Sir Edward Maufe and Guildford Cathedral

Simon Heffer had an interesting article last weekend in the Daily Telegraph about the Yorkshire born architect Sir Edward Maufe and his major work the cathedral in Guildford.

The article can re seen at Why this forgotten architect deserves his place among England’s master cathedral builders

This caught my interest because although I have never visited it when I was a child my uncle and godfather visited the still uncompleted cathedral and bought a brick in my name.

There are articles on Wikipedia about the cathedral itself at Guildford Cathedral and also about Maufe and his work at Edward Maufe

Not so long ago concerns were raised about the viability of the cathedral’s structure and there was even talk of possible demolition. I am not up to date as to how real a threat that was and what the current state of the fabric. It may merely indicate the prevailing institional philistinism of the Church of England.

I was always impressed by the way the Guildford diocese got on and quietly built the cathedral with none of the publicity that surrounded the building at Coventry of Basil Spence’s 1950’s cathedral or the very long drawn out building of Giles Gilbert Scott’s one at Liverpool. At Coventry of course the medieval parish church cathedral should have been rebuilt and restored as at Llandaff or instances on the continent - above all the Frauenkirche in Dresden.

At Guildford, and also at Bury St Edmunds and at Liverpool the responsible authorities persisted and completed the projected design. Alas at Sheffield Sir Charles Nicholson’s imaginative scheme to enlarge the newly designated cathedral was abandoned part-completed and finished off by George Pace’s frankly ‘cheap and nasty’ looking west end in the 1960s. The result was to leave what should be the choir as kind of north transept roofed off at the top of the arcade. If you want to see what was intended by Nicholson, and what we were denied, took at the photo in the first edition of Arthur Mee’s The King’s England  West Riding, and the plan in G.H.Cook’s English Cathedrals.