Shrewsbury Cathedral

Shrewsbury, like Lancaster, is unusual for being a county town without an Anglican Cathedral. Also like Lancaster, it possesses a Roman one instead. The Cathedral Church of Our Lady, Help of Christians and Saint Peter of Alcantara, otherwise known as Shrewsbury Cathedral, is relatively small and is unadorned by tower or steeple. This was not because it was funded by working class communities of Irish emigrees, for it was bankrolled by Shrewsbury's 16th Earl and employed the most fashionable architects, the Pugins. On account of a stratum of sand discovered by its foundations which effectively weakened them, the design for a larger building with heavy tower had to be abandoned, and this more modest construction tolerated. Its insides are suitably grand for the seat of a Romanist bishop, with statues, intricate carvings and areas sealed off from Joe Public.

The fundamentals of our churches, our families and our lives might be invisible, but they are just as important as the underground foundations of a cathedral. Building on tradition, music, emotion and ‘reason’ are all liable to cause wobbles and collapse; building on God’s word is the only sure foundation:

…and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. “But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.” Matthew 7:25-27, New King James Version