Catholic Cathedral of St John - Portsmouth, Hampshire - Wikipedia Entries on Waymarking.com

"This Cathedral was built in 1882 to accommodate Portsmouth's rapidly increasing congregation of Roman Catholics. It replaced a Chapel built in 1796 in Prince George Street, half a kilometre to the west.

In 1767 there were only 2 Catholics recorded as living in Portsmouth. But by 1791 there were at least 130. Many of these were descendants of people who, at the Time of the Reformation in the mid 16th century, refused to recognise the Sovereign as head of the Church in Britain. They kept the pre-Reformation faith, which recognised the Sovereign as their temporal head but the Pope as their spiritual head. Consequently their loyalty to the British Crown was suspect. So, in spite of their assertion of loyalty to the Crown and Government in temporal matters they were subjected to a series of harsh Penal Laws designed to encourage them to conform to the Protestant Church of England and keep them under surveillance. By the second half of the 18th century events began to show that their loyalty could be trusted, so these Penal Laws were gradually repealed between 1778 and 1829.


Before 1791 it was illegal for Catholics to have Chapels within towns of Borough status, like Portsmouth. The Second Catholic Relief Act of 1791 allowed Catholics to open a Catholic Chapel in Portsmouth. A group of Catholic lay-people in the town appealed to the Catholic Bishop in London for a priest whom they would support. The first priest was John Cahill who had a Chapel in a private house in Unicorn Street. He was succeeded in 1794 by Joseph Knapp who opened a purpose-built Chapel in 1796 in Prince George Street to seat 300 people. This Chapel was enlarged in 1851 because of the ever-increasing number of Catholic soldiers in the British Army, about 30%, and Portsmouth was a major garrison town. By the late 1870s an even larger church was needed. The land that this Cathedral is built on was purchased from the War Department in 1877 because Portsmouth's defensive ramparts, 100 metres to the west, had become redundant and were demolished.

The new church was opened for worship in August 1882 and was immediately made the Mother Church of the new Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth. The old chapel was closed. The Cathedral was completed in 4 phases: 1882, the nave; 1886, the crossing; 1893, the chancel; 1906 the narthex and west Porch. The Cathedral was badly damaged when enemy bombing in 1941 destroyed Bishop's House next-door. Since restoration in 1950 after the war the inside of the Cathedral has been re-ordered three times: in 1970, 1982 and 2001.

Until 1884, the Cathedral and Chapel that proceeded it were the only Catholic Churches in the Portsmouth area. In 1884 St. Swithun's Church was opened in Southsea. There are now 7 Catholic Churches within the City of Portsmouth. Besides its function as the Mother Church of the Diocese, St. John's Cathedral serves a parish of some 6 square kilometres with regular services.
The Cathedral

The Cathedral may be described architecturally as 19th century French Gothic because it has a curved apse and shallow transepts. It was originally designed by John Crawley to have a tall spire at the south-west corner, but the underlying geology made this impossible. Crawley died just as building started and his partner Joseph Hansom took over the project and modified the design. The Church is built of Fareham Red Brick with Portland Stone dressings. Most of the stained-glass windows sustained some bomb damage in 1941, especially those over the High Altar. The round window in the south transept was the only one not damaged. An elaborate baldacchino surmounting the high altar was removed in the 1970 reordering. The last part to be built was St. Patrick's Chapel in 1924."

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