Occupying a commanding position on St James’s Mount in Liverpool, Liverpool Cathedral – formally the Cathedral Church of Christ in Liverpool – is the largest cathedral and religious building in Britain. The Church of England cathedral is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Liverpool and the mother church of the Anglican Diocese of Liverpool. By several measures it is one of the most substantial church buildings ever constructed: it ranks as the fifth-largest cathedral in the world by overall volume, the longest cathedral in the world at 621 feet (189 metres) externally and 480 feet (150 metres) internally, and at 331 feet (101 metres) high it is among the tallest non-spired church buildings on earth. It holds the title of eighth-largest church in the world and contests with New York City’s incomplete Cathedral of St John the Divine for the distinction of being the largest Anglican church building. The structure is a designated Grade I listed building on the National Heritage List for England.
Design and Construction
The cathedral was designed by Giles Gilbert Scott and built over a remarkably long period, from 1904 to 1978. The building includes the Lady Chapel, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, which accounts for part of its total external length. Its scale places it fourth on the list of tallest structures in the city of Liverpool itself. The long construction timeline reflected both the ambition of the project and the various disruptions of the twentieth century, yet the result is a unified building rather than a patchwork of different eras.
History and Hope Street
The project traced back to 1880, when J. C. Ryle became the first Bishop of Liverpool. The diocese initially made do with the parish church of St Peter’s in Church Street as a temporary pro-cathedral – a building considered far too small and, in the words of the Rector of Liverpool at the time, ‘ugly and hideous’. The Liverpool Cathedral Act 1885 authorised construction on a site adjacent to St George’s Hall, and a design competition was won by William Emerson, but that site was ultimately abandoned as unsuitable. Bishop Francis Chavasse, who succeeded Ryle in 1900, revived the project and pushed it forward despite opposition from some clergy who questioned the expense. Liverpool Cathedral is one of two cathedrals in the city; the Roman Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King lies roughly half a mile to the north, and the two are connected by Hope Street – named after a local merchant, William Hope, whose house once stood where the Philharmonic Hall now is, long before either cathedral was built.