Okay, we've reached the letter "M" on our list of ancient cathedrals in England, and I suppose I should be introducing you to Manchester Cathedral (built in 1422) properly, but, seriously? If one wants to know where the good citizens of Manchester actually worship, these days, one must admit that more of them attended the "Take That" Live Concert in London (2011) than attended the Christmas high mass at Manchester Cathedral that year. Take That, an aging British pop band from the 1990s, sold out the stadium for eight days in a row.
Wembley Stadium, it would seem, does an excellent job of keeping Manchester, erm, united, as does the Old Trafford stadium, the "Theatre of Dreams" which set an attendance record of 76,098 on 31 March 2007.
Manchester Cathedral, meanwhile, has fallen on hard times.
Above: The Theatre of Dreams where thousands of Manchester United F.C. fans rage for national uplift. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Angels with Dirty Faces
Located on Victoria Street in downtown Manchester, an industrial city in northwestern England whose surrounding metropolitan region (the Greater Manchester Built-Up Area) counts more than 2,553,379 souls, Manchester Cathedral ought to be a huge, popular and well-funded church, richly adorned with amazing art and cherished by the locals as a national treasure. That's the dream.
Here's a picture of the reality:
Looking Gothic, a little drab, genuinely sad and very grubby, isn't she? Her face is positively covered with soot!
That's because, on the nights of 22, 23 and 24 December 1940, the German Luftwaffe dropped 474 tons of high explosive and more than 1,032 incendiary bombs on the historic downtown center of Manchester, killing an estimated 684 people, injuring 2,364, destroying 165 warehouses, 200 businesses, 150 offices, and damaging about 30,000 surrounding buildings.
It was called the "Christmas Blitz." Standard procedure, during the night-time air raids of World War II, was to use a large and easily recognized building, like a cathedral, to site one's bombs. Apparently the Germans used Manchester Cathedral itself for target practice.
On Christmas Eve, 1944, the Germans launched another wave of V-1 Flying Bombs at Manchester.
Manchester Cathedral was heavily damaged by these attacks. It took 20 years to repair her, and Christmas attendance has never been the same since.
Above: Fire fighters try to extinguish a blaze set by the 241 German bombers that hit downtown Manchester on Christmas Eve, 1940. Like these buildings, Manchester Cathedral was heavily damaged. Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons, photograph HU49833 from the British Imperial War Museum collection.
Recent Turmoil
In 1996, Manchester Cathedral became the target of an IRA bombing.
A feeling of gloom and doom has also surrounded this once beloved cathedral thanks to recent news reports. As the official Manchester Cathedral home page, here, frankly admits, the Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu, has launched an independent inquiry to determine whether there is any truth to recent allegations that the former Dean of Manchester Cathedral, the late Robert Waddington, engaged in sexual abuse.
A group of solicitors and officials from the Diocese of Ripon and Leeds will try to determine whether the reports of abuse were true, and, if so, whether the officials at Manchester Cathedral handled the reports properly. As always in such cases, a desire to defend church leaders conflicts with an equally strong desire to show compassion, concern and support for victims.
Manchester Cathedral thus provides a sad portrait of problems that have shaken the Church of England as a whole, and it may serve as a stark example of the difficult morale problems faced by many religious communities during a period of rapid social change.
Cathedrals simply don't have the popular support they once enjoyed -- they are in direct competition with venues like Wembley Stadium and Old Trafford Stadium for the hearts and minds of the younger generation -- and the burden of keeping up appearances and protecting the good name of a national heritage site is a very grave burden indeed.
Above: A low-resolution copy of the cover art for controversial video game Resistance: The Fall of Man, which sets dystopian gun battles inside Manchester Cathedral. Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons, provided under Fair Use rules.
Digital Desecration?
To complicate matters further, Manchester Cathedral has achieved some popularity among young people, but popularity of the wrong sort. It became the object of nationwide controversy in the year 2007 when it made a surprise appearance in the Sony PlayStation 3 video game Resistance: Fall of Man, which uses the cathedral as a doomsday setting for ultraviolent gun battles.
The game "is set in an alternate history 1951, and follows Sgt. Nathan Hale as he and the human resistance forces attempt to drive a mysterious alien-like invasion out of Britain," according to Wikipedia. The military battle against aliens involves first-person shooter scenarios set in the cathedral itself.
In its article "Controversy over the use of Manchester Cathedral in Resistance: Fall of Man," Wikipedia indicates the leaders of the Church of England "claimed its depiction to be desecration and copyright infringement, and that it was inappropriate of Sony to allow players to fire guns in a city with a gun problem. They have made several legal threats against Sony. They intended to make several demands of Sony, including an apology, a substantial donation, complete withdrawal of the game or modifying the segment featuring the interior of the cathedral, and financial support of Manchester groups trying to reduce gun crime in the city."
Official Virtual Tour
If one wants the official, interactive, 360-degree Virtual Tour of Manchester Cathedral, rather than the Sony PlayStation version, it may be found on the cathedral's homepage here. Produced by Claude Lorkowski, the virtual tour "explores the confines of the Nave, the Quire and the High Altar." Notably, it includes a very nicely done interactive-map, in the upper left-hand corner of the main screen, which allows one to choose amongst several locations on the cathedral's floor plan.
