mosaics in the Blessed Sacrament chapel, by Anrep.
• 1963: Mosaics in chapel of St Paul, by Justin Vulliamy, assisted by Anrep.
• 1982: Lettered tympanum mosaic of north door at west end, by Nicolete Gray, commemorating the visit of Pope John II.
• 1998-99: Bronze plaques of St Benedict and St Vincent de Paul in the south transept, by Bryan Kneale. Mosaic panel of St Patrick in south aisle outside entrance to St Patrick’s chapel, by Trevor Caley.
• 2001: Mosaic of St Alban in north aisle outside St Joseph’s chapel, designed by Christopher Hobbs and made by Tessa Hunkin of the Mosaic Workshop.
• 2003: Two marble panels and a mosaic panel commemorating John Henry Newman and The Dream of Gerontius (Elgar’s setting of Newman’s poem was first performed at Westminster Cathedral, in 1903) in north aisle outside Holy Souls chapel, by Tom Phillips RA.
• 2003-06: Completion of mosaics in chapel of St Joseph, designed by Christopher Hobbs and made by the Mosaic Workshop.
• 2006: Completion of mosaics in chapel of St Thomas Becket (Vaughan chantry), by Christopher Hobbs.
• 2010: Mosaic panel of St David in south aisle outside chapel of St Paul, by Ivor Davies, made by Tessa Hunkin of Mosaic Workshop (blessed by Pope Benedict XVI on 18 September 2010). Adaptation of area behind high altar to allow for westward celebration of the Mass, carried out by Nimbus Conservation under the direction of Michael Drury RIBA.
• 2012: Completion of mosaics in the chapel of St George and the English Martyrs, by Tom Phillips.

List description

99/15 The Metropolitan Cathedral Church of the Most Precious Blood (Westminster Cathedral)

GV I

Roman Catholic Cathedral. Commissioned by Cardinal Vaughan: built 1895-1903 to the designs of J F Bentley; consecrated 1910; interior fitting-out continued by John A Marshall of Bentley’s office. Red brick, Portland stone bandings and dressings on Cornish granite plinth, with concrete foundations and vaults. Saucer domes of brick and concrete, three over nave and one over sanctuary. Narthex flanked by baptistery and porch, aisled 3-bay nave with 4 aisle chapels to (liturgical) north and three to south, where western one is substituted by base of 284ft campanile; narrow two-bay transepts beyond which the apsed choir and sanctuary is flanked by apsed and aisled chapels. Sacristy to rear. Free Byzantine style. Complex west facade stepping forward in lower stages with central entrance in semi-circular arch with decorative voussoirs, columned jambs and mosaic by Robert Anning Bell in tympanum and sculptured medallions of 12 Archbishops of Canterbury. Blind round-arched arcading to upper tier, flanked by polygonal towers with corner buttresses supporting domes. Two-storey wings to either side with round-arched arcading and plate tracery. Further domes over the polygonal corner turrets to the banded bulk of the nave. Square campanile with polygonal buttressing at top supporting cupola. Side elevations with Diocletian windows, paired round-arched and plate traceried windows divided by angular buttresses in each bay; these rise behind flat roof from less moulded ground-floor aisles, and similarly the gabled transepts are shallowly moulded. Sanctuary towers are polygonal with shallow, blind arcading and onion domes over corner buttresses. Three-bay sacristry with Diocletian windows to ground floor, round-arched lancets above.

The interior has never been completed, yet is magnificent – the nave for its volume and (especially) the chapels for their wealth of enrichment, most of it mosaic in keeping with Bentley’s intention and much of it to his design. The walls lined with veined marble in cream and green to springer level. The brickwork above left rough for future mosaics where not yet installed. Narthex, for which Bentley left complete designs, with columns of Norwegian granite and marble floor. Organ by Henry Willis and Sons over. Nave has broad galleries over aisles, supported at the centre of each bay by paired monolithic columns, the Carrara marble capital of each being a different design. Stations of the Cross by Eric Gill, 1913-18. Pulpit remodelled and enlarged 1934 by L H Shattock. Rood by Christian Symons. Statue of St Peter copied from that at St Peter’s, Rome, c.1900. Pendant lights of 1909. Aisle chapels separated by further single columns of rare marble. The Chapel of the Holy Souls completed to Bentley’s fully worked out designs, in black and white marble and with carefully overseen mosaics by Christian Symons 1902-3. Altarpiece shows Christ enthroned. Marble floor 1906, bronze gilt grille 1908. Chapel of St George and the English Martyrs, also developed as a war memorial from 1915; largely designed by Marshall with altarpiece by Eric Gill, 1946. Figure of St George by Lindsay Clarke. Shrine to St John Southworth (1592-1654), reintered here in 1930. Apsed chapel of St Joseph with fine altar by Marshall, and monolithic panels of c.1992. On south side, from the west the baptistery, with font by Bentley. Statue of St John the Baptist. Marble screen and steps lead to the Chapel of St Gregory and St Augustine, with altarpiece by Henry Holliday set into design by Bentley (drawn up in detail by him and which he later simplified) with mosaics by Clayton and Bell 1902-4. Chapel of St Patrick and the Saints of Ireland, clad in Irish marbles with memorials to the Irish regiments of 1914-18, designed by Marshall in the 1920s; the altar also by him, 1910; statue of St Patrick by Arthur Pollen. The green hue of this chapel is in contrast to the blue and white of the neighbouring Chapel of St Andrew and the Scottish Saints, the gift of Lord Bute and the work of R Weir Schultz 1910-14. Lean openwork screens of white metal by W Bainbridge Reynolds; sculpture by Stirling Lee, stalls by Ernest Gimson (considered amongst his finest works) with kneelers by Sidney Barnsley, reliquary by Harold Stabler and altar cards by Graily Hewitt. Chapel of St Paul similar to Marshall’s work for that to St Joseph, 1913-17. Transepts with doors and confessionals by Bentley and Marshall, the latter a standard design for the Cathedral also found in St Patrick’s Chapel and elsewhere. Mosaic of St Joan of 1909-12 by Christian Symons in north transept, where also is the Chapel of St Thomas of Canterbury – the Vaughan Chantry. Effigy of Cardinal Vaughan by Marshall and carved by Henry McCarthy; Marshall’s also the marble and mosaic decoration, as designed by him in 1907. Sanctuary has marble and jasper arcades supporting arcaded tribune above. High altar of Cornish granite, with baldacchino of Veronese marble on marble floor, designed by Bentley in 1901 and executed by Farmer and Brindley in 1905-6. Bas relief by Lindsay Clark; mosaic in tympanum over high altar by Gilbert Pownall, of Christ in Glory. Fittings by Marshall, 1908-10. Sacristy to rear not seen. Crypt under sanctuary dedicated to St Peter, with tombs to Cardinal Wiseman by Edward Welby Pugin and to Cardinal Manning by Bentley (but only partly carried out) and mosaics by Christian Symons. Bentley left designs for the marble work. The northernmost of the aisles to the apsed chapels either side of the Sanctuary forms the Shrine of the Sacred Heart and St Michael. Black Panderma marble installed by Farmer and Brindley with contrasting white marbles and rosso antiquo highlights; mosaic of the Holy Face the last work of Christian Symons, 1910. Alabaster statue of the Sacred Heart by Farmer and Brindley and bas relief of St Michael on altar frontal completed by 1919. Silver lamp before the statue by Osmond Bentley and J A Marshall, who also designed the electric light pendants. Linked by screens is the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, marble clad between 1904 and 1909, enclosed by grilles and gates 1907 by Marshall, above which is represented the ‘Pelican in her Piety’. Altar rail 1908, tabernacle and suspended canopy 1909, all by Marshall. Mosaics by Boris Anrep, completed in 1962. – The Lady Chapel is clad in richly-coloured rare marbles, completed c.1914. White marble altar, with mosaic of Our Lady with the Holy Child by Anning Bell executed by a Miss Martin, who also did those to the apse recesses. Other mosaics by Gilbert Pownall, C15 Nottingham alabaster statue installed 1955, marble floor 1956. Sources Winegride de L’Hopital, Westminster Cathedral and its Architect, vol. I, 1919. Westminster Cathedral, popular guide, n.d. Westminster Cathedral Bulletin, July-August 1993.

