A Tale of Two Cathedrals

My lovely girl was home last weekend so we decided to have another day as 'tourists' in our home city. 

Saturday dawned bright and sunny ... 

a perfect day to visit Liverpool's Metropolitan Cathedral  

.... so the amazing stained glass windows could be seen at their best

It has the world's largest stained glass window in the lantern tower- 

over eleven hundred square metres of incredible colour!

the vast circular interior is flooded with light from above

and the colours change as you walk around the edge from reds, to blues through yellows and greens

It's filled with incredibly modern sculptures

Outside more stained glass panels mean you can get shots like this ...

Just a five minute walk down Hope Street brings you to Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral

Inside is a vast, jaw dropping space which defies further description.

You just have to experience it for yourself

I'd never been up to the top of the bell tower before ..... two lifts and over a hundred stairs later we could see a 360 degree view of the city and beyond laid out like a map below us.

We were still there as the sun was setting over our 'paradise peninsula' on the other side of the Mersey.

Beautiful .... but freezing!

Inside the cavernous bell tower was a bit unnerving.... the size of it makes you feel insignificant.

It took us ages to get up to the top and down again as it was really busy. To our horror the coffee shop was closed when we got back to ground level and we had to go home without our treat!

I've visited both cathedrals more times than I can count ... as a convent school girl I regularly went to the Metropolitan Cathedral ... as a teacher in a Church of England school I visit the Anglican Cathedral several times a year.  I've walked around them when they're empty... and I've been to services in them both, when, sadly, it's very difficult to hear or see what's going on in either of them.

Both cathedrals are stunning in their own way ... they are so utterly different that they cannot possibly be compared. But both cathedrals, I feel, are lacking something .... once you've got over the 'awe and wonder' bit there's just no soul there ... I don't feel connected to either of them. I feel dwarfed by their sheer scale and slightly disappointed by their modernity.... both belong to the Twentieth Century.

I think we might have to wait a thousand years before they can be judged on their merits... like Durham Cathedral and York Minster.

In a way they are typical of the city they belong to ... we had to build them bigger than anyone else's because we Scousers do like to 'show off'.

And we had to have two!!!