Reading the church  |  Looking east  |  The west end  |  The nave  |  The chancel  |  The sanctuary  |  The Shrewsbury Chapel   |  St Katharine’s Chapel  |  Looking north  |  St George’s Chapel  |  The Crypt  |  The Chapel of the Holy Spirit  |  Some reflections

Virtual visit

Come for a wander around the Cathedral with Canon Nick Howe.  360 degree views courtesy of the BBC.

Reading the church If you insist that church buildings must have an architectural unity then Sheffield Cathedral isn’t for you.  It has grown and changed a great deal over the centuries.    Much of the east end is evidently medieval – the only medieval building in Sheffield still in use.  But much has been added since then, making it all the more difficult to read.   Years ago we may have had an instinct for understanding such a sermon in stone.  We’d know what it was trying to tell us.    But most of us have lost that faculty.  Even well-educated, culturally-aware people may hear only a foreign language and struggle to make sense of it.   And yet we can guess that whatever shaped this building shaped the lives of people in this country for hundreds of years – a mystery to us, maybe, but still a powerful one.   As Philip Larkin wrote in his poem Church Going:   It pleases me to stand in silence here;   A serious house on serious earth it is, In whose blent air all our compulsions meet, Are recognised, and robed as destinies. And that much never can be obsolete, Since someone will forever be surprising A hunger in himself to be more serious, And gravitating with it to this ground, Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in, If only that so many dead lie round.   Which they do, but this Cathedral also houses a living community with a living faith, who still find it a place proper to grow wise in. Top

Looking east Sitting in the nave, the central body of the building, you are facing east.  In a building full of symbols here is one of the most powerful, this orientation.   Facing the sunrise.  Perhaps there is something pagan in this, but the Christian Gospels all speak about the resurrection - the rising - of Christ happening at daybreak on the first day of the week.   Which is our Sunday, the day of the sun.   Our day of resurrection, when we gather together in the morning, facing east, to celebrate the risen Christ.   That is what the building is for.  Its doors are open every day, and individuals find it a place of peace and refuge. But it is on a Sunday morning when it comes in to its own. It is best understood when worship is happening. Top

The west end Letting the light in has always been important for the church, but this building was notoriously dismal and gloomy for much of its life.   The new west end was added in 1966, not because the old one was bombed in the war, but to try and let in more light, through its tall, clear west windows and the spectacular lantern tower.   Looking up you see a glass ceiling of swirling colour, designed by Amber Hiscott in the 1990s.  It’s abstract, but you can read it as the Spirit of God bringing new life out of human conflict.  On a sunny day it throws patches of gold and red and indigo onto the stonework beneath.   One day a new font may be sited directly beneath it.   The existing one is Victorian and a thing of little charm.   Placed near the entrance to the church, it is the place of baptism, of christening.   And it could be seen as representing our tendency to make religion safe - if we can.   A drowning pool has become a place of washing, only faintly echoing the submersion that spoke of death by water, of burial, of re-birth.   But it is still the place where adults and children begin their Christian journey, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Top

The nave The Victorians rebuilt this space.  They weren’t the first.  On the wall ahead you can see the various roof lines, part of the struggle for light, eventually resulting in the row of clerestory windows high on each side.   This is where the congregation worships, it is their space.  A ‘nave’ because it resembles a great boat, an ark.  Look up and squint and you could be peering in to an upside down wooden hull.   Here we journey together across the choppy waters of life.   The pews are relatively recent.  People used to stand, and the weakest went to the wall, to prop themselves up.   It seems obvious to say, but it is communal seating.   Like a park bench.  A stranger could sit beside you, and that’s good.   Christianity is not the flight of the alone to the alone; it’s about gathering.  Other people are necessary, in all their awkwardness and difference.  Which is why simply watching Songs of Praise won’t do.   We get together to practice being Christ-like: to see how life might be when love and forgiveness and mutual esteem hold sway.    For this to be worthwhile you need a good mix of the lovely and the unlovely – mercifully we get it here, with room for plenty more.    On our journey we try to attend to wisdom, ancient and modern.   On one side a stand called the lectern holds the bible.  The pulpit on the other elevates the person who gives the sermon.   We listen to both and weigh up what we hear.   If you were called upon the offer wise words to an attentive congregation what might you say? Top

The chancel A step or two takes us up in to the medieval church.  Christianity was already 1430 years old when these soaring arches were built.   People back then thought the earth was flat and occupied a central place in the universe.  They travelled at an average of 3 miles an hour – if they travelled at all.  But they could build this.   Above your head in 182 feet of tower and spire, rooted through four massive columns.   This area was built to resonate with holy song.     As far as we know human beings are the only place where creation can reflect on its destiny and articulate what it thinks and feels.  We do this most beautifully in song, which is why music is so important in our worship here.   But the suggestion is that, actually, we are not alone.  Go a little further and look up at the medieval hammer-beam roof.  There are eight gilded angels, singing.    Their wings are modern, but their bodies have been up there for 600 years, a reminder that when we worship we join in the celestial song, with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.   The grand chair on the south side is the ‘cathedra’ the bishop’s chair, hence ‘cathedral’, the church where the bishop has his seat.    Carved on this one are the figures on St Peter with a fishing net and St Paul with a sword, because our formal title is the Cathedral Church of St Peter and St Paul. Top