Despite clear signs of smoke damage, the interior architecture is still breathtaking, which brings us, finally, to the history of the church, which is still considered a sterling example of English Perpendicular Gothic style.
History of Manchester Cathedral
According to Wikipedia, the city of Manchester began as a small Roman hill fort around 79 A.D.
One of the first records of a church near this location, a church dedicated to St. Mary, is mentioned in the Domesday Book (1086). The Domesday Book entry for Manchester reads "the Church of St Mary and the Church of St Michael hold one carucate of land in Manchester exempt from all customary dues except tax."
"Construction of the predecessor church started in 1215 within the confines of the Baron's Court beside the manor house on the site of Manchester Castle." A Wikipedia article on the history of Manchester Castle, a popular tourist site, may be found here. It identifies the castle as a "medieval fortified manor house, probably located on a bluff where the rivers Irk and Irwell meet, near to Manchester Cathedral, underneath where Chetham's School of Music now is."
The castle and cathedral were originally located on the edge of the medieval township of Manchester (grid reference SJ839989).
The church that resulted was officially named "The Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St. Mary, St. Denys and St. George" and it eventually became the seat of the Bishop of Manchester.
For a modern satellite overview of the cathedral grounds and its surrounding neighborhood, see Wikimapia's Manchester Cathedral page here.
A detailed groundplan of the cathedral itself may be found here.
Wikipedia: "The occupying lords of the manor were the Grelley family, and their coat of arms is still associated with the cathedral to this day. The Grelley family acted as stewards of the church, building and endowing the first chancery, the St. Nicholas Chancery."
"In 1349 the St. Nicholas Chancery was endowed by the de Trafford family. The involvement of the de la Warre family was furthered in 1382 when Thomas de la Warre, later to be appointed Baron of Manchester, became rector of the parish church.
A photographer known only as The Parrot of Doom donated the photograph of Manchester Cathedral's ceiling, above, in 2009. Viewed from the West Door, we see the Nave of the cathedral supported by "angel minstrels," that is, a group of plaques representing the names of generous donors and cathedral attendants.
Collegiate Foundation
"In 1421, Thomas de la Warre obtained a licence from King Henry V and from Pope Martin V to establish a collegiate foundation in Manchester, appropriating the parish church for the purpose. The college was established in 1422 by royal charter, with a warden, eight fellows, four singing clerks and eight choristers, an exceptionally large foundation charged with the duty of praying for the souls of those killed in the king's campaigns in France.
"John Huntingdon served as the first warden from 1422 to 1458, during which he rebuilt the eastern arm of the parish church to provide a collegiate choir.
"Traditionally the third warden, Ralph Langley (1465–1481), is credited with rebuilding the nave. However, both nave and choir were substantially reconstructed again by James Stanley a few years later, when he raised the present clerestory and provided the richly decorated timber roofs and choir stalls.
James Stanley's stepmother "was Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII and through their alliance with the new Tudor dynasty the Stanley's acquired fabulous wealth, as well as access to architects and craftsmen working on royal commissions."
Woodcarvings and Misericords
"On stylistic grounds, the arcades and clerestory of Manchester Cathedral are attributed to John Wastell, who was also the architect for the completion of Kings College Chapel. The choir stalls were carved by the workshop of William Brownflet of Ripon; and are the finest of a series by those woodcarvers, which also includes the surviving stalls at Ripon Cathedral, Beverley Minster and Bridlington Priory.
"The carving of the cathedral's misericord seats is exceptionally fine . . . .
"The cathedral has thirty 16th century misericords, considered to be among the finest in Europe. They are in a similar style to those at Ripon Cathedral and Beverley Minster, and although Manchester's are of a later date, they were probably carved by the same school at Ripon. One of the most notable is N-08, the earliest known mention of backgammon in the UK."
Chetham's Hospital School and Library
"The priests of the college were housed in collegiate buildings to the north of the church, built on the site of the former manor house. The buildings survive as Chetham's Hospital school and library, founded in 1653 in accordance with the will of Humphrey Chetham, and converted by his executors. They retain the 15th century hall and cloister . . . .
John Dee and Karl Marx
"The most famous of the post-medieval wardens of Manchester was John Dee, magus and astrologer for Elizabeth I; who was warden from 1595 to 1608, and who occupied the wardens' lodgings now incorporated into Chetham's Library.
"The spectacular 17th century library is the oldest surviving public library in Britain and among its readers was Karl Marx.
"The cathedral houses extensive parish and historical archives, dating back to 1421. In 2003, a project began to provide an exhaustive catalogue of the archive's contents to the public. It was the setting for a marriage at the start of the 2006 episode of Cracker."
Stained Glass Replaced by Several Artists
"All the Victorian stained glass in the cathedral was destroyed during the Manchester Blitz of 1940. Until the late 1960s, only two windows had been replaced, notably the Fire Window by Margaret Traherne (1966). The Dean and Chapter commissioned Antony Holloway to prepare a scheme for reglazing the cathedral, with particular priority to the five western windows: St George (1973), St Denys (1976), St Mary (1980), The Creation (1991) and The Apocalypse (1995). To commemorate the restoration of the cathedral following an IRA bomb in 1996, the Healing Window by Linda Walton was installed in 2004."
2013 Refurbishment
"The cathedral will be refurbished in 2013. A temporary wooden cathedral has been built on top of Victoria Street to allow worship to take place."
