Coventry Cathedral, the Global Candlestand
This “Global Candle stand” was presented to Coventry Cathedral during a Sunday morning service in 2016 a group of students and staff from the Berufsbildungszentrum (vocational college) in Kiel, in memory of the 7 July 2005 London Underground bombings. The stand holds 57 candles, representing the number of victims of the attacks, including the bombers.
Coventry’s long-standing links with Kiel are born of a similar suffering during the Second World War. Nearly 80% of Kiel’s buildings were destroyed by allied bombing during that conflict. After the war, exchanges between the two cities began as early as 1947, and involved the legendary Provost of Coventry, Leslie Howard, who presented a Coventry cross of nails to Provost Lorenzen of the damaged church of St Nikolai in 1947. A stone from that church was presented to Provost Howard and today is treasured in the Cathedral Archives.
Just occasionally people tell me they don’t like Coventry Cathedral. I couldn’t disagree more; a powerful symbol of Resurrection, restored to a very different life barely twenty years after being destroyed in the Blitz on 14 November 1940. The Modernist Cathedral of St Michael of the 20th Century both surrounded by and incomprehensible without the ruins of 14th Century building that surrounds it.
Coventry Cathedral incarnates the twin and interconnected British revivals of the two decades after the end of the Second World War – a revival of high culture and a revival of Christian faith. Basil Spence’s cathedral housing Jacob Epstein’s sculptures, John Piper’s massive arrangements of stained glass into windows, and Graham Sutherland’s tapestry, still in 2021 the largest in the world, represent collectively a totemic achievement in modernist visual arts and architecture.
The brief for the competition to select the architect of the new Cathedral demanded that the design emphasise the celebration of the Eucharist; Spence himself had a further vision of the building as the repository of great modern works of art. He described his building as “a plain jewel casket”. Piper’s windows cast shafts of colour into the heart of the nave, while the plain glass West Screen, which faces to the geographical south, allows much natural light into the building, essential given that the east end is entirely filled with Graham Sutherland’s great tapestry, still the largest in the world at 22 metres tall by 12 metres wide.
Coventry Cathedral was built to a tight budget – “not more than £985,000” – and making much use of reinforced concrete, the new cathedral was constructed in just six years, between Queen Elizabeth II laying the foundation stone on 23 March 1956 and the dedication ceremony on 25 May 1962.
Could there have been a finer or more appropriate setting for the world première of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem on 30 May 1962? On that night, the Cathedral’s great post-War religious theme was also incarnated in the three soloists: Peter Pears (Britten’s partner) from the host nation, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau from Germany, Galina Vishnevskaya from the USSR, representing three belligerent nations. That tri-national partnership continues to be symbolised by the presence of a replica of the Stalingrad Madonna given by the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, where the original hangs, with a second copy being in Kazan Cathedral in Volgograd.
A building that breathes with the presence of the Holy Spirit, giving new life the Church in every generation.
Coventry Cathedral, the Global Candlestand
This “Global Candle stand” was presented to Coventry Cathedral during a Sunday morning service in 2016 a group of students and staff from the Berufsbildungszentrum (vocational college) in Kiel, in memory of the 7 July 2005 London Underground bombings. The stand holds 57 candles, representing the number of victims of the attacks, including the bombers.
Coventry’s long-standing links with Kiel are born of a similar suffering during the Second World War. Nearly 80% of Kiel’s buildings were destroyed by allied bombing during that conflict. After the war, exchanges between the two cities began as early as 1947, and involved the legendary Provost of Coventry, Leslie Howard, who presented a Coventry cross of nails to Provost Lorenzen of the damaged church of St Nikolai in 1947. A stone from that church was presented to Provost Howard and today is treasured in the Cathedral Archives.
Just occasionally people tell me they don’t like Coventry Cathedral. I couldn’t disagree more; a powerful symbol of Resurrection, restored to a very different life barely twenty years after being destroyed in the Blitz on 14 November 1940. The Modernist Cathedral of St Michael of the 20th Century both surrounded by and incomprehensible without the ruins of 14th Century building that surrounds it.
Coventry Cathedral incarnates the twin and interconnected British revivals of the two decades after the end of the Second World War – a revival of high culture and a revival of Christian faith. Basil Spence’s cathedral housing Jacob Epstein’s sculptures, John Piper’s massive arrangements of stained glass into windows, and Graham Sutherland’s tapestry, still in 2021 the largest in the world, represent collectively a totemic achievement in modernist visual arts and architecture.
The brief for the competition to select the architect of the new Cathedral demanded that the design emphasise the celebration of the Eucharist; Spence himself had a further vision of the building as the repository of great modern works of art. He described his building as “a plain jewel casket”. Piper’s windows cast shafts of colour into the heart of the nave, while the plain glass West Screen, which faces to the geographical south, allows much natural light into the building, essential given that the east end is entirely filled with Graham Sutherland’s great tapestry, still the largest in the world at 22 metres tall by 12 metres wide.
Coventry Cathedral was built to a tight budget – “not more than £985,000” – and making much use of reinforced concrete, the new cathedral was constructed in just six years, between Queen Elizabeth II laying the foundation stone on 23 March 1956 and the dedication ceremony on 25 May 1962.
Could there have been a finer or more appropriate setting for the world première of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem on 30 May 1962? On that night, the Cathedral’s great post-War religious theme was also incarnated in the three soloists: Peter Pears (Britten’s partner) from the host nation, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau from Germany, Galina Vishnevskaya from the USSR, representing three belligerent nations. That tri-national partnership continues to be symbolised by the presence of a replica of the Stalingrad Madonna given by the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, where the original hangs, with a second copy being in Kazan Cathedral in Volgograd.
A building that breathes with the presence of the Holy Spirit, giving new life the Church in every generation.