The sanctuary To go any further east is to enter the sanctuary.   Seen by many as the most holy place in the Cathedral, it is the focus of the building and its worship.   Wooden rails prevent us from entering, reinforcing any instinct we have that such a place isn’t for us.   Perhaps this in unfortunate.   In the Gospels we see Jesus, the holy one of God, out and about with ordinary people, eating with them, mostly, in a way that’s at odds with the religious impulse to make the holy a no-go area.   The altar table at the heart of the sanctuary should let us know that God is hospitable: he seeks our company.   Here it is that week by week we take and bless and share bread and wine, to remember Jesus.   It recalls us to his death and to his life, and by eating and drinking we keep company with him and with one another.   Set in the walls you can see patterned pieces of paler stonework.  These are remnants of the 12th century church.   The east window is a memorial to the local 19th century poet, philanthropist and newspaper editor James Montgomery.  Former vicars peer down from the north wall, and across the way from them is the Shrewsbury Chapel. Top

The Shrewsbury Chapel  This chapel was the first substantial addition to the medieval church, built in 1520 by George Talbot, the Fourth Earl of Shrewsbury, as a family chapel with a burial vault below.   It houses two splendid Tudor monuments: one featuring George and his two wives, and against the south wall the other is for his grandson, the Sixth Earl, whose life was bound up with a number of formidable women.   He was married to Bess of Hardwick.  He was in the service of Elizabeth 1st, and he was custodian of Mary Queen of Scots during her fourteen-year captivity in Sheffield.   A Talbot was a type of medieval hunting dog, and these feature on and around the monuments.      The Roman Catholic Dukes of Norfolk inherited the Shrewsbury estates and kept this chapel until 1933, a Roman Catholic chapel in an Anglican setting.   Stepping away from the monuments and looking up at the roof you’ll see some distinctly pagan touches to the ornamentation: green men with fronds coming out of their mouths, and possibly a sheila na gig: male and female fertility figures finding a welcome in the rafters. Top

St Katharine’s Chapel This chapel was added to balance the building, and the stonework tells of much chopping and changing.   A hut on this side used to house the town’s fire engine.   The sedilia with its three seats is 600 years old, with what seem to be hunting scenes carved on it.   The focus is the triptych above the altar showing an episode from Luke’s Gospel, where the risen Christ is welcomed in as a stranger by two of his disciples who suddenly recognise him as he breaks bread.   This is where we hold the Monday meditations. Top

Looking north When the church was made a cathedral in 1914 there were those who felt it wasn’t grand enough, and plans were made to swing the orientation of the building to face north.   Between the World Wars the northern end of the scheme was completed, but then the money ran out, or perhaps a better wisdom prevailed, and they never built the nave out southwards.  It would have reached the tram tracks.   This gives the building its peculiar lopsided character, and left the question of what to do with the additional bits. Top

St George’s Chapel The part intended to be the sanctuary of the new scheme has become a chapel commemorating the York and Lancaster Regiment.   When the regiment was disbanded the fence of swords and bayonets was made – weapons laid aside.  So while it looks fierce, it is intended to speak of peace.   The presence of the paraphernalia of war may seem an uncomfortable one in the context of a Christian church.   Perhaps it is part of facing up to the reality of a broken world.   Alongside the regimental flags is an ensign from HMS Sheffield, and alongside the chapel stands a sculpture marking the link between the city, the ship and the Cathedral.   Top

The Crypt  This space has an underground or womb-like quality.  People sometimes retreat here when they find the cathedral space too big and open.   It is a columbarium, a place for the interment of ashes – the first in an English cathedral – with the names carved in to the walls. An intriguing window in the south-west corner looks as though it has been made of boiled sweets. Schoolchildren wearied by a long tour are often perked up on seeing it. Top

The Chapel of the Holy Spirit This would have been the Lady Chapel of the reordered Cathedral.  Now it is used for small services.  It is the lightest and airiest place in the cathedral but it comes in to its own of an evening when the Choir is singing by candlelight. A screen behind the altar is carved with figures of Christ and his disciples (an numerous masonic symbols). Above it is the striking Te Deum window designed by Webb, showing Christ in judgement on a (predominantly anglo-saxon) world. Top

Some reflections The recently published Pevsner Guide to Sheffield calls the Cathedral “beguiling”, and I think that’s true.  It is an extraordinary combination of architectural styles and schemes but the overall effect is, I think, pleasing - if not always very practical or helpful to our worship. People seem to respond to its human scale and its quirky charms.   Like the faith it seeks to represent, nurture and proclaim the building is an historical inheritance, and like that faith it probably would not look like it does were we to begin afresh, shaping it according to our own best insights.    But part of our responsibility to ourselves and to the future is to take on the task that has been shouldered time and again over the lifetime of this building, and play our part in its development, so that it speaks as best it can of the living faith whose purposes it must serve if it is to be more than an historical curiosity. Top