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The list description (below) is extremely brief by current standards and uses the pre-1973 dedication to Our Lady and St Philip Neri. Joseph Aloysius Hanson (1803-1882) was in partnership with his younger son J. S. Hansom from 1869 until 1882, so it is likely that the design is that of J. A. Hansom albeit that the execution was by Hansom & Son. The church was built by Henry, fifteen Duke of Norfolk, to celebrate his coming of age in 1868. Built of Bath stone, work began on 27 December 1869 and the church opened on 1 July 1873. It cost almost £100,000 and was funded almost completely by Henry, fifteenth Duke of Norfolk.

Description

What is perhaps most memorable about the building is its contribution to what Nairn & Pevsner (The Buildings of England Sussex) called ‘one of the great town views in England’. Approached from the east the town is perched on the hill, with the cathedral at one end and the castle at the other, the Arun valley in the foreground. Hansom encountered difficulties with the foundations, necessitating the sinking of concrete supports as deep as 57ft.

The design provided for a more elaborate east end with radiating chapels. More flying buttresses and more pinnacles, as well as a 280ft high steeple at the north-west corner. The church consists of a sanctuary with narrow ambulatory, a nave and aisles of 6-bays, north and south transepts, with a fleche over the sanctuary, an apsidal south-west baptistery and a north-west porch.

Although the style is decidedly that of the French Gothic of around 1300, notably the tall narrow proportions, it is not exclusively a recreation. The spatial ambiguity of the chapels tucked into the angle between transepts and ambulatory is rather a trait of the English Decorated style. The bands of blank arcading externally, and internally the doubled tracery of the clerestory and the shaft rings and the capitals are more Early English than French.

Some of the tracery design is of Hansom’s own imagination and the idea of a porte-cochere (for the proposed north-west steeple) is a Victorian convenience. The nave is 72ft high, 33ft wide and 97ft long, proportions that give a sense of soaring height on entering the cathedral, crowned by the quadripartite vaulting. The lack of stained glass in the nave somewhat spoils the effect and the harsh light gives a coldness to the rather mechanical detailing.  Elsewhere the stained glass was designed by Hansom, to thirteenth century imagery, made by John Hardman Powell and put in during the 1880s.

The Stations of the Cross, in memory of John Butt, fourth Bishop of Southwark, were put up from 1885 to 1899. The shrine of St Philip Howard is in the north transept. The tabernacle in the Lady Chapel is thought to be the first English tabernacle made after the Reformation; it is the work of Charles Kandler and was made for Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, in 1730. The church became a cathedral in 1965, on the creation of the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton.

Ian Nairn, writing in The Buildings of England Sussex in 1965 struggles with the validity of ‘replica’ architecture but acknowledges that it is tremendously impressive in terms of scale, form and siting. As Nairn in fact acknowledges, the thirteenth century borrowings are selective and this is not a replica at all but a nineteenth century belief in the continued relevance of Gothic as a modern building style. The cathedral is unmistakably Victorian and all the more impressive for it.

List description

I GV

Designed 1868-9. Built 1870-3. Architect J A Hansom. Ashlar walls and vaults. Pitched slate roof. Picturesque Gothic composition with details from later C13 sources. Stylobate surrounding cathedral on north and west sides, interspersed with ashlar piers: square bases, octagonal tops, and pyramidal caps with foliate finials. Roman Catholic Cathedral of St Philip Neri forms a group with No 2 Parsons Hill.

Listing NGR: TQ0152607178

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A mission with a resident priest was established at Brentwood in 1836, with a church built on land given by Lord Petre and opened on 26 October 1837. This building, which survives today as the Cathedral Hall, is a yellow brick Gothic design by Henry Flower, capable of seating over 200. It had its own burial ground. A clergy house built in 1836-37 also survives, now providing accommodation for the cathedral clergy.

A south aisle was added to the 1830s church in about 1845, but this soon proved insufficient to accommodate the growing congregation. In 1861 a second church was built to the south, from designs by G. R. Blount. The old church became a school (becoming the parish hall in 1969 and more recently the Cathedral Hall). The new church was a more full-blooded Victorian Gothic design (in Pevsner’s words, ‘of that assertive ugliness which is characteristic of much church work of the sixties’), built of Kentish ragstone, with a longish chancel, nave and two aisles and a southeast tower. In 1873 a convent for the Sisters of Mercy was built to the west of the church. This was a ragstone building by F. W. Tasker, and had a small chapel to the south.

In 1917 the church was made the Cathedral of the new diocese of Brentwood. In 1919, an early nineteenth-century building, Brent House (now Regency House), lying to the south at the corner of Ingrave Road and Queen’s Road, was acquired to serve as the residence of the first bishop, the Rt Rev. Bernard Ward (this was later sold and the bishop’s residence relocated to South Woodford; the current Bishop resides at Stock).

Although the church was appropriately refurnished to reflect its newly-acquired status (with F. A. Walters preparing designs for a new cathedra), it was not immediately increased in size. This did not happen until 1974, under Bishop Casey.

