Westminster Cathedral

A church for a returning faith

After the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England in 1850, the new archdiocese of Westminster needed a cathedral. Cardinal Vaughan chose John Francis Bentley as his architect and asked, deliberately, for a building unlike any Gothic Anglican church in the country. Bentley travelled to Italy, studied Hagia Sophia and Ravenna, and produced one of the most original ecclesiastical buildings in Britain.

An unfinished interior

The cathedral was opened for worship in 1903, but its mosaic decoration is still being completed more than a century later. Bentley's structure is built almost entirely of brick, without steel reinforcement — a feat of pure load-bearing masonry rare in late-Victorian Britain. The lower walls are clad in over a hundred varieties of marble, while the upper vaults remain raw brick — a powerful, deliberately unfinished space that gives the cathedral its singular atmosphere.

What to see

• Eric Gill's Stations of the Cross carved between 1914 and 1918.
• The Lady Chapel and its glittering early mosaics.
• The campanile (273 feet) — take the lift for one of London's quietest skyline views.
• The crypt, with the relics of St John Southworth.
• The cathedral choir at sung Mass — its Latin tradition is unusual in modern London.

Visiting

The cathedral is open every day, free of charge. Visitors may attend Mass at any time. Recorded organ recitals on Sunday afternoons are particularly worth catching. The viewing gallery in the campanile is open to ticketed visitors at certain times of year.