Regenerating Liverpool III – Two Cathedrals

‘And if you want a cathedral we’ve got one to spare
In my Liverpool home.’

Well you can keep both of them.

The city has two Cathedrals, an Anglican one whose construction began in 1904 and was completed in 1971. Astonishingly the architect who was awarded the design brief way back then was only 22 years old. The colossal sandstone building broods over the city smoke stained and angry looking. Inside it’s impressive but in an arrogant way and it sells the worst coffee I’ve tasted in a long while. (Which reminds me, the signal of Liverpool’s economic disadvantage is the lack of coffee shops. Even Belfast has Starbucks.)

The Catholic Cathedral is at the other end of Hope Street. Architecturally I think it’s an awfully ugly building, the product of 1960s modernism in architecture where form follows function. It’s outside shape is meant to recall a crown and its official name is Christ the King. Inside it’s wonderful. The stained glass is charged with light and the overall feel is big but intimate. No seat is more than 25 metres form the altar. Post-construction it was plagued with difficulty, in fact from the late 80’s it was essentially rebuilt.

The two cathedrals are the product of early 20th Century competition between the churches. They have one so we better get one was the spirit of the day. The Catholics planned to have the biggest one in the world but WWII put paid to that. Then within a decade of its completion it began to fall apart. The roof leaked and safety nets had to be installed to collect falling debris. Eventually £10m was paid for full restoration. A lawsuit against the architect and contractor was settled out of court.

Someone told me that the architect for the Anglican cathedral was Catholic and the one for the Catholic one was Anglican. Revenge perhaps?

Architectural monstrosities aside, the Cathedrals are more marked by two bishops who championed the cause of the poor in Liverpool, Bishops Worlock and Sheppard, and probably best remembered by these two saintly men than anything else.