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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Liverpool Cathedral’s Lady Chapel was the first portion to be constructed of a building project which took until the end of the 1970s to complete. Often overshadowed by the later work, this comparatively small building has perhaps not been adequately documented and assessed as a work in its own right. Moreover, in the case of this portion of the cathedral, two architects were involved, and so an attempt to assess the extent of each person’s contribution is a necessary endeavour in any study of this building, but has not previously been undertaken in this case.
1 Accounts of Liverpool Cathedral, and the work of Giles Gilbert Scott include (listed chronologically): Vere E. Cotton, The Book of Liverpool Cathedral (Liverpool, 1964) [henceforth BLC]; Joe Riley, Today’s Cathedral. The Cathedral Church of Christ, Liverpool (London, 1978); Gavin Stamp, ‘Giles Gilbert Scott. The problem of "Modernism"’, Architectural Design, 49,10-11 (‘Britain in the Thirties’) (1979), pp. 72-83; Edward H. Patey, My Liverpool Life (London & Oxford, 1983), pp. 3-41; Thomas, John, ‘Classical Monument in a Gothic Church’, Transactions of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 133 (1986), pp. 117–39 Google Scholar; Peter Kennerley, The Building of Liverpool Cathedral (Preston, 1991); Stamp, Gavin, ‘Scott, Sir Giles Gilbert’, in the Macmillan Dictionary of Art, 28 (London/New York, 1996), pp. 280–82 Google Scholar; and Gavin Stamp, ‘Scott, Sir Giles Gilbert (1880-1960), architect’, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), — available electronically at http: / / www.oxforddnb.com / view / article / 35987 The above documents, and those cited below, are only some of the many published accounts of Liverpool Cathedral and the work of Giles Gilbert Scott.
2 References are given throughout to the Liverpool Cathedral Committee and its many sub-committees. Minutes of the meetings of these have been transcribed and bound into volumes which are kept by the archives department of Liverpool City Libraries, William Brown Street, Liverpool. Committees included: Executive, General, Building, Stained Glass, etc. A running number is given to minutes, irrespective of which committee/sub-committee they refer to. The number following the oblique stroke relates to the year, so ‘75/01’ would refer to the 75th minute of a committee sitting in 1901. Confusingly, documents (such as copies of letters), relating to a particular minute are given the same number, e.g. minute 85/07 and letter 85/07. The discussions referred to here (meeting of 23 September 1902) is minute 75 / 01.
3 Executive Committee, 32/02.
4 48/02.
5 79/02.
6 55/02.
7 Liverpool Cathedral Bulletin, 7,30 (hereafter LCB). The Liverpool Cathedral Bulletin ran from Volume v (September i937—June 1940), and succeeded the Quarterly Bulletin of the Liverpool Cathedral Committee (Vol. 111, September 1931-June 1934 and Vol. iv, September 1934-June 1937), which itself succeeded the ‘Cathedral Builders’ Quarterly Bulletin (Volumes 1 and 11). At first LCB, like its predecessors, was quarterly, though later, volumes were issued annually, ending with Vol. xra, 100 (1977), when the cathedral’s completion was in sight. In December 1946, LCB began an annual series ‘Forty Years Ago’, which drew on the committee minutes from their inception, attempting to cover the period 1901 to 1925, giving information regarding past decisions and deliberations; I have drawn on this series, along with the minutes themselves. ‘Forty Years Ago’ appeared annually until it had fulfilled its aims, in December 1970 (number 24; unfortunately 10 and 11 call themselves 9 and 10, before the editor (Vere Cotton) realized his mistake; Cotton died in September 1970). LCB was the source of Liverpool Cathedral. The Official Handbook of the Cathedral Committee (1st edn, June 1924; 4th edn, August 1924; 8th edn, 1932; 11th edn, 1951, etc.).?
8 Joanna Heseltine (ed.), Catalogue of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Drawings Collection, The Scott Family (Farnborough, 1981) (hereafter RIBADC Cat.). (The section concerning Giles Gilbert Scott was produced by Gavin Stamp). Sketchbook 3 (referred to here) appears on p. 166, column 2.
