Roman Catholic Cathedral Of Our Lady Help Of Christians And St Peter

SHREWSBURY

SJ4912SW TOWN WALLS 653-1/15/683 (North side) 10/01/53 Roman Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady Help of Christians and St Peter

GV II*

Roman Catholic cathedral. 1856. By Edward Welby Pugin, possibly to designs initially prepared by his father Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin. Coursed and squared sandstone rubble with plain tiled roof. PLAN: nave and 2 aisles, chancel. EXTERIOR: nave of 5-and-a-half bays with bellcote corbelled out over 5-light window in western gable. West porch with cusped moulded arched doorway and traceried windows in each side. Ornate canopy over statue on gable apex. Within, a deep moulded west doorway with short shafts. Lean-to aisles with eastern chapels with steeply pitched roofs. The bays are articulated by slim buttresses, and each bay has 3-light Decorated window with triple quatrefoils to clerestory. The easternmost bay is narrower. Porch and ante-room added to west of south aisle, with quatrefoil frieze to parapet, and gabled porch entrance with shouldered archway. INTERIOR: nave arcade of 5-and-a-half bays with narrow eastern bay. Octagonal shafts in a very Early Gothic style, with steep pointed arches. Western gallery. Nave roof has wall posts which carry wrought-iron ties, and alternating cross-bracing and arched trusses. Deep moulding to steeply pointed chancel arch, with rood of 1885 hanging from the apex. Coved panelled ceiling to chancel. Gilded reredos with triangular arched traceried panels with figures in high relief. South aisle chapel with canted apsidal end, formed like a reliquary with marbled shafts to sedilia and to entrance arch, with heavily foliate capitals and cusped triangular arcading all around the walls. North aisle chapel has richly gilded and traceried altar. The chapels and chancel were decorated by J Pippet of Hardman and Co. STAINED GLASS: very rich in stained glass, mostly in a medieval idiom: the large west window depicts the English Martyrs, while in the south aisle, various windows between 1898 and 1906. North aisle chapel has 2 windows by Margaret Rope showing scenes from the Lives of the Saints, dated 1917. Stained glass also in chancel and south aisle, largely c1911, some by Margaret Rope, the rest probably Hardman and Co. Chancel east window 1862 by Hardman. Low relief stone Stations of the Cross, 1952 by Philip Lindsey Clarke. (The Buildings of England: Pevsner N: Shropshire: Harmondsworth: 1958-).

Listing NGR: SJ4915512228