The rebuilding of the adjacent St Helen’s Junior School enabled the site to the north of the 1861 church to be developed. The new addition was roughly square on plan, and was built from designs by John Newton of Burles & Newton. The north aisle of the 1861 church was demolished and the north arcade of the nave opened up to join with the new worship space. The sanctuary was placed in the nave of the old church, while the old sanctuary became the Blessed Sacrament chapel. The rebuilt and extended Cathedral was capable of seating 1000, and was embellished with furnishings by John Poole (altar and ambo), Michael Clarke (tabernacle and stone base), David John (Crucifix) and others.

The Cathedral was rededicated and three altars consecrated on 3 May 1974, and the re-opening Mass was held on 5 June 1974. The final cost was approximately £104,000, excluding furnishings and enlarging and altering a Gothic building presents considerable problems. While no attempt has been made to re-produce the Gothic style, respect has been paid to its scale and materials. Externally the continued use of stone to match as closely as possible the colour and texture of the old building is hoped to ensure a unity of concept in sympathy with the old building. Internally, the linking of the new to the old has been achieved by the consistent use of two materials, timber and white textured plaster.

In 1982-83, Cathedral House, new diocesan offices designed by Laurence King were built to the west of the cathedral, an extension to the former convent building. This was two years after the consecration of the Rt Rev. Thomas McMahon as sixth Bishop of Brentwood. Bishop McMahon had previously been at Colchester, where he had become familiar with the work of the modern Classical architect Raymond Erith at Wivenhoe New Park, home of the (Catholic) Gooch family. The bishop sensed a lack of the numinous in the functional design of the new Cathedral which, although only a few years old, was also presenting maintenance problems. A major anonymous donation allowed for the possibility of rebuilding, and the bishop commissioned designs from the Dedham-based architect Quinlan Terry, partner of Raymond Erith (who died in 1973). Terry prepared plans for the replacement of the 1974 addition, working on the same footprint, but this time to a Classical design. Although recommended for approval by local planning officers, this scheme was refused planning permission by Brentwood Council on the grounds that the proposed extension would introduce an ‘incongruous and alien feature’ in the town centre conservation area. However, an appeal was lodged and the development allowed by the Secretary of State in March 1988.

Quinlan Terry was perhaps an unusual choice for a Catholic bishop in search of the numinous, being an architect with a strongly-held Protestant, indeed Calvinist, belief in the asacral nature of church buildings. However, the collaboration proved long and fruitful, with the architect’s involvement extending not just to every detail of the new cathedral, but also to improvements to its setting (including new gate piers and railings); updating and partially remodelling the original church (the Cathedral Hall); adding a portico to and refenestrating the clergy house; remodelling the cathedral offices with a neo-Georgian entrance; and converting and extending the old convent chapel for the choir school, the last of these being completed in 2001.

The rebuilt Cathedral was opened and consecrated by Cardinal Basil Hume on 31 May 1991.

Description

The church consists of two elements, the surviving portion of Blount’s church of 1860-61, and Quinlan Terry’s additions of 1989-91. The former is Gothic in style and consists of nave, south aisle, chancel (now Blessed Sacrament chapel) with south chapel, former sacristy, south porch and southwest tower and spire. The latter is Classical in style, fusing Italian and English Renaissance elements, incorporating the nave of Blount’s church to form a centralised Greek cross plan. Although the two elements are of contrasting architectural style, they are united by their use of Kentish ragstone in the walls and slate in the roof.

The outer walls of the Terry addition are divided into bays by Doric pilasters, the smooth Portland stone finish of which contrasts with the more rugged ragstone surfaces between. The pilasters support a continuous Doric triglyph frieze with balls on the parapet marking the bay divisions. The main elevation is to the north, facing the old church. This consists of nine bays, with a central a semi-circular Doric portico, reminiscent of the south portico of Wren’s St Paul’s or the west entrance of Gibbs’s St Mary-le-Strand. This is flanked on either side by pedimented bays. There is a secondary entrance (the day-to-day main entrance) in the eastern bay, with hooped overlight. The main windows are all round headed, with Venetian windows on the east and west elevations. Set back behind the parapet is a raised clerestory of yellow brick, with arched windows and a hipped roof rising to a domed octagonal lantern. The external elevations of the western arm of the Greek cross, not seen from the street, are also faced in yellow brick.

On the east elevation the wall of the new church somewhat uncomfortably abuts the gabled east end of Blount’s chancel. This has diagonal stepped buttresses at the corners and a five-light Decorated window over a string course. The south elevation of Blount’s church has gabled sacristy and porch projections, an aisle of three bays with two-light windows, and a low clerestory with spherical triangle windows. The tower is asymmetrically placed at the southwest corner and has two square stages with a transition to an octagonal belfry stage. The belfry houses a new bell cast by Whitechapel Bell Foundry for the opening of the rebuilt Cathedral as well as the old bell of 1861 (also cast by Whitechapel), which sounds the Angelus. Above the belfry stage is a short stone spire. There is a further large five-light window at the west end of the nave.

The day-to-day entrance to the cathedral is via the entrance in the eastern bay of the north elevation. This leads into a narthex area in one of the re-entrants of the Greek cross, housing a repository (in the form of a large cupboard with scrolled open pediment, made by Taylor’s of Bildeston, Suffolk, to Terry’s designs). The main space of the church resembles an Italian Renaissance court, framed by an arcade of five bays on the longer north and south sides and three bays on the east and west sides. The stone Tuscan columns have a pronounced entasis. The design of the arcade, with its roundels in the spandrels, appears to be derived from Brunelleschi’s Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence. On the south side this arcade creates a degree of separation from the Blount church, while retaining intervisibility (whereas Burles & Newton had simply formed a large opening, with a massive steel beam supporting the superstructure). Above the arcade is a Doric entablature, with the ceiling of the raised clerestory stage divided into fifteen compartments, from the central one of which rises the lantern, with timber balustrading framing the octagonal opening. The flooring is of Portland stone slabs with diamond slates set into the corners, all on one level apart from where raised up for the chief liturgical furnishings (altar, throne, ambo and font). The walls are of plain painted plaster, with some detailing, such as the guilloche patterning over the clerestory, picked out in gold leaf. The space is well-lit, with large windows of clear glass. The interior of the Blount church has a more intimate atmosphere, dimly lit by stained glass, giving that sense of the numinous sought by the Bishop, and appropriate for an area used (in the chancel) for private prayer.