This printed catalogue does not include entries concerned with the many Liverpool Cathedral drawings, formerly at Portman Square. Perhaps in anticipation of full cataloguing, a typewritten handlist was produced (n.d., [early 1980s?), ‘Drawings of Liverpool Cathedral at the Royal Institute of British Architects, Drawings Collection’, listing 1,874 items. Items 9-121 relate to the Lady Chapel.
9 Geoffrey Brandwood, Temple Moore. An Architect of the Late Gothic Revival (Stamford, 1997), p. 4; RIBADC Cat., p. 178, column 1; Gavin Stamp, An Architect of Promise. George Gilbert Scott junior (1839-1897) and the Late Gothic Revival (Donnington, 2002), p. 358.
10 Stamp, An Architect of Promise, p. 361.
11 Note, for instance, the exterior (from south-east) of St Agnes (Stamp, An Architect of Promise, pi. 15, p. 77). Scott has created a transept which rises up out of the single-storey south aisle, not projecting in plan, but rising towards the principal parapet, a feature strongly suggestive of the dwarf transepts found on the 1903 Liverpool Cathedral competition winning design (as seen in the south-east perspective, reproduced in BLC, pi. 9; Kennerley, The Building of Liverpool Cathedral, p. 21, etc.). See also n. 70 below.
12 Ironically, perhaps, uncertain authorship emerges also, at the end of the building project, with the completion of the ‘west’ front (1960-80). We know that F. G. Thomas drew the overall plan of the building, and supervised construction, and that the details are the work of Roger Pinckney, but the exact nature of the authorship of the completed building is perhaps a subject for a future study. Meanwhile, see my article on the completion, ‘Building a Cathedral. 79 years on site in Liverpool’, RIBA Journal (May 1983), pp. 39-42.
13 37/03.
14 39/03.
15 39/03.
16 26 May 1903, 40/03.
17 The winning design is published by Vere Cotton, BLC, pi. 9 (perspective from south-west); Kennerley, The Building of Liverpool Cathedral, p. 21; LCB, 7 (December 1948), pp. 47-48.
18 53/07.
19 See Block, Jean F., The Uses of Gothic. Planning and building the campus of the University of Chicago 1892-1932 (Chicago, 1983), pp. 152–58 Google Scholar; Oliver, Richard, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), pp. 137–42.Google Scholar
20 The Conditions of Competition containing the ‘Instructions and Conditions to be observed by Competing Architects’ are recorded in minute 79/02. They are dated 6 October 1902, and the minute contains a letter (11 November) altering Clause 21. Clause 7 (‘Buildings Suggested’) includes: The Cathedral, consisting of Nave, with all necessary Aisles, Porches, &c. The Committee suggest that the central space at the crossing of the Nave, Transepts, and Choir, should be large, and fully capable of seating 3,000 persons (without any interruption of view from Columns) either in the form or plan of an octagon, circle or other design as thought best by the Architect ... / Transepts, if desired by the Architect. / Choir. / There should be a Morning Chapel on the level of the Nave floor to seat 300 persons; this need not be at the Choir end, but it is suggested that it should stand East and West. / Baptistery. / Vestries for Bishop, ... / Also a Chapter House. These conditions were said to be advertised in The Builder, 2 November 1901; but since I have never found them in extant copies of The Builder, I wonder whether they were inserted as loose sheets. Concerning the controversy caused by the (initial) style requirement, see John Thomas, "'The style shall be Gothic'”, The Architectural Review, September 1975, pp. 155-62, and Sarah Crewe, Visionary Spires, pp. 104-19.
21 This plan is currently inaccessible, awaiting developments at the cathedral.
22 LCB, 10 (December 1964), pp. 101-03, pi. 461.
23 LCB, 7 (December 1948), p. 49.
24 For instance, in The Builder, 84 (January-June 1903) pp. 614, 634, 658, etc., and see also Sarah Crewe, Visionary spires, pp. 114-18; sadly, this book contains no references to the contemporary material it reproduces.
