Dignitaries and MP join Shrewsbury Catholics for Mass to mark 170th anniversary of Cathedral

The Catholic community came together in Shrewsbury to celebrate the 170th anniversary of the building of Shrewsbury Cathedral.

The congregation that filled the Cathedral was joined by His Majesty’s Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire, Mrs Anna Turner; the High Sheriff of the County, Mrs Jane Trowbridge; the Mayor of Shrewsbury, Councillor Alex Wagner and the Member of Parliament for Shrewsbury, Mrs Julia Buckley.

The Mass was celebrated by the Rt Rev. Mark Davies, the Bishop of Shrewsbury, to give thanks the construction of the Cathedral on Town Walls which first opened in 1856.

In his homily, Bishop Davies paid tribute to the vision of John Talbot, the 16th Earl of Shrewsbury, who funded the construction of the Cathedral and commissioned one England’s most famous architects, Augustus Welby Pugin to design a Cathedral in the orchards which stood on Town Walls.

The Bishop recalled how both men would die before the project was completed and it was left to two remarkably young men, Pugin’s 18-year-old son, Edward, and the new 20-year-old Earl, Bertram Talbot, to raise one of Shrewsbury’s most significant public buildings.

Bishop Davies said: “We might wonder why the founders had sought to place a cathedral in these orchards above Town Walls, and concluded they were aware of the ruins of 12th Century St Chad’s and the earlier churches which stood in this place.

“They saw this hillside as bound up with the beginnings of Christianity, the first evangelisation of England, where the Gospel had first been preached, the Mass first celebrated.”

The Bishop said: “The same vision remains in this 21st Century not merely in the silent testimony of stone and artwork but in a living community which stands in the faith which first inspired the people of our land.”

He added: “And we pray this new Cathedral … will continue to stand for generations to come, drawing our gaze to the same Jesus Christ who lives and reigns for ever and ever.”

Shrewsbury Cathedral was built in the style of the Gothic revival and contains famous stained-glass windows by Shrewsbury’s Margaret Rope, a noted artist of the Arts and Craft movement.

Since 2014 renovations have been under way to restore the Cathedral to much of its original Victorian neo-Gothic splendour envisaged by the Pugin and Talbot families.

The work included a renewal of the entrance, and repairs to a bell which was cast just three months after the Treaty of Paris ended the Crimean War, but which had not rung out for several decades.

It also included renewing the altar and the uncovering and cleaning the original floor of highly decorative mosaic and encaustic clay tiles.

(Photos by Simon Caldwell)

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