The furnishing of the church consists almost entirely of pieces designed by Terry or chosen by the Bishop. The chief earlier interior of note is the Blessed Sacrament chapel, with a painted ceiling of 1911 and stained glass in the east window by Mayer and Co., depicting the Risen Christ with saints Peter, Paul, John and Andrew. On its south side is a small window of the Sacred Heart, the original dedication of the Cathedral. On the north side in a niche is a small wooden statue of the Madonna and Child. The brass sanctuary lamp dates from the late nineteenth century and comes from St Mary’s, Hornchurch. The tabernacle is a polychrome timber piece, a mini-Classical church of centralised design, acquired by the bishop in Rome. It stands on a pedestal of Pisan Nabrasina stone.

At the west end of the old church is the organ, built by the London firm of Alfred Hunter in 1881, which came from the now-redundant Anglican church of St. Mary-at- the-Walls, Colchester. This has been rebuilt and enlarged by Daniels of Clevedon, with a handsome new Classical case by Terry.

The cathedra or bishop’s throne is placed in the central bay of the southern arcade. Raised on a dais of two Portland stone steps, it was made from Terry’s designs and is of Nabrasina stone. It has two scrolled arm rests and a segmental pediment to its back, incorporating the Diocesan coat of arms; its design was inspired by a throne at San Miniato al Monte, Florence.

The throne faces towards the altar placed centrally under the lantern. This too is raised on a Portland stone plinth and is made of Nabrasina stone. It is rectangular in form, following the proportions and axis of the main space, with its mensa carried on eight Tuscan columns.

On the same north-south axis as the throne and altar is the ambo, of Nabrasina stone, octagonal in form, with panelled faces and surmounted by a gilded eagle lectern.

The other chief liturgical furnishing is the font, located in the north aisle between the two entrances. This is raised on a stone plinth, and like the other liturgical items is of Nabrasina stone. It is octagonal, inset with a Greek Cross (the design informed by Romans 6:3) and has steps down to allow those being baptised to stand in the water.

The Cathedral (including walls, railings and gates) was listed Grade II* in May 2022. List entry: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1479422?section=official-list-entry

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In October 1834 the foundation stone was laid for a large new church in what is now Park Place, Clifton. This was built for Fr Leo Edgeworth, a Franciscan. It was designed in neoclassical style by Henry Goodridge, who at this time was also working for Bishop Baines at Prior Park, Bath, and who almost certainly actively encouraged the scheme. As planned, the church would be capable of seating 2,500. The church would be encircled with a giant order of Corinthian columns, and topped with a lantern loosely modelled on the choragic monument of Lysicrates on the Acropolis. ‘Had this great classical building been quickly finished it would have stood out as the largest, most splendid Catholic church in England’ and ‘a clear challenge to the Gothicists’ (Little, pp. 75 and 103). The ambitious plan proved excessively so, and the choice of site catastrophic; its edge was to slip down towards a nearby disused quarry under the weight of Goodridge’s building. The nave and transepts were substantially complete but remained roofless, and the unfinished building was abandoned by 1838. Instead a smaller chapel dedicated to St Augustine was built alongside in 1842, from which the Clifton mission originated (the building survives today within St Catherine’s Court). Work resumed on Goodridge’s building in 1843, but again soon had to be abandoned.

After he became Vicar Apostolic in 1846, Bishop William Ullathorne OSB engaged Charles Hansom (who had built for him a Gothic church at Coventry) to complete the church to a smaller design, under a lighter timber roof. Dedicated to the Holy Apostles, this was opened by Bishop Ullathorne in September 1848. In 1850, with the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy, this became the provisional cathedral (pro-cathedral) of the Diocese of Clifton. In the 1870s the west end was remodelled by Hansom in Italian Romanesque style, but a tall intended campanile was not built. The building was furnished and enriched over time, with important glass by the Hardman firm. It was slightly damaged by wartime bomb damage, and the roof repaired in 1950s. It was about this time that fears about the stability of the building again resurfaced, and in 1964 an architect’s report concluded that extensive works (estimated cost £86,000) were needed, particularly to stabilise the foundations.

In 1965 a major donation by an anonymous group of Catholic laymen allowed for the possibility of building a purpose-built cathedral on a more convenient site in Clifton, and Bishop Rudderham appointed the Percy Thomas Partnership to prepare designs. An 1840s villa, the former home of Dame Monica Wills, was demolished to make way for it. Unlike at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral (where the same architects had also submitted a design) there was no competition. The architects in charge were Ronald Weeks, Frederick Jennett and Antoni Poremba and the contractors were John Laing & Son Ltd. (who had also built Coventry Cathedral). Work began in March 1970, Bishop Rudderham laying the foundation stone on 26 September. A presbytery was built at the same time. The building was due for completion in 1972 but a strike by construction workers delayed things, and the new cathedral was consecrated by Bishop Rudderham on 29 June 1973, when Cardinal Heenan preached. The cost was just £600,000.

The cathedral was the first to be conceived and built in England after the Second Vatican Council, and the brief (prepared by a committee of liturgists) called for a single worship space in which 1000 people could gather in active participation around the high altar. Unlike at Liverpool, the altar was not placed centrally, but slightly off-centre, with (moveable) seating arranged around it in horseshoe fashion. Furnishings of note include the large inscribed stone font by Simon Verity, and striking concrete Stations of the Cross by William Mitchell. Notable for the quality of its board-marked concrete, the cathedral won the Concrete Society Award for 1974, and in 2000 it was awarded Grade II* listed status.

The two bells in the new cathedral belfry are the only furnishings brought from the pro-cathedral. That building went through various vicissitudes after 1973, and was finally converted in recent years to student flats.

The cathedral has undergone little alteration since it was opened. In 1995 the original fibreglass and metallic filler doors by William Mitchell were replaced in glass. The building was closed for major repairs at the time of the writer’s visit, and most of the photographs in this report were taken at the time of a previous visit in 2014.

Description

The building and its principal fittings and furnishings are described in some detail in the list entry (below), and repetition is unnecessary. Briefly, in addition to its qualities as an outstanding ‘sermon in concrete’, this is perhaps the most consistent and successful example in England of the rigorous application of modern liturgical principles to church design. Internally its success is most apparent when the building is in use and full. Furnishings not mentioned in the list entry are a small bronze statue of Our Lady in the Lady Chapel, by Terry Jones, and the organ, made by Rieger of Austria for the opening in 1973, with an ash case whose design reflects the geometrical characteristics of the cathedral building. The Henry Haig glass in the narthex (which might perhaps be more accurately described as dalle de verre, or slab in resin glass rather than stained glass) depicts Pentecost (the larger panel) and Jubilation.

