Celebrating Liverpool Cathedral’s Archives Heritage Treasures Day 2021
Making time to share the wonders behind the scenes.
One of the thing first time visitors say time and time again is how impressed they are with the scale and beauty of Liverpool Cathedral. However, this Heritage Treasures Day we wanted to celebrate the hidden gems within our archive as we are preparing for some of our original architectural drawings to be taken off site, some for the first time in over 100 years.
Thanks to the support from the Townsweb Archiving, we are able to begin the process of digitising over 1,000 hand drawn images from Sir Giles Gilbert Scott himself. Liverpool Cathedral’s design infamously changed radically from concept in 1904 to completion in 1978, and our unique archive documents the changes as they happened.
Some people may not know that we still rely on these drawings today to make repairs and ensure we are able to conserve our Grade I listed building. Digitising these drawings means we will now be able to easily share information with conservators like stonemasons at the click of a button, as well as support new academic research about Liverpool Cathedral.
"Sir Giles Gilbert Scott was a globally significant architect and designer and was chosen to be one of the pages in the British passport. It is crucially important to preserve his drawings of Liverpool Cathedral,” said Cathedral Archivist, Val Jackson. “Despite his other globally recognised contributions to design such as Battersea Power Station and the red telephone boxes, Liverpool Cathedral is considered to be his crowning achievement and to lose the drawings would be a catastrophic. These drawings could be so easily lost if the Cathedral suffered a disaster such as a fire or flood.”
Each year it costs over £1 million just to maintain and repair our building. If you are able to support Liverpool Cathedral be there for future generations you can donate here.
Thank you