25 David Mark Collins, ‘The Architecture of George Frederick Bodley 1827-1907 and Thomas Garner 1896-1906’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1992), pp. 99, 103.
26 RIBADC Cat., p. 175, column 1.
27 RIBADC Cat., p. 167, column 2.
28 The Builder, 30 January, p. 215.?
29 Plan as built, David Cole, The Work of Sir Gilbert Scott (London, 1980), p. 36.
30 Caroe’s letter (a photocopy of the original) was kindly sent to me (March 2001) by Elizabeth Townsend, who found it at the Caroe home, Vann.
31 BLC, p. 23.
32 See Stamp, Gavin, The Great Perspectivists (London, 1982), p. 94.Google Scholar
33 59/o6.
34 LCB, 7 (December 1951), p. 119.
35 67/06.
36 LCB, 7 (December 1951), pp. 119-20.
37 80/06.
38 89/06.
39 RIBA Drawings Collection. They were kept in several large rolls (some ‘Howell Room Rolls’) when I studied them, at Portman Square, and bore no contemporary number or recent catalogue reference. I here refer to the drawings entitled ‘Plan of Apse’, ‘Vaulting in Chapel’ and ‘ 1 / 8th scale Liverpool Lady Chapel (long section)’. All are undated, as are many of the drawings, though some, as referred to in the text, bear the date that they, or copies, were sent to the Clerk of Works.
40 93/09.
41 Executive Committee meeting of 12 November 1906.
42 BLC, pi. 11.
43 110/06.
44 LCB, 7 (December 1951), p. 121; (December 1932), pp. 135,136. Bodley’s letters to Scott, of 1906 and early 1907, are full of criticisms and advice regarding Scott’s window design. That of 19 April 1906 complains about his tracery design, which involves ‘what I can only call tadpoles, which are not a pleasant shape, not dignified nor graceful’ (British Architectural Library archives ScGG/153/1). That of 2 January 1907 argues that the tracery should be ‘made more attractive than [your] large quatrefoils would be’; he has made a drawing, to illustrate his alternative recommendation (ScGG/153/3-1). 30 March 1907: ‘I am sorry to say I do not like the new design for the east windows of the Lady Chapel ... I do not think you would like it if it is done’ (ScGG/154). He constantly suggests that he (Scott) would rather prefer things designed Bodley’s way: ‘I am quite sure you would like it if it is done [as I suggest]’ (ScGG/153/3, dated ‘c. 28 January 1907’).
45 Previously published in RIBADC Cat, Fig. 95.
46 As seen in the photograph (‘March 1907’) reproduced by him, Kennerley, The Building of Liverpool Cathedral, p. 44.
47 British Architectural Library archives, ScGG/153/3.
48 These letters survive in the form of the ‘Wet-copy out-letter book, 1902-7’, ScGG / 255, British Architectural Library. See letter 779 (8 May 1907).
49 ScGG/255. Letter 791 (13 May 1907).
50 13 May 1907.
51 Verey, David, ‘George Frederick Bodley: climax of the Gothic Revival’, Seven Victorian architects, ed. Jane Fawcett (London, 1976), pp. 84–101 (p. 100).Google Scholar
52 ScGG/255. Letter 834 (5 June 1907).
53 53/0754 57/o7-
55 ScGG/255. Letter 982 (2 October 1907).
56 70/07.
57 Letter of 26 November 1907 to the Committee, 85 / 07.
58 85/07.
59 Kennerley, , The Building of Liverpool Cathedral, pp. 52–53.Google Scholar
60 LCB, 7 (December 1949), p. 75.
61 LCB, 7 (December 1951), p. 121.
62 1/08.
63 LCB, 8 (December 1953), pp. 161, 162.
64 Revd Charles Harris, The Building of the New Liverpool Cathedral. Its history and progress (Liverpool, 1911), P- 7565 Verey, ‘George Frederick Bodley’, p. 101.?
