Qualla: Brentwood Cathedral

Brentwood Cathedral: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fr James Bradley from Washington, DC, CC BY 2.0. When the Catholic Diocese of Brentwood decided in the late 1980s to enlarge its small cathedral, it chose an architect whose career was a deliberate rebuke to nearly everything modernism had done. Quinlan Terry, later a Driehaus Prize laureate, designed the new building between 1989 and 1991 in early Italian Renaissance style crossed with the English Baroque of Christopher Wren. The donors stayed anonymous. The original 1861 Gothic Revival parish church was kept and built up against the new classical body. The result was an Essex cathedral in which all five classical architectural orders, Tuscan to Composite, can be found in a single interior.

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Image: Fr James Bradley from Washington, DC | CC BY 2.0

Brentwood Cathedral: A Parish Church That Became a See

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fr James Bradley from Washington, DC, CC BY 2.0. Brentwood Cathedral started in 1861 as an ordinary Gothic Revival parish church serving the small market town of Brentwood in Essex. It was relatively small. In 1917 it was raised to cathedral status as the seat of the new Diocese of Brentwood, which covers Essex and the East End...

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Image: Fr James Bradley from Washington, DC | CC BY 2.0

Brentwood Cathedral: Wren in Essex

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JohnArmagh, Public domain. Quinlan Terry's design took its cues from two specific traditions: the early Italian Renaissance of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and the English Baroque of Christopher Wren's London churches and St Paul's. The north elevation runs in nine bays divided by Dori...

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Image: JohnArmagh | Public domain

Brentwood Cathedral: All Five Orders in One Room

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JohnArmagh, CC BY-SA 3.0. Walk inside and you can find every classical architectural order Western architecture has used. The four giant pilasters holding up the clerestory are Doric. The arcade of arches below is Tuscan. The Palladian windows in the east and west aisles use Ionic pilasters. Corinthian an...

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Image: JohnArmagh | CC BY-SA 3.0

Brentwood Cathedral: The Coin Designer's Stations of the Cross

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fr James Bradley from Washington, DC, CC BY 2.0. Around the arcade run fifteen terracotta roundels representing the Stations of the Cross. They were modelled by Raphael Maklouf, the sculptor whose portrait of Queen Elizabeth II appeared on Commonwealth coinage from 1985 to 1997. Their milky glaze gives the figures a quiet intim...

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Image: Fr James Bradley from Washington, DC | CC BY 2.0

Brentwood Cathedral: An Organ from Colchester and a Choir That Tours

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fr James Bradley from Washington, DC, CC BY 2.0. The organ came as a gift from the Anglican Diocese of Chelmsford. It was built by Hunter in 1889 for St Mary-at-the-Walls in Colchester, rebuilt there in 1931, and when that Anglican church became redundant the instrument was given to Brentwood and restored by Percy Daniel and Co...

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Image: Fr James Bradley from Washington, DC | CC BY 2.0