Did you know... How the West End of the Cathedral Came About

In 1981 Ken Makins, the Surveyor of the Fabric, alerted the Cathedral Council that some bricks in the temporary west wall of the cathedral were failing. The utilitarian red brick wall had been hurriedly erected in 1939, when the start of the Second World War halted Sir Charles Nicholson’s extension. Remedial work was begun; but in June 1982 repairs were halted, while discussion proceeded on more substantial changes.

The failing West wall interior.

In March 1983 David Stancliffe, Provost (Dean) between 1982 and 1993, urged the replacement of the west wall and an expansion of the floor space. In 1995 Stancliffe wrote an article on the (by then completed) cathedral; he outlined his original vision of a flexible nave area which would enable a wide variety of functions - large ceremonial liturgies, quiet individual prayer, concerts, talks, exhibitions and more - and described the ‘pilgrim path’ from the public space of the nave, through the narrow passage past the font, ‘into a patterned and ordered temple, which gives us a foretaste of the clarity of heaven’.

Through the rest of 1983 and early 1984 consultations were held across the diocese; then the agreed brief was sent out to a range of architects. This led to a series of presentations where the Cathedral Council attempted to assess which architect would best engage with the vision set before them. On 11 March 1985 Michael J. Drury was appointed; he was a young architect based in Salisbury, and this would be his first major project. Drury’s first plan was based on a Lutyens design; after extensive discussions about finance and design, however, he was asked to scale down his original proposals.

The temporary red brick wall, with the power station behind.

A period of wrestling with this challenge led him to look at the work of Sir Charles Nicholson, the 1930s architect of the West end extension, who had died in 1949. Thus the second scheme was born, harmonising with the existing Nicholson work. In 1988 an ambitious and ultimately successful fund-raising appeal was launched; on 8 January 1990 the first sod was cut on Cathedral Green, and work was begun on the foundations; the crumbling brick wall came down later that year, and on 16 October 1990 Diana, Princess of Wales laid the foundation stone (now situated in the south-west porch).

An early sketch of a possible West end by Michael Drury.

 The main additions comprised the fourth bay of the nave, the western towers and tower rooms, the rose window, the singing gallery and the ambulatory, together with the re-ordering of the entire cathedral. Thus the West End was completed, and on 30 November 1991 the cathedral that we know today was consecrated as a finished building, in the presence of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

The architect meeting the Princess of Wales in 1990.

The images show: the disintegrating bricks of the west wall inside the cathedral / the ‘temporary’ brick wall / a preliminary drawing by Michael Drury – a view that didn’t come to pass / the meeting of the architect and the Princess of Wales in 1990.

Acknowledgements: ‘Forever building’ (edited by Sarah Quail & Alan Wilkinson), 1995 and ‘The Completion of the nave 1991’, a 2017 booklet from the Portsmouth Cathedral Research Group.