66 See Church Building. The Magazine of Ecclesiastical Design, 37 (January/February 1996), p. 41; RIBADC Cat., p. 171, column 2, fig. 111.
67 BLC, p. 73.
68 Executive Committee, 5 March 1906.
69 BLC, p. 22.
70 This arch — untypical of the architecture of the cathedral as built — strongly suggests the subdivided arch that rose above the gallery at the east end of George Gilbert Scott Junior’s St Agnes, Kennington (see Gavin Stamp, An Architect of Promise, pi. 17, p. 82). The lower part of the structure, beneath the gallery, is subdivided, unlike at Liverpool.
71 53/08.
72 102/08.
73 RIBA Drawings Collection. See also n. 8 and n. 39.
74 Undated. It is not impossible that the drawing is by Cecil Hare.
75 A letter from Phillips to Scott, of 13 November 1907, writes at length of the various kinds of sculptor, stonecarver, and mason who may be appropriate for producing different kinds of stone work for Scott in this ‘great opportunity of the century’, reflecting the kinds of choices, and problems, that Scott was to face in the 1920s, when commissioning the memorial to the sixteenth Earl of Derby (south-east transept); see Thomas, ‘Classical Monument’, pp. 124-25. Joseph Phillips quoted for carving the Lady Chapel’s friezes, and other such work, at the rate of 15s. per foot, for a narrow frieze, £4 for the ‘Alleluia’ inscription, and £5 for the ‘Alleluia’ doorway’s crown (letter from Phillips to Scott, 17 April 1907; these letters are in the British Architectural Library archive collection, ScGG/153/3 and ScGG/154 respectively).
76 23/09.
77 Kennerley, The Building of Liverpool Cathedral, p. 48.
78 The Builder, 9 July 1910, p. 30. In a letter of 18 October 1906, Bodley complained about the thinness of Scott’s tracery: ‘would it not look like ironwork — till it got broken? I think it would’ (British Architectural Library archive collection, ScGG/153/2).
79 The Architectural Review (July 1921), p. 18.
80 Harris, The Building of the New Liverpool Cathedral. Its history and progress, p. 68. The subjects of these works had been approved by the Stained Glass Committee on 12 November 1908; 112/08.
81 Ibid., p. 61.
82 Ibid., p. 75.
83 In reality, these windows are no longer extant. As with so many medieval English churches, catastrophic destruction removed the original glass — aerial bombing of 1941, in this case — and so it cannot now properly be assessed. New windows by Carl Edwards and James H. Hogan were in place by the end of 1953, and they attempt to give an ‘even’ coverage, which was desired, as opposed to the originals, in which the female figures, etc., were probably rendered more visible and striking by being set in large areas of lighter/clear glass, which had given rise to complaints of occasional dazzle (LCB, 8, (December 1953), pp. 148-49). Cotton describes the iconography of the replacement windows, which also depict female saints (BLC, pp. 116-20).
84 Revd William McNeil, The Noble women of the staircase and atrium windows in the Lady Chapel of the Liverpool Cathedral (Liverpool, n.d. 1951); Chavasse: pp. 4, 5; McNeil: p. 6.
85 Hall, Michael, ‘Emily Meynell Ingram and Holy Angels, Hoar Cross, Staffordshire: a study in patronage’, Architectural History, 47 (2004), pp. 283–328 (pp. 307–11).Google Scholar
86 Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth. Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity (Wheaton, 2004), Ch. 12, ‘How Women Started the Culture War’, pp. 325-48.
87 Hersey, George L., High Victorian Gothic. A Study in Associationism (Baltimore and London, 1972), pp. 48–52.Google Scholar
88 Ibid., p. 53.
89 Illustrated, for example, in Andrew Martindale, Gothic Art (London, 1967), p. 89.
90 Focillon, Henri, The Art of the West. II: Gothic, 2nd edn (London and New York, 1969), p. 42, pi. 58.Google Scholar
91 Martindale, Gothic Art, p. 91.
92 Ibid., p. 90.
93 See Thomas, John, Albi Cathedral and British Church Architecture (London, 2002); available electronically at: http: / / www.ecclsoc.org / Albi.pdfGoogle Scholar
94 Scott never actually saw Albi Cathedral, according to Gavin Stamp, ‘Scott’, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.?
