A Masterpiece for Merseyside

After 74 years of building, Liverpool has its cathedral

Master Stone Carver Tom Murphy was born in 1904, the year King Edward VII visited the booming port city of Liverpool to lay the foundation stone of a great new Anglican cathedral. As Murphy grew up, so did the cathedral, with stone upon hand-dressed stone rising on a rocky eminence overlooking the Mersey River. Then, 44 years ago, Murphy himself joined the work force on the vast new church. In the decades since, with hammer, chisel and mallet, he has carved more than 100 heraldic shields, ornaments, pinnacles and corbels to decorate the cathedral inside and out; his last accomplishment is the royal coat of arms, 5 ft. by 5 ft., over the west doorway--a task that took him nine months. He also enjoyed a privilege few craftsmen have experienced since the Middle Ages. He was present to see his monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, preside over the dedication of Liverpool's Cathedral Church of Christ, 74 years after it was begun.

Conceived in the Edwardian era of optimism, the cathedral is nothing if not ambitious. It was the first built in England's northern provinces since the Reformation, and may well be the last one in the majestic Gothic style to be erected anywhere. It is is the largest church in a country already rich in religious edifices, and the fifth largest in the world.* Its vaulting (175 ft. high under the tower) is higher than any other, its length (619 ft.) second only to St. Peter's in Rome. Work on the cathedral continued through two world wars and a depression. During the blitz of 1940, King George VI came to Liverpool and told church officials: "Keep on with the work, if only in a small way. Refuse to be beaten." Work continued even after bombs damaged the walls and blew out several windows of the completed Lady Chapel. The pounds of merchant benefactors and the pence of a devoted public paid the bills: over the years the cathedral has cost more than $11 million and only $100,000 more remains to be raised for final expenses, although maintenance costs will remain high. At that the cathedral is a bargain: at today's prices, it would probably cost ten times as much to build.

What Liverpudlians got for their generosity is no mere ostentatious pile of stone. The cathedral's clean, neo-Gothic lines and interior have already been widely praised; Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman, a connoisseur of architecture, pronounced it "one of great buildings of the world." Yet its architect, a Roman Catholic named Giles Scott, was a 22-year-old unknown when he chosen from among 102 competitors in 1903. Later Scott go on to design London's Waterloo Bridge and the massive Battersea power station, and to rebuild the bomb-gutted House of Commons after World War II. But the cathedral remained his masterpiece, a modern vision of Gothic that is uncluttered and open. "Don't let your eyes dwell on the soaring arches or tracery of windows," he told visitors. "Look at my spaces." Scott, later knighted by King George V, supervised construction for more than half a century. He personally set the last stone on the highest tower pinnacle during World War II. He died in 1960 at 79 and is buried just outside the cathedral's imposing west front.

Inevitably, the project came under fire, especially during the later years of construction. A religious journal complained that "a pilgrim church cannot spend its time, thought and money on monumental buildings." An anonymous critic painted on an outside wall: "Christ was poor and homeless. Two-thirds of humanity starve."

The graffito distressed the cathedral's Dean, the Very Rev. Edward Patey, a clergyman known for his social conscience, but he defended the project forthrightly. "It might be called wasted space, wasted heat, by some," he says today, "but there is an instinct that one aspect of worship of God is to be aware of our smallness in proportion to his majesty. The medieval builders felt this. To go to worship God is not just like going out to buy a packet of fish and chips." As for the cost, Dean Patey has no apologies: "Compared with what people spend money on--nuclear submarines and Concordes--the cost of a great cathedral is almost negligible. Your nuclear sub and the Concorde will be obsolete in a few years, but this place will be admired in 500 or 1,000 years' time."

The cathedral's completion could help to spur the finishing of two grand Episcopal churches in the U.S.--Washington's National Cathedral, begun in 1907, and now stalled for lack of funds, and New York's St. John the Divine. A massive drive is planned to collect funds to complete New York's cathedral, which has been under construction since 1892. But New Yorkers will not get off as cheaply as Liverpudlians have. The estimate just for finishing St. John's: $20 million.

Patey concedes that Liverpool's Cathedral was built only because it was started long ago: to launch a similar project now "would not fit the mood of the church today." But, he adds, "we have here in the work of stonemasons, stained glass artists, carpenters, sculptors, organ builders, metal workers, clear evidence that in an age which too easily tolerates the shoddy and second-rate, we can find craftsmen who can match any who have gone before. I'm glad that Merseyside has actually completed one of the great buildings of the world in a century of so many shattered dreams and broken promises."

* The other four; St. Peter's Basalica in Rome, Seville Cathedral in Spain, Milan Cathedral still unfinished, Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Devine in New York City.

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