Treasures of Westminster Cathedral

Lunch again in the Cathedral cafe, followed by a visit to the current exhibition "Treasures of Westminster Cathedral", which is open from 9.30 am - 5.00 weekdays and until 6.00 pm at weekends.

Tickets (£5 for adults, £2.50 concs) have to be purchased in the shop, and a member of staff then takes you upstairs and unlocks the door to the Guild Room, where the treasures are housed.

It's only a small room, but displays a fascinating range of items, from large items such as the purple chasuble worn by Cardinal Manning at the First Vatican Council to tiny relics of the saints, including a fragment of silk from the tomb of St Edward the Confessor.

The display of vestments is small, but the embroidery on them is magnificent; one can imagine seamstresses sitting there day after day, or month after month, working every stitch by hand until the beautiful garment was finally finished and ready to wear at some great festival or event.

Most of the chalices were silver gilt, and date from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries; some are incredibly ornate, whilst other were very plain and simple and look purely functional.  

There was also a painting of St. John Bosco, whose relics are currently touring the country; they were at the Cathedral last Saturday.

On the walls of the balcony outside the Guild Room there was a brief history of the Diocese of Westminter and the building of the Cathedral; although the Diocese was created in 1850, Westminster Cathedral was not built until 1903 and not consecrated until 1910.   Before that St. Mary Moorfields in the City was the archbishop's pro-Cathedral, followed by Our Lady of Victories in Kensington, because of a shortage of churches which were large enough for a cathedral.

Westminster Cathedral is huge and distinctive, and is set back from Victoria Street, with a large piazza in front which enables anyone walking along Victoria Street to appreciate its size and importance.   Rather than Gothic, which was extremely popular at the time, it is in Byzantine style, with four huge domes and a tower which,at 273 feet, can be seen for miles.   There is a viewing tower, open to the public, at 210 feet.

It was the brainchild of Cardinal Manning, who followed Cardinal Wiseman as Archbishop of Westminster, but he did not live to see it completed, dying in 1892.   Although the land had been acquired by Carindal manning in 1884, it was left to his successor, Cardinal Vaughan, to commission the architect John Francis Bentley in 1895 and see the project through to completion.