VICTORIAN ARCHITECTURE V: WESTMINSTER CATHEDRAL
In 1850 Pope Pius IX reinstituted the Roman Catholic church in England and Wales and established the archdiocese of Westminster.
In Benjamin Disraeli’ novel Lothair (1870), which compares the Anglican and Catholic churches, a character proclaims:
Had I that command of wealth of which we hear so much in the present day, I would purchase some of those squalid streets in Westminster and clear a great space and build a real cathedral where the worship of heaven should be perpetually conducted in the full spirit of the ordinances of the Church. I believe, were this done, even this country might be saved.
In 1885, Cardinal-Archbishop Manning seemingly realized this passage from Lothair by acquiring a heavily-mortgaged parcel of land occupied by a decrepit prison in the City of Westminster to serve as the site of a new Roman Catholic cathedral. Manning’s successor, Cardinal Vaughan, awarded the design commission in 1894 to John Francis Bentley, a protege of Manning’s and proponent of the Neo-Gothic style.
Vaughan’s initial plan for an Italian Baroque basilica was opposed by the medieval revivalist Bentley. As a compromise, Bentley proposed a domed, Neo-Byzantine design that emphasized the antiquity of the Catholic Church. To study possible models for the cathedral, Bentley set off on a research tour of Italy. He hated the late Gothic cathedrals of Milan and Florence and judged St Peter’s to be “the worst large church ever built.” He admired the Romanesque churches of Tuscany and Lombardy and the 6th-century churches of Ravenna and the Basilica of San Marco in Venice.
His final design for Westminster Cathedral was an eclectic pastiche of medieval Italian styles: bands of colored masonry of the Ligurian and Tuscan Romanesque, the gold mosaics and marble revetments of Ravenna, the wide nave and ciborium Sant’Ambrogio in Milan, and the domes of San Marco were freely intermingled. The only authentically Byzantine features—the exterior massing and buttressing of the church—were derived from Hagia Sophia, which Bentley knew only from photographs. Unlike the majority of the great Victorian public buildings, Westminster Cathedral was constructed entirely of brick and masonry, with no cast iron supports or framework.
The cathedral was consecrated in 1903, one year after Bentley’s death. The mosaic decoration of the vast interior was never completed. The design and construction history of the cathedral were described in great detail in the two-volume monograph written by Bentley’s daughter, Winefrid de L’Hopital, entitled Westminster Cathedral and its Architect (1919).
VICTORIAN ARCHITECTURE SERIES
I. Royal Albert Hall
II. St Pancras Station and Hotel
III. Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery
IV: Cast Iron Construction
