Cathedral House and former Convent of Christ the King

Summary

Cathedral House and former convent. Constructed in 1962 to 1967 for the adjacent Roman Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral of the same date to designs by Frederick Gibberd and Partners.

Reasons for Designation

Cathedral House and the former Convent of Christ the King, 1962 to 1967 by Frederick Gibberd and Partners, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* designed in an understated modernist style by Frederick Gibberd & Partners as part of the cathedral complex;
* the flat-roofed buildings are carefully placed to one side of the cathedral and visually associated with it by the mutual use of high-quality Portland stone facings to the external walls.

Historic interest:

* they are part of the infrastructure of the new cathedral, the greatest Roman Catholic post-war architectural commission in Britain and an international example of the progressive architecture of the Roman Catholic Church at this time.

Group value:

* they have visual, functional and historical group value with the Grade I-listed Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King.

History

Liverpool became an Archdiocese in 1911 and in 1930 Archbishop Richard Downey purchased the old parish workhouse site overlooking the city on Brownlow Hill as the site for a cathedral. Downey commissioned Sir Edwin Lutyens to design a new cathedral with work beginning on the crypt in 1933. Work stopped due to the Second World War. Following Lutyens' death in 1944 and Archbishop Downey’s death in 1953, Adrian Gilbert Scott was appointed, but his scaled-down version was not pursued.

In 1959, shortly after the appointment of a new Archbishop, John Heenan, the decision was made to hold an international competition for the design of a new cathedral with Lutyens’ crypt to be incorporated into the design. The winner was Frederick Gibberd with a circular design incorporating Lutyens' crypt into an elevated piazza extended across the rest of the site to form a podium with the raised cathedral standing high at the south end reached by flights of steps. Located at the foot of the cranked east staircase were Cathedral House and the adjoining Convent of Christ the King, subsidiary buildings to the complex also by Ferderick Gibberd and Partners. The cathedral and subsidiary buildings were built in 1962 to 1967.

(Sir) Frederick Gibberd (1908-1984) was an architect, town planner and landscape architect, who was influenced by the European International Style and became one of the architects who fathered the emergence of Modern architecture in Britain. He made major contributions as an architect-planner to post-1945 reconstruction and civic design, notably Harlow New Town, and designed many significant post-war buildings, including the first terminal buildings at Heathrow airport and power stations at Hinkley Point and Didcot, as well as landscaping several new reservoirs. He won major architectural competitions both for Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral and the London Central Mosque in Regents Park. Gibberd was knighted in 1967.

Details

Cathedral House and former convent. Constructed in 1962 to 1967 for the adjacent Roman Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral of the same date to designs by Frederick Gibberd and Partners.

MATERIALS: the flat-roofed buildings are faced in Portland stone.

PLAN: Cathedral House is attached to the former Convent of Christ the King by a single-storey link block and they stand on the east side of the cathedral podium to which they are joined by enclosed corridors.

EXTERIOR: the two rectangular, two-storey, flat-roofed blocks are aligned north-south and stepped with a single-storey block linking them. They are faced in Portland stone blocks with recessed concrete plinths (painted black) and sloping slate sills to windows.

The front elevations face east onto Mount Pleasant with Cathedral House to the left and the former convent to the right. The ground floors have irregularly spaced and numbered rows of vertical strip windows. Cathedral House has a door towards the right-hand end which is inscribed CATHEDRAL HOUSE and the convent towards the left-hand end. Both doorways have deep, textured concrete lintels over doors with sidelights. The convent doorway is also flanked by two small, vertical windows. Between the left window and the door is inscribed CONVENT / OF / CHRIST THE KING and an inset doorbell. The single-storey link at the right-hand end of Cathedral House has a wide doorway with timber double doors with vertical strip glazing and a narrow, horizontal window to the right. The first floor of Cathedral House has four evenly-spaced, large casement windows with timber panelled aprons and metal panels above, separated by three narrow, horizontal windows. The convent has seven casement windows offset to the right with metal panels above.

The south end elevation of Cathedral House has two similar first-floor windows separated by a narrow, horizontal window with another below. The south end elevation of the convent has an offset row of vertical strip windows on the ground floor. The north end elevation has a door to the right and a narrow, horizontal window to the left with a larger, first-floor window above.

The rear elevations overlook two enclosed gardens. Cathedral House has similar fenestration as the front elevation, with double, glazed doors at the left-hand end opening onto the garden and an enclosed corridor towards the right-hand end connecting the building with the cathedral. The single-storey link block to the left has a row of narrow, horizontal windows and a metal external staircase from the flat roof. To the left is a second enclosed corridor connecting to the cathedral . The two-storey convent has a wide textured concrete band between floors with similar first-floor windows with a doorway and external metal staircase at the left-hand end leading down into the second garden. The ground floor has three large windows with lower timber panels continued round onto the link block.

INTERIOR: both blocks have cantilevered staircases of concrete flights with timber treads and slender balustrades with handrail boards and widely-spaced metal rods. Doors are timber-laminated in timber architraves, some with rectangular overlights. At the head of the convent staircase is a timber and glazed screen with vertical window strips and a laminated timber door and rectangular overlight set to one side. The link block has timber ceiling frames beneath rectangular, semi-circular roof lights.

Sources

Books and journals
Sharples, J, Pevsner Architectural Guides: Liverpool (2004), 90

End of official list entry