Liverpool Cathedral

J. C. Ryle was installed as the first Bishop of Liverpool in 1880, but the new diocese had no cathedral, only a pro-cathedral: the parish church of St Peter in Church Street, too small, and in the words of the Rector of Liverpool "ugly & hideous". The Liverpool Cathedral Act 1885 authorised a cathedral on the site of St John's Church, beside St George's Hall, and William Emerson won the competition, but the site proved unsuitable at the scale proposed and the scheme was abandoned.

Francis Chavasse succeeded Ryle in 1900 and revived the project. Some of his clergy said there was no need for an expensive new cathedral; Chavasse, himself an Evangelical, held that a great church would be "a visible witness to God in the midst of a great city". St James's Mount was chosen as the site. The Liverpool Cathedral Act 1902 authorised the purchase and the building, on condition that once any part opened for worship St Peter's should be demolished and its site sold to endow the new chapter. St Peter's closed in 1919 and was demolished in 1922.

Two assessors were appointed in late 1901: George Frederick Bodley, a leading exponent of the Gothic Revival, and Richard Norman Shaw. The stipulation that designs be Gothic drew protest, and Renaissance or Classical designs would also be considered.

In 1903 the assessors recommended a design by the 22-year-old Giles Gilbert Scott, an articled pupil in Temple Moore's practice with no buildings to his credit; he told them his only major work so far had been a pipe-rack. The choice grew more contentious when it was discovered that Scott was a Roman Catholic, but it stood.

Scott's inexperience prompted the committee to appoint Bodley to oversee the detailed design and the building work, and King Edward VII laid the foundation stone in 1904. The collaboration was fractious, particularly after Bodley took two cathedral commissions in the United States. Scott was on the point of resigning when Bodley died suddenly in 1907, and the committee then made him sole architect.

The Lady Chapel, the first part finished, was consecrated by Chavasse on 29 June 1910, St Peter's Day. Scott had submitted an entirely new design for the main body in 1909: his first scheme had two west towers and a single transept, the revision a single central tower 280 feet (85 m) high flanked by twin transepts. The committee approved the reworked plans in November 1910.

The First World War brought shortages of men, materials and money. By 1920 the workforce was back to strength and the Woolton quarries, source of most of the building's sandstone, had reopened. The chancel, ambulatory, chapter house and vestries were complete by 1924 and closed off with a temporary wall; on 19 July, twenty years to the day after the foundation stone, the cathedral was consecrated before King George V and Queen Mary.

Major work stopped for a year while Scott revised the tower, under-tower and central transept, the tower now higher and narrower than in 1910. Building ran steadily from July 1925. War in 1939 cut the workforce from 266 to 35, and German bombing damaged the building during the May Blitz. The central section was handed to the Dean and Chapter in July 1941, and Scott laid the last stone of the last pinnacle on 20 February 1942. His nave plans followed that year, though work began only in 1948, and the bomb damage, worst in the Lady Chapel, was not fully repaired until 1955.

Scott died in 1960; the nave's first bay was handed over in April 1961. Who finished the west end is told two ways: that Frederick Thomas succeeded him and drew a new front carrying Carl Edwards's Benedicite Window; or, in Gavin Stamp's 2017 obituary of Richard Gilbert Scott, that the son inherited the practice, added two nave bays in concrete and fibreglass, resigned when a drastic alteration of his father's design was proposed, and Roger Pinckney drew the front "much simplified and diminished".

A service of thanksgiving and dedication in October 1978 marked the completion, attended by Queen Elizabeth II; Derek Worlock, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool, took a major part.

The building was listed Grade I on 28 June 1952. It is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Liverpool, and the largest cathedral and religious building in Britain; its tower carries the world's highest and heaviest ringing peal of bells. Admission is free with a suggested donation; in October 2021 it was one of 142 English sites to share £35 million from the government's Culture Recovery Fund.