List description

II*

Roman Catholic Cathedral. 1969-73 to the designs of Ronald Weeks, E S Jennett and Antoni Poremba of the Percy Thomas Partnership. Pre-cast concrete panels and in-situ concrete. Lead-clad pitched roofs stepped between tiled flat roofs. Irregular, elongated hexagon in plan, with west door set in one of the longer flanks, and the altar and sanctuary set on axis with this – almost, but not quite in the centre of the building. The building set over a car parking area in the sub-basement. Polygonal, board-marked concrete piers flank the St Peter and Paul’s doors’ to Clifton Park and Pembroke Road, and mark the corner between these doors. Raised walkway with board-marked concrete balustrade to each entrance. Irregular composition of offset, superimposed, part-hexagons rise in three layers to culminate in the smallest hexagon, above the sanctuary; this has pairs of windows to three sides at the base, of irregular hexagonal form, with lead surrounds. From this smallest hexagon a tall, lead roof rises, of irregular pyramidal form. This has inset panels of glazing to the liturgical west, and from its apex rises a spire comprising three linked ribbed concrete uprights, one taller than the others and of triangular section with a bevelled top. The west door has a heavy projecting board-marked concrete canopy.

Dramatic interior with board-marked concrete to walls, deep upstand beams of roof and to galleries. Pyramidal timber acoustic cones’ set in lower ceilings. Complex natural top-lighting, above and behind sanctuary and to the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, the latter separated by screen, designed by Brother Patrick of Prinknash Abbey. Walls of narthex inset with stained glass by Henry Haig. Narthex gives on to baptistry area; font of Portland stone by Simon Verity. The Stations of the Cross are low relief panels of light-weight cast concrete, each one worked in 1« hours by William Mitchell. His original doors replaced with clear glass in c.1995, but the lectern made by him to Weeks’s design remain.

A new cathedral in Clifton was commissioned in 1965 to supersede the Pro-Cathedral (already listed) of the 1830s. The Percy Thomas Partnership produced a powerful and dramatic building, which is perhaps the most important work of one of Britain’s largest post-war architectural practices. Clifton is often described as being the first cathedral in the world to accord completely with the liturgical guidelines issued by the Vatican in November 1963 (Building, 15 June 1973, p.73). Its planning is more succinct and successful than that at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral because it places the altar to one side, with a horseshoe of seating for the congregation. This quickly became a preferred alternative to the notion of seating entirely in the round’ because of the clearer view it gave everybody of the celebration. Built in a remarkably short space of time to a low budget (£600,000), Clifton Cathedral achieves a rare integration of materials and spatial quality which is remarkable for a cathedral of any period. George Perkin in Concrete Quarterly (January 1974, p. 23), described it as having a remarkable serenity and delight’ coupled with an apparent simplicity’. Mary Haddock, in Building (20/27 December 1974, p.43) admired the hint of theatre in the design; the absence of clutter and garish church ornament; the fine materials and the use of colour; the cold design in stained glass – … a heart-lifting Christian temple, inspiring reverence but not awe. A sermon in concrete.’ The Cathedral won the Concrete Society Award for 1974.

Sources Building, 25 February 1967, p.88 Architect and Building News, 1/15 January 1969, pp.22-29 Building, 15 June 1973, p.73 Concrete Quarterly, January-March 1974, pp.22-32 Building, 20/27 December 1974, pp.39-43 Information from William Mitchell.

Listing NGR: ST5728373587

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Built as an ambitious parish church in the confident years after the restoration of the hierarchy, and the Cathedral since the creation of the Diocese of Lancaster in 1924.  A fine, aspiring building, the chef d’oeuvre of Edward Paley. The northwest steeple is a local landmark, 240 ft high and excellently detailed. Transepts and a high nave and chancel, with an interior that is quite light, yet rich and impressively proportioned. The  style  is  that  of  c1300,  the  material  warm  buff  stone. The baptistery on the north side is like a chapter house; it was added in 1895 by Austin & Paley, and has good group value with the main building.

Lawful Catholic worship in Lancaster started with the building by Dr John Rigby of a chapel (now the Palatine Hall) in Dalton Square in 1799. By 1847 this chapel had become too small for the growing congregation, and a three acre plot was bought at Greenfield for £2,200. The school, convent and cemetery were built first. In 1856 several suns of money became available for the building of a new church, including £2,000 from the will of Thomas Coulston. Plans were drawn up by Edward Paley under the guidance of the Rev. Richard Brown; the foundation stone was laid by the Dr Goss, the Bishop of Liverpool, on April 29 1857, and the new church consecrated and dedicated by Dr Goss on October 4 1859.

In 1924 the Liverpool diocese was divided, and St Peter’s became the Cathedral for the new Diocese of Lancaster.

Description

The list entry (below) describes the building in some detail, but does not generally give attributions for the design of various features. The following puts some flesh on the list description, and is drawn from notes prepared by Clare Hartwell for the revised Pevsner volume for Lancashire.

St Peter’s reminds us that if Hubert Austin brought genius to the partnership, Paley’s contribution  should  not  be  overlooked. The church retains an elaborate decorative scheme with many furnishings.

The narthex has a spiral stair to the elaborate west gallery, which is supported by marble piers. This was rebuilt in 1888 by Austin & Paley following acquisition of a new organ. Lofty six-bay nave arcades, stately vaulted apse. Densely timbered roof with scissor braces, stencilled and with a stencilled frieze with Lancastrian emblems by Bernard Watson to the designs of Francis Roberts who was responsible for extensive and sensitive restoration in 1994-5.

On  the  southwest side  a  door  connects  with  the  presbytery,  then  comes  the  two-bay Coulston Chantry Chapel, founded in 1856, with an arcaded entrance, stone vaulted ceiling and an elaborate carved reredos by Geflowski. Confessionals follow, then another chapel like the first, of the Whiteside Chantry and St Thomas More Chapel, with a reredos relief carving of the Agony in the Garden by Lane. South transept altar, the Sacred Heart, with a carved reredos and alabaster panels by Edward Simpson. The south chancel has two chapels, sharing rich arcading to the chancel. The St Charles Borromeo Chapel (west) has a painted reredos with a figure of the saint and scenes of his works during the sixteenth century plague of Milan. To the east, and accessible only from the convent (see below) is the Convent Chapel, divided from the chancel by glazing and ironwork screens. The northeast Lady Chapel has mosaic floor with lilies etc, a spherical triangular east window with glass by Shrigley & Hunt and an alabaster reredos (Annunciation, with an elaborate canopy over a statue of Our Lady).

