The following new dioceses have been formed during the present reign: Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Ripon, St. Alban’s, Southwell, Truro, Wakefield. Of these Ripon Minster, St. Alban’s Abbey, and Southwell Minster have been described already. In only one diocese, Truro, has a new cathedral been commenced. The bishops of Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, and Wakefield, are housed in parish churches.

Liverpool Cathedral.

The see was founded in 1880. A fine design for a domical cathedral was prepared by Mr. Emerson in 1885, but the church of St. Peter remains the “provisional cathedral.”

Manchester Cathedral.

The see was founded in 1847. Externally and internally the cathedral is but a magnified parish church. The single western tower, the absence of a central tower, the extraordinary breadth of the interior, the absence of a triforium, the wooden roofs, all stamp it with parochialism. Indeed, the nave and aisles are still the parish church of Manchester, the cathedral proper being confined to the choir and its aisles. Looked at as a parish church and a collegiate church—for from 1426 it was both—it is a magnificent specimen of late English Gothic, dating from 1426 to 1520, when the ambition of architects was to make of their churches “stone-lanterns.” In the same accidental way as Chichester cathedral it has become possessed of picturesque double aisles, by the incorporation on either side of sets of chantries. The south aisle of Dorchester priory church had a similar origin. It has been so thoroughly “renovated” that it is practically a modern church. But it is very impressive. There is no jarring of styles. And the colour effects, externally and internally, are superb. Its woodwork, too—rood-screen, choir-screens, tabernacled stalls, misereres, and roofs—is of great richness and fine design. The whole church in its fortuitous picturesqueness appeals to one much more than the icy regularity of such churches as St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, or Bath Abbey.

Newcastle Cathedral.

The see was founded in 1882. The church is Curvilinear work of the fourteenth century, to which a Perpendicular tower and spire, east window and font were added about 1450. The spire, with its pinnacle supported on converging flying buttresses, is a bold and effective composition. Spires of similar construction occur in the Cross Steeple, Glasgow, and King’s College, Aberdeen, and formerly existed at Linlithgow and Haddington. London has a fine example by Sir Christopher Wren in St. Dunstan’s-in-the-East. There is a fine Jacobean monument, pulpit-shaped, to Henry Maddison, and another to William Hall.

Truro Cathedral.

Truro cathedral, consecrated in 1887, is the first entirely new cathedral designed in England since St. Paul’s. The nave, towers, spires, chapter-house, and cloister are still to build. In dimensions it ranks with Norwich and Wells; in plan it is as complex as any of the greater of our cathedrals. It is intended to have three towers and spires, a south porch, western porches, an aisled nave of nine bays, a central transept with eastern and western aisles and baptistery, a choir, sanctuary, and eastern processional aisle, a square east end, and an unaisled eastern transept, projecting slightly beyond the aisles. Below the choir is a crypt, appropriated to vestries. The crypt is supposed to be in the massive style of the latter years of the twelfth century. The choir is supposed to have been commenced in the early years of the thirteenth century; but since, as in the transepts of Salisbury, the aisle windows are lancets, while those of the clerestory have early plate-tracery, the upper part of the choir is supposed not to have been finished before the middle of the century. So again, in the half-century or so which is supposed to elapse between the commencement and the completion of the cathedral, the design is supposed to have been altered here and there as it passed through different hands; hence the rose-windows, which are unusually plentiful, are all different; the transept ends are differently treated; the arches of the choir are narrow, those of the nave are wide; the latter has coupled bays, the choir has not; the quadripartite vault of the choir becomes more complex in the nave, just as it does at Lincoln. And just as the Lincoln architect dropped down fortuitous chapels at the west end of the nave, so Mr. Pearson purposely forgot to leave room for a baptistery, and tacked it on, in a carefully casual manner, to the south transept. The cloister, too, is to be three-sided and lop-sided, as at Chichester. Internally, the cathedral is picturesquely beautiful, and admirably adapted for the ritual of the Church of England as it was in the thirteenth century. The south side of the choir has the remarkable peculiarity of having three aisles; so has that of Oxford cathedral. But it got its three aisles in a different way from Oxford. Mr. Pearson was instructed to leave standing a piece of genuine mediÆval work, late and good—viz., the south aisle of the old church of St. Mary’s. The cathedral was placed to the north of it, just so far off as to barely admit the buttresses supporting the flying-buttresses of the choir vault. These buttresses Mr. Pearson pierced with arches, and, roofing over the space from buttress to buttress, got a narrow intermediate aisle between the choir-aisle to the north and St. Mary’s aisle to the south. Thus on the south side of the choir there are three ranges of piers and three ranges of arches, and the changing vistas and perspectives and mysterious distances are delightful. In this instance the architect was mediÆval in spirit as well as in the letter.

Wakefield Cathedral.

The see was founded in 1888. Like Manchester cathedral, the church is thoroughly parochial in appearance, inside and outside. But, archÆologically, it is of exceptional interest. It is one of those numerous churches, every stone of the exterior of which is of late Gothic date, but which internally in their arcades reveal the existence of much earlier building epochs. Like many others, though now a vast parallelogram, it was once a cruciform church in plan; and though now it has a western tower, its tower once stood above the crossing. Once its nave was aisleless; then it had narrow aisles; later on, these narrow aisles were replaced by broad ones. The piers and arches of the first aisles were low; afterwards they were heightened or rebuilt. Originally it had no clerestory; this was not added till the fifteenth century. When the central tower fell, the new tower was built ten feet west of the nave, so as not to interfere with the services. When it was finished, it was joined up to the nave by the addition of a new westernmost bay. The Norman chancel and its successor were short, and had neither aisles nor clerestory; the present chancel, the third, is long, having absorbed the space originally covered by the central tower; and it has a clerestory and aisles, and these have absorbed the transepts. Finally, the font, choir-screen, and sounding-board are Jacobean. Wakefield cathedral is a typical embodiment of the history of the Church of England, with a personal identity undestroyed by its many transformations, like the boy’s knife which had a new blade and a new handle, but was still the same old knife.