Manchester Cathedral: The Collegiate Church and Cathedral of Manchester
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- British, English
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page16 sections
History
Manchester Cathedral, formally the Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Mary, St Denys and St George, is the parish church of Manchester, United Kingdom, and the mother church of the Anglican Diocese of Manchester, whose bishop has the cathedral as his seat. The present Perpendicular Gothic building grew from a medieval parish church and became a cathedral in 1847.
Early churches and the medieval parish
The beginnings of Manchester’s earliest churches are uncertain. An Anglo-Saxon connection is suggested by the Angel Stone, found in the wall of the south porch. Its inscription translates as “Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.” The stone has been dated to about 700, although the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Sculpture assigns it to the twelfth century.
A church probably standing on or near the site of St Ann’s Church was destroyed by Danish invaders in 923. King Edward the Elder later built a church dedicated to St Mary, probably near the junction of St Mary’s Gate and Exchange Street. It was mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, the survey of landholding and resources commissioned by William the Conqueror.
Construction of a predecessor parish church began in 1215 between the Rivers Irk and Irwell, beside an ancient watercourse crossed by the Hanging Bridge. The church stood within the Barons’ Court, next to the manor house on the site of Manchester Castle. The manor belonged to the Grelley family, who built and endowed the first St Nicholas Chapel. Through marriage, the estate passed to the de la Warres in 1311, while the de Traffords endowed St Nicholas Chapel in 1349. Thomas de la Warre became rector in 1382.
The collegiate foundation and late-medieval rebuilding
In 1421, after more than fifty years as a priest, Thomas de la Warre received permission from King Henry V and Pope Martin V to establish a collegiate church at Manchester. A collegiate church was served by a corporate body of clergy rather than a monastic community. The new foundation comprised a warden, eight fellows, four singing clerks, and eight choristers.
The church’s dedication to St Mary was expanded to include St George, the patron saint of England, and St Denys, the patron saint of France. The additions may have reflected de la Warre’s French heritage or Henry V’s claim to the French throne. De la Warre financed new college buildings on the site of the former manor house. These survive in altered form as Chetham’s Library.
John Huntingdon, the first warden, rebuilt the eastern arm of the parish church between 1422 and 1458, creating the collegiate choir. The rebuilding of the nave is traditionally associated with Ralph Langley, the third warden, who held office from 1465 to 1481. A further reconstruction took place under James Stanley II, warden from 1485 to 1506 and later Bishop of Ely. This work included raising the clerestory, the upper range of windows above the main arcades, and installing richly decorated timber roofs and choir furnishings.
The choir arcades and clerestory are attributed on stylistic grounds to John Wastell. The choir stalls were produced in the workshop of William Brownflet of Ripon. The Stanley family’s wealth and their access to craftsmen employed on royal commissions helped sustain the late-medieval rebuilding.
Reformation, collegiate government, and the cathedral
The college was dissolved in 1547 during the reign of Edward VI and refounded by Mary I in 1553. Elizabeth I granted a new charter in 1578. It provided for a warden, four fellows, two chaplains, four singing men, and four choristers. Under this charter the college, but not the church, was dedicated to Christ. Charles I later granted a fourth charter.
Daily choral worship continued after the Reformation. John Dee, described as Elizabeth I’s magus and astrologer, served as warden from 1595 to 1608 and occupied the warden’s lodgings, now incorporated into Chetham’s Library.
Until 1850, the collegiate church served as the parish church for almost the whole of Manchester. The parish population was 187,031 in 1821, and the collegiate church retained a legal right to a marriage fee of 3 shillings and 6 pence. The Revd. Joshua “Jotty” Brookes, pastoral chaplain from 1790 to 1821, conducted 1,924 marriages in 1821. In 1838, the church recorded 5,164 christenings, 1,457 funerals, and 2,615 weddings.
The Ecclesiastical Commissioners Act of 1840 transformed the warden and fellows into a dean and canons as preparations were made for a new diocese. The Diocese of Manchester came into effect in 1847, and the collegiate church became Manchester Cathedral. A proposal for a new cathedral at Piccadilly Gardens, designed by R. C. Carpenter, was not pursued. Instead, the existing building underwent extensive renovation in 1882.
War damage, restoration, and archives
During the Manchester Blitz, the German bombing campaign against Manchester during the Second World War, a bomb exploded near the cathedral’s north-east corner in 1940. It destroyed the medieval Lady Chapel and James Stanley’s chantry chapel, blew out the stained-glass windows, destroyed the organ case above the pulpitum, and damaged the roofs. The medieval choir stalls toppled inward. Repairs took almost twenty years. The Lady Chapel was rebuilt to designs by Hubert Worthington, while the St John the Baptist Chapel was refitted as the regimental chapel of the Manchester Regiment.
An IRA bombing in June 1996 caused further damage. The IRA, or Irish Republican Army, was a republican paramilitary organization. The Healing Window, installed in 2004, commemorates the restoration that followed the bombing.
The cathedral’s parish and historical archives date from 1421. A project begun in 2003 prepared an exhaustive catalogue to make the contents accessible to the public. Manchester Cathedral received Grade I listed-building status in January 1952. Grade I is England’s highest category of listed-building protection and is reserved for buildings of exceptional interest.