The sanctuary has been converted to the Blessed Sacrament chapel. The furnishings relate partly to a reordering of 1909, reinstated by Francis Roberts in 1994-5. The reredos is a huge triptych by Giles Gilbert Scott, . 1909, with scenes from the Passion, executed by Farmer & Brindley. The painting was done by Tosi of London and the figures modelled by Miss Reid. The outer leaves have painted scenes framed by gilded traceried panels in relief, the inner leaves scenes in sharp relief with yet more complex traceried surrounds. At the top, the Crucifixion with attendant figures and angels. The elaborate wall paintings were begun in 1894, and show Christ in majesty  with  attendant  saints,  angels,  etc.,  north  side;  the  Virgin  and Child  with attendants, south side. Blind arcading to the apse has more paintings within the arcading, Saints, missionary saints, etc., with minstrel angels above. The screen is iron and brass with candlesticks across the top. Ornate choir stalls by Austin & Paley carved by Bridgeman of Lichfield in 1899. Dec in inspiration, though with flat testers. They have misericords, six on each side, with beasts, angels, etc. and, more memorably, a scene of a grimacing child being spanked. The nave altar belongs to the Francis Roberts reordering and has over it a large chandelier with angels at the centre. There is a stone pulpit, elongated and low with minimal carving.

The northeast baptistery is a tour de force, the furnishings integral to the scheme, with a carefully considered iconography.  There is a short linking corridor with stained glass by Shrigley and Hunt leading to iron gates guarded by statues of Processus and Martinianus  (Peter’s jailers in Rome, converted and baptised by him) in the uniform of Roman soldiers. There is a two-light window showing on one side the Serpent at the ear of a driven, clean-shaven Herod, sword in hand, an Innocent crushed beneath his foot, with poppies, a fox and the Tree of Knowledge in the background. The other light is much more conventional, Christ cradling a baby in a summery setting with lilies. The significance of the sacrament of Baptism is underlined by the dim light of the passage and the bright space beyond, with the stern Roman soldiers guarding the entrance  adding  a  primitive  note,  while  the  menace  of  evil  is  embodied  in  the depiction of Herod. Inside, all is light, with a stone vaulted ceiling. The font is placed centrally and raised, Connemara marble with an attractive architectural oak lid. At the east end an elaborate carved stone altar and reredos by R. Boulton in a niche. The stained glass is all by Shrigley & Hunt, fine work in carefully chosen pale tones, with St Peter and St Paul and various baptismal scenes.

Other stained glass is largely by Hardman, including English Martyrs, north transept, a rose window with red roses, south transept, both of 1888, and scenes from the life of St Peter in the north aisle. Other glass to note is the Assumption window, SW aisle, by Shrigley & Hunt, late nineteenth century.

Significant monuments include that to Dr John Rigby, builder of the chapel in Dalton Square (+ 1818) in the south transept: Faith with a cross by Richard Westmacott Jun., executed  c.1860,  after  Rigby’s  body  was removed  from  Dalton  Square  to  the cemetery in the new church. In the Whiteside Chapel, a good brass with crocketed pinnacles and a cross over, to members of the Whiteside family. In the Coulston Chapel another good brass, with a kneeling figure before a cross, with panels on each side with names   of   members   of   the   Coulston   family   and   an   inscription commemorating the chapel’s founder, Thomas Coulston (+ 1856). On the north arcade, a brass to the Rev. Richard Brown, who helped draw up plans for the building; a tonsured figure holding a model of the church.  At the southwest end a bronze seated St Peter, a copy of that in St Peter’s, Rome.

Adjoining Buildings

A complex of buildings to the south and east are all by E.G.Paley or successor firms, separately listed Grade II. The passage between the church and the ancillary buildings has a stencilled scheme by Francis Roberts and a stained glass window of St Edmund Arrowsmith, in front of Lancaster Castle, the scene of his martyrdom.  The attached southeast presbytery was built at the same time as the church and is modestly Gothic, with a full-height bay with a pyramidal roof and windows with arched heads. It was extended by Austin & Paley in similar style, 1895-6.

St Walburga’s Convent, to the east and set back from Balmoral Road, was built 1851-3, and is thus the earliest building on the site. It is attached to the Cathedral southeast Convent Chapel by a corridor. L-shaped with mullioned windows with shouldered or cusped heads. Tall gabled wing and a three-bay lower range with upper windows in half dormers extending above the eaves, a favourite Paley motif.

Further east on Balmoral Road Balmoral RC School was designed in 1897 by Austin & Paley. A disposition of unequal gabled ranges along the street, two to the east with tall arched windows with mullions, transoms and plate-traceried heads lighting full-height classrooms. The two to the west project forward of the others and have two storeys and upper arched windows flanked by windows with flat heads. On the east side of the precinct, off East Road, a cemetery was laid out 1849-50.

List description

II*

Roman Catholic cathedral, originally a parish church. 1857-59 and 1895-96. By Edward Paley, with a later baptistry by Paley and Austin. Gothic Revival style. Sandstone ashlar and slate roofs, except for the baptistry roof which is of copper. A tall aisled 5-bay nave with transepts, an aisled 2-bay chancel with a semi-octagonal apse and side chapels, a tower and spire in the north-west corner and an octagonal baptistry attached to the north transept. The west facade has a 5-light window with Geometric tracery, and below it is a deeply recessed doorway with 2 shafts with foliated capitals and orders of crockets and fleurons in the arch. The side elevations have 3-light aisle windows with Decorated tracery and paired clerestory windows flanked by blind arches. The north transept has a 4-light window with Geometric tracery, while the south transept has a round window composed of a 10-light wheel window surrounded by 10 circles. The clerestory windows of the chancel are spherical triangles, while the tall 3-light windows in the apse have Decorated tracery. The baptistry is slightly more decorated, with 2-light windows with panelled tracery and deep buttresses. The tower has 4 stages, separated by string courses, and a stair turret in the north- west corner. The lowest stage has, on the west side, a 3-light window with intersecting tracery and, on the north side, a recessed porch under a shallow gable, over which is a canopied niche containing a statue of St Peter. The second stage has on each face a row of 6 gabled and shafted arches, of which only the central 2 have windows. The third stage contains a single small window, while the belfry stage has paired openings, each containing 2 sub-arches. The graceful spire rises to a height of 73m, with 3 tiers of lucarnes on the cardinal faces.

