Survival of cathedrals against all the odds

Elspeth Howe (Baroness Howe of Idlicote) visited every cathedral in the land before writing a report about them in 1994. “This is not the first age in which people have valued the monumental splendour of cathedrals without being entirely certain what they are for,” she wrote.

This remark is quoted in a new report from a group chaired by the Rt Rev Adrian Newman, the Bishop of Stepney. It seems to me that the consequences of its recommendations, many of them to do with the way cathedrals should be run, are hard to predict. But they are to be rushed along like the old Night Mail, going before the General Synod next week, with legislation timetabled for February.

At the moment cathedrals are mostly under the power of a dean and a chapter of canons. Canons complain that the report makes them like directors under a CEO.

As Tony Blair’s halfreform of the Lords showed, it is easier to pull down than to build up. The Lords made the best of things, with the roof leaking (as it were) and uninvited guests crowding its benches. Cathedrals have been muddling through since the Restoration in 1660.

Trollope’s age was certainly no golden one for cathedrals. Many of their endowments had been removed in 1840 by an Act of Parliament (nicknamed the “Cathedral-crushing Act”), after the turbulent 1830s when the survival of bishoprics and clergy livings were in the balance.

By the 1880s, an agricultural slump brought unintended consequences from a complicated scheme by which the Church Commissioners accepted cathedral lands in return for an income. Winchester Cathedral was unsure how it could remain open at all.

Cathedral fabric-funds had insufficient to mend their aged structures. In 1879 a block of stone fell from a capital and smashed a book-case in the library at Exeter, upon which it was discovered that mould covered ancient and valuable books. The west end of Llandaff Cathedral (still part of the Established Church) was in ruins, and cathedral services were limited to a chapel at the east end. With no organ, music was provided by a cello played by an old man.

Ecclesiastical reform had limited cathedral chapters to four canons, but in York, Chester, Bristol and some other sees, only one canon was in residence at a time, as they had to take turns living in the only available house.

Many more peculiarities of cathedral life 150 years ago are to be found in Owen Chadwick’s beautifully written history The Victorian Church.

Music did survive as an part of cathedral life in Victorian times, even though Charles Kingsley wrote of a service sardonically: “The organ droned sadly in its iron cage to a few musical amateurs. … The place breathed imbecility and unreality and sleepy life in death.”

Only through the reforming energy of the Winchester (nave, looking east): almost closed in the 1880s 19th century was English cathedral music raised to a level that still seems globally remarkable. Compare an English cathedral with Burgos, say, even St Mark’s, Venice, and you’ll see.

This new report by the Cathedrals Working Group openly notes that it did not consider music. Its mind was more concentrated on financial woes like those seen in the past couple of years at Peterborough.

Still no one knows what cathedrals are for. Visitors, 10 million a year, come and find breathtaking historical architecture, with God as its informing idea. They may find inspiring music too, and return to hear it.

That music forms part of the daily round of prayer, which the new report admits is the cathedral’s opus dei, the work or liturgy of God.