95 Collins, ‘The Architecture of George Frederick Bodley’, p. 125.
96 Thomas, Albi Cathedral, fig. 37, pp. 56-57.
97 See n. 45, and text.
98 I have discussed the question of Gothic architecture’s forms and identity, and what Gothic may consist of, in Thomas, John, ‘The Meaning of "Style" in Traditional Architecture: the case of Gothic’, The Journal of Architecture, 5, 3 (Autumn 2000), pp. 293–306.Google Scholar
99 11 May 1907.
100 In an interview occasioned by the fiftieth anniversary of his competition success, Scott spoke of his design relationship with Bodley: The association of Mr Bodley and myself had led to a number of smaller changes in the competition design which gradually changed its character and led to a design which was neither Bodley’s nor mine. Bodley kept altering a bit here and a bit there, until I was very dissatisfied with the result... As soon as I was given sole control of the work I decided to start all over again, and to abolish the twin towers ... To what extent Scott was referring to the Lady Chapel, with his ‘bit here and a bit there’, as opposed to the conception as a whole, we cannot know; and he was speaking from memories of over forty years before. See ‘Fifty Years of Building Liverpool Cathedral. An interview with Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’, RIBA Journal (April 1953), p. 220.
101 Dillistone, F. W., ‘Francis James Chavasse. Man of the people’, in A Portrait of the First Four Bishops of Liverpool (Liverpool, 1985) (p. 25).Google Scholar
102 Harris, , The Building of the New Liverpool Cathedral, pp. 98–99.Google Scholar
103 The document ‘Instruction and Conditions’.
104 LCB, 7 (December 1948), pp. 47-48; BLC, p. 24.
105 Crewe, Visionary Spires, ch. 10 (pp. 104-19).
106 Ibid., pp. 90-91, 96 (pis 102 and 103 (plan)).
107 R1BADC Cat., p. 175.
108 RIBADC Cat., p. 168.
109 Letter 779 (8 May 1907)
110 Morgan, William, The Almighty Wall. The Architecture of Henry Vaughan (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1983), p. 17.Google Scholar
111 Richard Oliver, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, pp. 125-43, ‘The Impact of Liverpool Cathedral’. See also Betsky, Aaron, James Gamble Rogers and the Architecture of Pragmatism (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1994)Google Scholar; and Calder Loth and Julius Trousdale Sadler Jr, The Only Proper Style. Gothic Architecture in America (Boston, 1975)/ PP- H7-57-
112 Feller, Richard T. and Fishwick, Marshall W., For Thy Great Glory. The Building of Washington Cathedral (Culpepper, Virginia, 1965), pp. 16.Google Scholar
113 Morgan, The Almighty Wall, p. 74.
114 Feller and Fishwick, For Thy Great Glory, pp. 17, 19.
115 Collins, ‘The Architecture of George Frederick Bodley’, p. 130; Clarke, Basil F. L., Anglican Cathedrals Outside the British Isles (London, 1958), p. 209.Google Scholar
116 Information e-mailed to me on 6 March 2001 by Michael Lampen, Archivist, Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, from correspondence and papers kept in the cathedral archives.
117 Crewe, Visionary Spires, p. 90; Collins, ‘The Architecture of George Frederick Bodley’, pp. 130-33.
118 Collins, ‘The Architecture of George Frederick Bodley’, p. 133.
119 Ibid., pp. 133-36.
120 Verey, ‘George Frederick Bodley’, p. 156.
121 Clarke, Anglican Cathedrals Outside the British Isles, p. 209.
122 Verey, p. 145.
123 Ibid., pp. 100, 155, 156.
124 Collins, ‘The Architecture of George Frederick Bodley’, p. 125.
125 Morgan, The Almighty Wall, p. 12.