INTERIOR: 5-bay nave with 2-centred arches of 2 orders of quarter- round mouldings carried on slender round columns with foliated capitals and high octagonal plinths. Directly above each arch is a pair of clerestory windows, whose cusped rear-arches are supported by a central colonnette. Between these windows other colonnettes on foliated corbels carry the principal trusses of the arch-braced roof. The aisles have simple, steeply-pitched rafter roofs. On the south are 2 chantry chapels, each approached through a pair of arches. The arches north and south of the crossing are slightly higher than those of the nave and have clustered shafts. The chancel arch, also with clustered shafts, is much higher and rises to the ridge of the wooden vault of the chancel. This is painted with arabesques and angels and has tierceron ribs and foliated bosses, except for the one over the original position of the high altar, now moved to the west bay of the chancel, which shows Christ in Majesty. On the south and north sides pairs of arches lead respectively to the Convent Chapel and to the Lady Chapel, whose wooden panelled ceiling is painted with fleurs-de-lys and crowns. Above them, but beneath the clerestory windows, is a deep band of painting representing on the south Our Lady enthroned and surrounded by female saints and on the north St Peter and male saints. Around the base of the apse are 2 rows of 5 gabled canopies containing paintings of other saints, with angel musicians above. The carved oak choir stalls have crocketed canopies. he baptistry, approached through fine wrought-iron gates flanked by niches under nodding ogee heads containing statues, has an octagonal stone vault. The floor and font are of polychrome marble, the font bowl being supported on 4 short columns. The oak font cover is a spirelet suspended from a chain. In the south transept is a triptych, by Giles Gilbert Scott, in which the carved and painted panels represent scenes from the Passion. (In 1909 this was the reredos of the high altar.) At the west end of the north aisle is a large seated bronze figure of St Peter. The west gallery contains an organ. The glass in the apse windows and in the west window is original and by Hardman, showing the Ascension and St Peter and St Paul in the east and Christ in Glory at the west. The church is the finest and dominant feature of an important group, also containing a graveyard, school, convent and presbytery (qv), which was built between 1847 and 1859.

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After the Reformation the Catholic faith was sustained in Leeds by local recusant families, notably the Killingbecks of Allerton Grange and the Leighs at Middleton. After the passing of the Second Relief Act in 1791, Fr Albert Underhill, a Dominican priest, built a small chapel in Lady Lane in the town centre. By 1836 this was proving inadequate for the growing Catholic population and a large new Gothic Revival church dedicated to St Anne was completed in 1838 at the top of what is now Park Row. The architect was John Child, who had also been responsible for the design for the first St Patrick, Leeds (1831-2). The church was a prominent local landmark, with a spire of 148 feet, and is recorded in Atkinson Grimshaw’s atmospheric painting of 1882, Park Row by Moonlight. Its finest internal features were the elaborate and colourful high altar and reredos, designed by A.W.N. Pugin and installed in 1842, and a pulpit designed by J.F. Bentley, 1897, alabaster and incorporating a central opus sectile panel of Christ and Disciples.

With the creation of the Diocese of Leeds in 1878, St Anne’s became the cathedral. In 1899 Leeds Corporation compulsorily purchased the cathedral, presbytery and parish schools (which had been opened in 1841) for a realignment of the junction of the Headrow and Park Row. In compensation for this, the corporation provided a new site nearby on the corner of Cookridge Street and Great George Street. Bishop Gordon’s choice of architect was between three Yorkshiremen: John Kelly (architect of St Patrick, Leeds and Holy Family, Leeds, but then nearing retirement), J.F. Bentley (then working on the designs for Westminster Cathedral) and the London-based but Leeds-born architect John Henry Eastwood. Both Bentley and Eastwood were founder members of the Guild of St Gregory and St Luke, established to raise the standard of design and furnishings in Catholic churches. Eastwood was chosen, and with his assistant Sydney Kyffin Greenslade prepared over 600 drawings, now held in the diocesan archives. As originally intended, the new cathedral was to have a prominent tower at the southwest corner facing towards Cookridge Street, but threatened litigation from adjoining premises concerned about loss of light meant that the tower was moved to a less imposing position on the north side. The contract was awarded to William Cowlin & Sons of Bristol and the foundation stone laid by Bishop Brindle of Nottingham on 26 July 1902, the Feast of St Anne. On 29 April 1904 Mass was said for the last time in Child’s old cathedral before demolition of that building got underway. Eastwood’s new Arts and Crafts Gothic-style cathedral opened for worship in the following month, and was formally opened by Bishop Gordon on 16 June 1904. The cathedral was finally consecrated on 18 July 1924,  when relics of St Tranquillinus and St Victoria, brought from the Catacombs in Rome, were sealed within the high altar.

When Eastwood’s building first opened, only the most immediately necessary furnishings were in place. Pugin’s high altar and reredos were saved for re-use, as was Bentley’s pulpit. Otherwise, furnishings were added over time as funds permitted, many of these through the efforts of Canon Thomas Shine, who was administrator from 1908 until 1921, when he became Coadjutor Bishop of Middlesbrough and embarked on a church building programme in that diocese. Much of the design flair is Greenslade’s. His high altar and reredos were installed early on, but the designs for the furnishing of the sanctuary were not prepared by Eastwood until 1907, and fundraising for these only got underway from 1910. From 1912 the sanctuary and Lady Chapel walls were painted with murals by the Italian artist Cesare Formilli. Eastwood’s bishop’s throne, with a great Gothic canopy, was installed in 1913. About the same time the Shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour was installed, designed by Eastwood as a memorial to the first administrator, Canon  Croskell. The War Memorial chapel was fitted out in 1920. In 1928 Formilli’s wall paintings on either side of the reredos were replaced with versions of the same design in mosaic, made in Venice under Formilli’s  direction. In 1930 the canons’ stalls were added, from designs by Eastwood.

After his appointment in 1951, Bishop Heenan instigated various simplifications to the design and furnishing of the interior, in tune with the austerity of the time. Formilli’s paintings (but not the mosaics) were removed from sanctuary, as was the canopy over the bishop’s throne. Bentley’s pulpit was moved from the nave to the entrance of the sanctuary and new hanging lamps installed in the nave. 1954 saw the golden jubilee of the Cathedral, which on 10 January was the setting for the first ever televised High Mass in this country.

More radical changes were made for the Cathedral’s diamond jubilee, during the time of Bishop Dwyer and administrator Thomas Murphy. This was the period of the Second Vatican Council, with its renewed emphasis on active congregational participation in the liturgy. In 1963-4 the cathedral was reordered by Weightman and Bullen at a cost of £40,000. Two flights of steps and a low screen were removed from the entrance to the sanctuary, and replaced with a single flight in Swedish green marble and low marble altar rails. Bentley’s pulpit was retained but adapted. The altar was detached from the reredos to allow for westward celebration and the sanctuary repaved with travertine and marble. Eastwood’s cathedra, stalls and screens were replaced with new oak fittings in a diluted Gothic style. In the nave, new paving was laid and the original chairs replaced with hardwood pews. New gates of a vigorous Arts and Crafts character were installed at the entrance to the baptistery.

In 1987 the external stonework was cleaned and repaired and the boundary railings reinstated to Eastwood’s design (the originals having been removed in wartime). In 1991 the cathedral was re-roofed and the building floodlit. Most of these works were grant aided by English Heritage under its Cathedral Grants scheme.

