What’s 207yd long and drove Pevsner wild?

he 20th century was more distinguished in Britain in architectural terms than one might think. I have dealt in this column with glories of Edwardian baroque. There was some magnificent art deco – think of Broadcasting House, the Hoover factory or the De La Warr Pavilion at Bexhill – and even in the locust years from the Fifties to the Seventies, the odd decent building popped up, when architects had some regard for proper materials and setting, such as Bracken House in the City of London.

Late in the century, architecture became once more about pleasing the eye of the public as well as impressing the architect’s peers, even if it took some getting used to. I am not surprised that James Stirling’s No1 Poultry, which replaced a harmless Victorian building opposite the Mansion House and was described by the Prince of Wales as resembling a Thirties wireless, was recently listed Grade II*, or that the “inside-out building” – as Richard Rogers’s 1986 phantasmagorical Lloyd’s office was called – has been listed Grade I.

But for me the finest building in Britain of the 20th century is the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott for the new diocese there. The first time one sees the great red sandstone pile, set on an eminence above the Mersey (and it is best seen from the river, or from Birkenhead on the other side), is unforgettable. Its great, looming silhouette deals the viewer an almost physical blow, such is its dominance of the landscape.

When the competition was opened in 1901, it was decreed the design had to be Gothic, even though the zenith of the revival of that style had passed a quarter of a century earlier with the death of Scott’s grandfather, Sir George, architect of (among many other things) the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras and the Albert Memorial. His grandson’s genius was to build a Gothic cathedral for the 20th century, with a plainness of style and ornament that made a more contemporary contribution.

Scott also understood something about a building’s impact, inside and out. The great spaces and arches he created within the cathedral sent even a querulous critic such as Sir Nikolaus Pevsner into ecstasies. And he understood that the elevated site on which he was to build demanded a work of serious scale and height; and that to create such a thing was the best way to fulfil the wish of Francis Chavasse, Bishop of Liverpool at that time, for a church that was “a visible

Twitness to God in the midst of a great city”. Scott designed the longest cathedral in the world (207yd) and gave it a stark central tower that rises to 331 ft, making it one of the world’s tallest ecclesiastical buildings without a spire.

The two assessors of the competition were the architects GF Bodley and R Norman Shaw. When the stipulation that the building should be Gothic became known, it provoked controversy, with Reginald Blomfield leading the claque of architects who objected to what Blomfield called a “worn-out flirtation in antiquarianism, now relegated to the limbo of art delusions”.

As a result, classical designs were considered, but in 1903 the assessors chose Scott’s unashamedly Gothic plans. Remarkably, the architect was only 22, still a pupil in Temple Moore’s practice, and with only a design for a pipe rack to his name hitherto.

Concerned about Scott’s inexperience, the diocese persuaded Bodley – a friend of Scott’s late father – to work in partnership with him. This proved troublesome, but that difficulty ended in 1907 when Bodley died.

Two years later, Scott revised his plan of the cathedral, of which Edward VII had laid the foundation stone in 1904, replacing his idea of two towers at the west end with the great central tower. Also at this time Scott stripped away some of the more intricate Gothic ornament, creating the more austere and monumental building we now see. What evolved was a church within a Gothic framework, but with the face of the 20th century.

It was as well that Scott was so young when he was appointed. He died in 1960, by which time he had been able to supervise the construction of much of the building, progress on which had been held up by two world wars, including by bomb damage in the second – though the tower was finished in 1942, almost as an act of defiance against the Luftwaffe. Some of what we see was the work of his successor Frederick Thomas, responsible for a revised west front entirely in keeping with Scott’s style and which gives the great building an admirable unity.

The great work was finished in 1978: a 74-year journey that says something about faith, and whose results are a testament to architectural genius.

20th-century dream: Liverpool Cathedral