Sarum Vespers for Candlemas

Sarum Vespers

Something Decent at Stanfurd

The Choral Tradition of Salisbury: A Concert with Commentary Featuring the Salisbury Cathedral Choir

Funny how 666 appears in the url.

Would Peter Hitchens endorse the restoration of the Sarum rite?

From Liverpool's Two Cathedrals:

Brooding above all this is the 330-foot tower of Liverpool Cathedral, which unlike its older brother cathedrals is one of the very few built specifically as an Anglican building. The others, of course, were originally Roman Catholic, though I would say they embodied a very different (and more English) form of Roman Catholicism from the rather Italianate one which has been dominant in the English RC church since it was re-established here in the 19th century.

This is most definitely a modern building in that it was constructed using modern techniques, designed by men familiar with modern engineering and architectural precepts. I doubt if its enormous Gothic arches could have been achieved by the builders of the middle ages, though I may be wrong.

But it is also entirely within the tradition of English cathedral building - the unique version of church architecture which grew up here, through Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular styles. Its size is greatly moving, both seen from a distance and close to. It is a work of considerable majesty and power, and if you are touched at all by buildings, it will affect you as soon as you see it, and draw you towards it.

And it does not in any way disappoint. The quality and richness of its sculpture, the purity and subtle colours of the stained glass windows, the astonishing perspectives which suddenly open up before the visitor, are all equal, in my view, to those to be found in much older churches. Giles Gilbert Scott, the architect, was himself a Roman Catholic, and so I think rather thoughtfully conscious of the difference between his tradition and the Anglican - and of the things they have in common. The Lady Chapel, much more ornate than the rest of the cathedral and a particularly tranquil and comforting space, is supposed to be what Scott intended the whole building to be like, and in some ways I wish he had managed to achieve this.

But the more austere character of the main part of the building is just as easy on the heart, and (though I personally think the tea-room should be separated from the main body of the church, and deplore the neon sign above the West Door) the visitor goes away more thoughtful and better than he was when he arrived, which is all you could ask for.

The amazing thing is that somehow this Edwardian project, conceived when the Church of England was still full of authority, dignity and grandeur, managed to survive essentially unchanged well into the second half of the 20th century, despite war, inflation and the receding tide of faith. What a stroke of providence that it did.

Compare and contrast the Church of England's rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral after its destruction in World War Two, which despite great efforts always seems to me to be a failed mixture of more or less Godless modern architecture and religious themes. The surviving spire of the original church next door only serves to emphasise what was lost, and what late 20th-century man lacked the conviction to recreate.

And also look at the other end of Hope Street, at the Roman Catholic Liverpool Cathedral. This too was intended to be a majestic and astonishing building. The (Protestant) architectural genius Edwin Lutyens proposed a mighty basilica, more or less Byzantine but with a giant dome - which would have been a worthy partner to its Anglican brother church further along the same ridge. Look up the original designs to see what was lost. You will have to go to New Delhi to see anything comparable, in Lutyens's superb Indian government quarter, built to survive for centuries to come and still rather embarrassingly speaking of British Imperial Power in the heart of independent India.

But war and lack of funds, together - I suspect - with a feeling that the Lutyens design was just too conservative and overpowering for the new world that began in the 1960s led to a radical change of plan. On top of Lutyens's crypt, Sir Frederick Gibberd was commissioned to build a strange circular funnel, more fitted to guitars and folk masses than to the solemnity of the old church.

It could easily have been the other way round. In this comparison, not sectarian but between the preserved spirit of a departed age and the unwise welcome of the spirit of the new age, we can see in one upward glance from the Mersey how far we have sunk thanks to progress.

These two buildings - one rooted in centuries of worship and reverence, the other conceived by men who thought we could dispense with the past - together make one of the great sights of our time. Can anyone look at it and say that the last hundred years have been all gain, and no loss?

Liverpool Cathedral
Liverpool Cathedral Organ

Re: Edwin Lutyen's design --
The Very Greatest Building that Was Never Built
Andrew Cusack
About the wooden model
BBC article
Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral: A Brief History

If only: Byzantine-style cathedral + Sarum rite...

Speaking of the Sarum rite -- Chant Cafe: All about Sarum. 

NLM, The Future Liturgy of an Anglican Ordinariate: Why not Sarum?

I don't think it will happen, but people can dream...