In 2003 the new Cathedral Hall was built at the northeast corner of the site, from designs by Damond Lock Grabowski and Partners.

More recently, a major internal reordering has taken place, initiated by Bishop Konstant and administrator Mgr Peter McGuire, but revised and completed under Bishop Roche and Canon McCreadie, Cathedral Dean (architect Richard Williams of Buttress Fuller Alsop Williams Architects). The works lasted over a year, and the cathedral was formally reopened by Bishop Roche on 13 November 2006. In 2007 the Pugin altar and reredos were conserved and restored, with a grant from English Heritage.

Description

See list description, below. This contains a mis-spelling of Weightman & Bullen, and incorrectly dates their work. The description of the interior ought to be revised to take account of the recent reordering. Weightman and Bullen’s communion rails and Bentley’s pulpit have been removed and a new sandstone altar and ambo introduced at the entrance to the sanctuary, approached from the nave by curving steps. A new cathedra in the style of Eastwood and Greenslade has been introduced at a higher level behind this, flanked by other clergy seating, and prominent in axial views from the nave towards the sanctuary and restored reredos. The 1960s screens to the sanctuary aisles have been removed and new seating for the choir provided behind the clergy seating and below the reredos. In the nave, a York stone floor with underfloor heating has been installed, and new benches have replaced the 1960s pews. The font has been moved from the former baptistery, minus its base, to the west end, where new glass doors have also been introduced within a new lobby designed to be in keeping with Eastwood and Greenslade’s work. Reconciliation rooms of a contemporary glazed design have been introduced adjacent to the south transept. The Lady Chapel has become the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, and Pugin’s reredos conserved and restored. The Stations of the Cross, dating from 1912 and painted by Cesare Formilli, have been cleaned and better displayed.

Internal features and furnishings of note not mentioned or inadequately described in the list description include the following:

• The font, now located at the west end of the nave and doubling as a stoup, from the old cathedral. Late nineteenth century, Gothic. Hexagonal with carved sides, lacking its base.
• Statue of the Sacred Heart, 1922 by Formilli, in the former baptistery. The arts and crafts-style railings to the former baptistery are from Weightman & Bullen’s reordering, 1963-4.
• In the chapel adjoining the baptistery, the pieta, 1913 by Boulton of Cheltenham, modelled on Michelangelo’s pieta in St Peter’s, Rome.
• War memorial, 1920, by Formilli. Above the altar is the foundation stone, laid on 26 July 1902.
• Chapel of St Joseph, designed by Eastwood and executed by H. H. Martyn of Cheltenham, 1904, with a stone altar frontal and oak and gilded reredos.
• Chapel of the Sacred Heart, designed by Greenslade and executed by Nathaniel Hitch, 1904, marble altar incorporating an alabaster panel of the Last Supper; reredos with Sacred Heart, Moses and Crucifixion.
• Sanctuary reredos designed by Greenslade and executed by Flint Bros of Clapham, 1904. Central gilded relief of the Coronation of the Virgin, flanked by eight statues of Yorkshire saints.
• Mosaics around the reredos made in Venice under Formilli’s direction. 1928.
• Above the entrance to the Lady Chapel, a large statue of Our Lady Immaculate by Boulton of Cheltenham, 1933.
• Tall Gothic shrine to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, 1913, designed by Greenslade and executed by H.H. Martyn & Co. of Cheltenham, 1913, in south transept.
• Stained glass: The only one of Eastwood’s designs to be realised was the east window. Glass in the south transept, depicting the Temptation and Transfiguration, was installed before the Second World War, brought by Canon Shine from another church. Crucifixion (1927) and Resurrection (1929) in the north transept by Kayll and Read, who also provided the delicate patterned glass, installed in the rest of the church in 1931.
• Shrine of St Urban, with Greenslade’s reliquary, surmounted by a painting commemorating Yorkshire martyrs, by Richard Lomas, 1988.

List description (Cathedral, presbytery, walls, railings & gates)

GV II*

Roman Catholic cathedral and presbytery with boundary walls, railings and gates. 1902-04 with C19 remains. By JH Eastwood and SK Greenslade; re-ordered 1960 by Wakeman and Bullen. Cathedral: Ketton stone ashlar, coursed Horsforth sandstone, slate 2-pitch roofs; presbytery: cream and red brick, steeply-pitched slate roof with diamond motif to brick stack between bays 1 and 2 and deep eaves; stone boundary walls, cast-iron railings and gates. Arts and Crafts Gothic Revival style.

PLAN: on an almost-square trapezoidal site which slopes up from west to east, the Cathedral having a wide 4-bay nave, north and south aisles and short transepts, 4-bay chancel with organ on north side and octagonal sacristy to south, 2-stage north tower, a ceremonial west entrance, and south entrance from St Ann Street; 2 storey with attic and basement presbytery and offices on the north-east corner of the site, entered from Great George Street.

EXTERIOR: west elevation: porch with 7 steps to low double gates with cross and scroll motifs and paired panelled doors under arch surmounted by a large stone Crucifix with flanking figures fronting the west window of 3, 6, 3 lights; flanking buttresses. South facade: steps up to deeply-recessed paired panelled doors under a round arch, left; 2, and 3-light windows with elaborate tracery under deep segmental and pointed arches; sacristy with single-light windows and octagonal roof projects right, boundary wall has ashlar coping surmounted by plain bars, thicker standards with splayed finials and overthrow at entrance. North facade: 2-stage tower with plinth, narrow windows and niches, 2-light louvred belfry windows, clasping square buttresses, pyramid roof; presbytery left: steps up to round-arched stone porch right, 4-panel door, top 2 panels glazed, small-pane cross windows of 5 lights, a canted bay to left of entrance. North side boundary wall and railings similar to those on south side, fronting presbytery but interrupted along range fronting transept.

INTERIOR: cathedral has elaborate font on north side; side chapels with statues and altars, short transepts, high chancel with organ on north side. Roll mouldings to nave piers, ornate niches high on plain walls, the 3 flanking the chancel arch having statues, shallow pointed arch to roof; east end mosaic with figures rising to small east window above fine carved and painted reredos. Fittings from the earlier church include reredos in south chancel chapel designed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, completed by 1842, Decorated details, cresting and 9 figures; pulpit by JF Bentley, 1897.

HISTORICAL NOTE: the first church was built in 1838 and became the cathedral of the new Roman Catholic diocese of Leeds in 1878. JH Eastwood was a founder member of the Guild of St Gregory and St Luke devoted to the improvement of church craftsmanship.

(A History of Modern Leeds: Yates, N: The Religious Life of Victorian Leeds: MUP: 1980-: 256; Pevsner, N & Metcalfe P: The Cathedrals of England).

Listing NGR: SE2994733908

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