Remains
Manchester Cathedral is a Perpendicular Gothic church whose predecessor had a six-bay aisled nave, a six-bay chancel with aisles, and a western tower. Parts of the fourteenth-century west tower were incorporated into the present structure, although little visible fabric from that period remains. The surviving building combines medieval stonework, nineteenth-century reconstruction, later flooring, postwar glazing, and furnishings associated with its continuing use as a cathedral.
Nave and side chapels
Double aisles and chantry chapels
The early-sixteenth-century chantry chapels formed an almost continuous sequence along the north and south sides of the parochial nave. A chantry chapel was founded for prayers and worship associated with a donor or deceased person. Together, the chapels created double aisles around the nave, which is much wider than it is long and is commonly described as the widest cathedral nave in England. The screens that once divided the western chapels have been removed, leaving the interior with the appearance of double aisles on both sides.
South-side chapels
On the south side, the de Traffords rebuilt St Nicholas Chapel in 1470. William Galley endowed St George’s Chapel in 1503, and Richard Beswick endowed the Jesus Chapel in 1506. The original dark purple-brown Collyhurst sandstone remains visible in the interior of the Jesus Chapel.
North-side chapels
William Radcliffe of Ordsall Hall endowed the Holy Trinity Chapel in 1498. Huntington provided money and land for St James’s Chapel, built in 1507. James Stanley began the largest chapel, St John the Baptist’s Chapel, in 1513. Near the north-east corner, Stanley’s attached Ely Chapel served as his funerary chapel until it was destroyed in 1940. Brass from Stanley’s tomb chest was recovered from the ruins and mounted on the rebuilt north wall of the Regiment Chapel.
Stonework, roofs, and floors
The cathedral uses three principal types of stone. The original walls and internal piers were built from dark purple-brown Collyhurst sandstone of Early Permian formation. It remains visible in the nave’s tower arch, the Jesus Chapel, and the chancel. In the early nineteenth century, the surfaces of the nave and aisles were scored and coated with Roman cement to lighten the interior. The treatment caused severe damage, and much internal and external stonework was replaced later in the nineteenth century with buff-grey Fletcher Bank Grit from Ramsbottom.
J. S. Crowther replaced the external stonework between 1850 and 1870 and reconstructed the nave walls and arcades internally as exact reproductions of the originals. J. P. Holden heightened the west tower in 1868 to 135 feet, or 41 metres, and replaced its external stonework. Basil Champneys added the vestry, canons’ library, and western porches in 1898. Percy Worthington built further accommodation on the south-east side, first for a choir school and later converted into offices. The nave floors were relaid from the 1960s in Peak District limestone containing fossilized crinoids.
The nave roof is supported by fourteen life-size angel sculptures traditionally regarded as a gift from James Stanley II. Each angel plays a different late-medieval instrument. On the south side are a portative organ, harp, psaltery, dulcimer, lute, fiddle, and hurdy-gurdy. On the north side are a clavicymbal, trumpet, shawm, Scots pipes, Irish pipes, recorder, and tabor. The clavicymbal and organ may have been transposed during the nineteenth-century restoration. Only the organ would normally have been heard in church in the early sixteenth century, while the other instruments were more typical of secular music, though they could accompany mystery plays and religious processions.
Choir furnishings and glazing
The cathedral contains thirty sixteenth-century misericords, small projecting supports beneath folding choir seats that often carry figurative or humorous carvings. They resemble those at Ripon Cathedral and Beverley Minster and were probably carved by the same Ripon school. Misericord N-08 is considered the earliest known British depiction of backgammon.
All the Victorian stained glass was destroyed in the 1940 bombing. Replacement glazing began before the end of the 1960s, including Margaret Traherne’s Fire Window of 1966. Tony Hollaway prepared a wider reglazing scheme that included windows dedicated to St George in 1973, St Denys in 1976, St Mary in 1980, The Creation in 1991, and The Apocalypse in 1995. Linda Walton’s Healing Window was installed in 2004.
Tower bells and organs
Bells
The tower contains ten bells cast by Gillett & Johnston of Croydon in 1925. They are tuned to D for change ringing, a system in which ringers vary the order of the bells rather than simply sounding them together. The tenor bell weighs 1.3 tonnes. The bells are used for Sunday services and special occasions.
Organs
The first known organ was installed in 1745 by the local maker Richard Parker and had at least twenty-three stops. John Nicholson of Worcester built its replacement in 1860. William Hill & Son and Harrison & Harrison enlarged that instrument from 1871, but the 1940 bombing severely damaged it. In 1952, Harrison & Harrison built a 92-stop organ using surviving parts, installing it in the choir aisles.
A new organ by K. Tickell of Northampton was installed in 2016 and inaugurated in 2017. Part of it is mounted above the pulpitum, a substantial medieval choir screen or gallery separating the chancel from the nave, in a case designed by Stephen Raw. The remainder is in the south choir aisle and south chapel. The instrument has 86 stops on five manuals, Choir, Positive, Hauptwerk, Swell, and Solo, with pedals, 32-foot open principals, and a double ophicleide among its lowest stops.
Hanging Bridge
The fifteenth-century Hanging Bridge crosses the former watercourse near the cathedral. It was once the principal approach to the church and later became buried for more than a century after the ancient ditch was filled. The bridge is a scheduled archaeological monument. A visitor centre beside the south porch incorporates an exhibition space and preserves the Hanging Bridge as its principal historic feature.
