Westminster Cathedral
Westminster Cathedral is the mother church of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, and one of the most significant religious buildings in the United Kingdom. Completed in 1903, it serves as the seat of the Archbishop of Westminster and is the largest Catholic church in England. Despite sharing a name and postcode area with the more famous Westminster Abbey a short walk away, the Cathedral is an entirely distinct institution — Anglican versus Catholic, medieval versus Victorian — and has its own profound character and draw. It attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, both pilgrims seeking religious experience and tourists drawn by its extraordinary architecture and art.
The Cathedral was built on land purchased by Cardinal Henry Edward Manning in 1884, formerly the site of Tothill Fields Prison. The architect chosen was John Francis Bentley, who had recently converted to Catholicism, and he was commissioned to create something that would stand apart from the Gothic Revival style then dominant in English ecclesiastical architecture. Bentley travelled to Italy and Constantinople for inspiration and returned to design a building in the Early Christian Byzantine manner, drawing heavily on the Basilica of Saint Mark in Venice and the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. Bentley died in 1902, a year before the Cathedral was consecrated, and never saw his masterwork completed. The foundation stone was laid in 1895 and the building opened in 1903 under Archbishop Herbert Vaughan, though its interior decoration remains, in an important sense, deliberately unfinished — a project still ongoing more than a century later.
Physically, Westminster Cathedral is a spectacular and somewhat startling presence in Victoria. Its exterior is built of red brick banded with stripes of Portland stone, giving it a dramatic striped appearance quite unlike anything else in London. The campanile, known as Saint Edward's Tower, rises to 87 metres and offers panoramic views across the city from its lift-served viewing gallery. The interior is vast, the nave being the widest in England, and is dominated by enormous arches and domes that soar into semi-darkness overhead. Much of the upper wall and dome surfaces remain bare, dark brick, which the Cathedral authorities have chosen not to rush to cover — this gives the space a brooding, awe-inspiring quality unlike the jewel-box brightness of many Continental Catholic churches. Where the mosaics and marble cladding have been completed, the effect is sensational: glittering gold and rich colour cascading down from the vaults to the floor level.
The lower sections of the walls are almost entirely clad in more than one hundred different types of marble from around the world, creating a rich tapestry of colour and texture. The side chapels are each individually decorated to a high standard, and several are widely considered masterpieces of their kind. The Blessed Sacrament Chapel is particularly breathtaking, its gold mosaic ceiling shimmering in candlelight. The Stations of the Cross, carved in low relief by Eric Gill between 1913 and 1918, are considered among the finest examples of his work and are listed Grade I in their own right. The acoustics of the building are remarkable — the Cathedral has a world-class choir and its music programme, including daily sung liturgies, is one of the finest in any church in Britain.
The Cathedral sits on Victoria Street in the City of Westminster, an area that has been transformed over recent decades from a somewhat drab government and transport hub into a more lively mixed neighbourhood. The immediate surroundings include Cardinal Place, a shopping and dining development, and the Cathedral Piazza, which provides an open space in front of the main façade and hosts outdoor events. Victoria railway and Underground station is only a few minutes' walk away, making the Cathedral exceptionally easy to reach from almost anywhere in London. Nearby attractions include Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, and the Tate Britain gallery.
For visitors, entry to the Cathedral itself is free, though donations are welcomed and there is a small charge to take the lift to the top of the campanile. The Cathedral is open daily, typically from early morning until well into the evening, and Mass is celebrated multiple times each day. Visitors are welcome to attend services or simply to walk around the building quietly outside of service times. The gift shop and a café are located within the Cathedral complex. The best time to experience the building at its most atmospheric is during one of the choral services, particularly Solemn Mass on Sunday mornings or Vespers on Sunday evenings, when the choir sings in the semi-darkness and the whole vast space seems transformed.
One of the lesser-known facts about Westminster Cathedral is that the heart of Cardinal Manning, the man responsible for acquiring the land and commissioning the project, is interred within the building. The Cathedral also contains the tomb of Saint John Southworth, a Catholic martyr executed in 1654, whose body was preserved in France during the suppression of religious orders and returned to England in 1930. His remains, clothed in a red vestment, are displayed in a glass case in the Chapel of Saint George and the English Martyrs and represent one of the most unusual and moving sights in any British church. The Cathedral's ongoing interior decoration programme means that it is, in a very real sense, a living project — each generation adding to what Bentley began — and this sense of an unfinished, evolving sacred space gives it a vitality that many more polished buildings lack.