A retrospective of the first fifty years of my life, picking fifty items that resonate with me. This one is about churches. Not just churches, but cathedrals as well. Ones that I have visited and seen inside and out. They will be the ones that I have liked the most, but the first one on the list is one that I went to regularly for fifteen years.
Having been raised as a Catholic I went to church every week until I was in my early twenties, more out of habit and to meet friends for the last few of them. I don’t believe in God anymore, but that doesn’t stop a fascination I have with church buildings. So many of them are an amazing testament to human endeavour, being able to build such magnificent buildings with none of the modern machinery available to them.
The decoration inside often tells the tale of how rich the churches were, this is much more apparent overseas as they didn’t have Henry VIII robbing them after the Reformation, or Oliver Cromwell despoiling them because they upset his puritan sensibilities.
After my old parish church, the rest are in alphabetical order.
- Our Lady of Good Counsel – Leicester
- All Saints – London
- Basilica of the Holy Blood – Bruges
- Berliner Dom – Berlin
- Christ Church – Canterbury Cathedral
- Christ Church – Liverpool Anglican Cathedral
- Christ and St. Mary’s – Chester Cathedral
- Christ and St. Mary’s – Durham Cathedral
- Christ and St. Mary’s – Worcester Cathedral
- Christ The King – Liverpool Catholic Cathedral
- Church of the Immaculate Conception (A.K.A. Farm Street Church) – London
- Holy Trinity – Carlisle Cathedral
- Holy Trinity – Chichester Cathedral
- Holy Trinity – Gloucester Cathedral
- Holy Trinity – Norwich Cathedral
- Holy Trinity – Westminster Cathedral, London
- Holy Trinity – Winchester Cathedral
- Jesuitkirche – Vienna
- Karlskirche – Vienna
- Kykkos Monastery – Cyprus
- La Sagrada Familia – Barcelona
- Notre Dame Cathedral – Paris
- Notre Dame Cathedral – Rouen
- St. Alban’s Cathedral – St. Albans
- St. Andrew’s – Wells Cathedral
- St. Chad’s – Shrewsbury
- St. David’s Cathedral – St. David’s
- St. Helen’s – Ashby de la Zouch
- St. James’s – St Edmundsbury Cathedral, Bury St. Edmunds
- St. Leonard’s – Boston, Massachusetts
- St. Mark’s – Leicester
- St. Martin’s – Leicester Cathedral
- St. Martin’s In The Fields – London
- St. Mary’s – Lincoln Cathedral
- St. Mary’s – Salisbury Cathedral
- St. Mary’s – Truro Cathedral
- St. Mary’s and St. Chad’s – Lichfield Cathedral
- St. Mary’s and St. Ethelbert’s – Hereford Cathedral
- St. Mary The Virgin’s – Tewkesbury Abbey
- St. Paul’s Cathedral – London
- St. Peter’s – The Vatican, Rome
- St. Peter’s – York Minster
- St. Peter’s, St. Paul’s and St. Andrew’s – Peterborough Cathedral
- St. Peter’s and St. Wilfred’s – Ripon Cathedral
- St. Philip’s – Birmingham Anglican Cathedral
- St. Saviour’s and St Mary Overie’s – Southwark Cathedral, London
- St. Stephan’s Cathedral – Vienna
- St. Vitus’ Cathedral – Prague
- Union Chapel – London
- Westminster Abbey – London
A lot of these have been visited over the last few years and so are fresh in the memory, although in doing that a lot are being revisited having been there as a child. There will doubtless be many more that will get visited over the next few years as well.
