St Chads Cathedral 10.10.11

The Metropolitan Cathedral Church and Basilica of Saint Chad is the mother church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham and province of the Catholic Church in Great Britain and is dedicated to Saint Chad of Mercia. Built by Augustus Welby Pugin and substantially complete by 1841, St. Chad's is the earliest building among those Roman Catholic churches that were constructed after the English Reformation and raised to cathedral status in 1850.[1] It is one of only three minor basilicas in England (the others being Downside Abbey and Corpus Christi Priory, the latter now disused). St. Chad's is a Grade II* listed building.[2] The cathedral is located in a public greenspace near St Chad's Queensway, in central Birmingham. The current Archbishop is the Most Reverend Bernard Longley. The Cathedral Dean is (since October 2010) the Very Reverend Canon Gerry Breen.

St Chad's was the first Catholic cathedral erected in England after the English Reformation initiated in 1534 by King Henry VIII. St Chad's Cathedral was built at the behest of Bishop Thomas Walsh, the local apostolic vicar (styled Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District). St Chad's Cathedral was designed by Augustus Welby Pugin, the foundation stone was laid in October 1839 and the building consecrated as a church on 21 June 1841.[3] The church was raised to the status of cathedral in 1850 by Pope Pius IX, when Catholic dioceses were re-established in England. The first Bishop of Birmingham was William Bernard Ullathorne OSB, whose monument is the Crypt of the Cathedral. He was buried at St Dominic's Priory, Stone, a convent of Dominican sisters. In 1911 the diocese was elevated to an archdiocese.

The patron of the cathedral is St Chad, a 7th century Bishop of Mercia and pupil of St Aidan of Lindisfarne. The cathedral enshrines, in the canopy above the altar, the relics of some long bones of St Chad. These were originally enshrined at, and rescued from, Lichfield Cathedral by Prebendary Arthur Dudley, before its despoilation during the Reformation, in about 1538.[4] Fr Dudley passed the bones to his nieces, Bridget and Katherine Dudley of Russell's Hall, whence they were divided in parcels and passed down among their family. In 1651, Henry Hodgetts, a farmer, of Sedgley was dying and his wife summoned an itinerant priest, Fr Peter Turner, SJ to gave him the last sacraments. When they recited the litany of the saints, Henry kept calling upon Saint Chad, pray for me. On being asked why he called upon St Chad, he replied, "because his bones are in the head of my bed". He then instructed his wife to pass the box of relics to Fr Turner for safekeeping and he took them back to the Seminary of St Omer, in Northern France, where he was based. In the nineteenth Century, the relics found their way into the hands of Sir Thomas Fizherbert-Brockholes of Aston Hall, near Stafford. After Sir Thomas's death, his widow moved to a smaller residence and their chaplain, Fr Benjamin Hulme found the dusty velvet-covered box of relics under the altar, when he cleared out the chapel. Fr Hulme presented the relics to Bishop Walsh, who was in the process of deciding upon a suitable patronal dedication for his new Cathedral.[citation needed] So it was that the relics of the saint who was the apostle of the Midlands in the seventh century were enshrined above the altar. It is the only cathedral in England which has the relics of its patron saint above the altar.[citation needed] These relics were subjected to carbon dating analysis by the archaeological laboratory of Oxford University in 1985, on the order of Archbishop Couve de Murville, which showed all but one of the bones to date from the seventh century, which concurs with the death of St Chad on 2 March 672 AD.[citation needed]

The cathedral was situated in the Gunmakers Quarter of Birmingham, which endangered it during the Second World War. It was bombed on 22 November 1940. An incendiary bomb fell through the roof of the south aisle and bounced from the floor into some central heating pipes, which then burst. The water from the damaged central heating pipes thus extinguished the fire. A thanksgiving tablet appears in the diapered design of the transept ceiling, reading Deo Gratias 22 Nov 1940 ('Thanks be to God').

The architect chosen to design St Chad's was to become one of England's most renowned Gothic Revival architects, Augustus Welby Pugin (1812–52). Pugin had recently converted to Roman Catholicism in 1835, and spent most of the remainder of his working life designing Catholic churches, their fittings and vestments. St Chad's was the first large church that he designed which was planned, from the outset in 1837, to become a cathedral.[3] Pugin lavished much care on the building, and described, in his letters, not only the architecture, but its decoration, fittings and furnishings. The Clerk of Works and builder of St Chad's was George Myers.
RC Cathedral of St Chad, Birmingham

St Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham

www.stchadscathedral.org.uk