Location: Coventry, England, UK
Architect: Basil Spence
Completed: 1962
10 Photographs
Once upon a time, a friend needed something collected from Coventry, another friend was playing ice hockey in an arena had never been to, and I’d heard about this old ruin of a cathedral alongside a new one, that was apparently quite something. Armed with a triumvirate of reasons, friends, ice hockey, and architecture, it was a road trip asking to be had. And thus, we found ourselves setting off late in the day, in a small, rented Fiat 500, up and along the motorway and off into wider England.
I did not train as an architect in Britain, so at the time, I wasn’t really aware of how many buildings Basil Spence had designed, nor really of his importance to the development of 20th century design. If I’m being honest, I still don’t know a lot about his specific work, just that I like what work of his I have witnessed, most of which has been beautiful, considered, and crafted.
The old ruins, bombed during the 1940 Coventry Blitz, remain as the Luftwaffe left them, the whole spire and much of the walls remaining intact. What remains is a grand roofless space, with the new cathedral, hewn from a similar stone, nestling in from the north. The two buildings feel very much like they belong together, displaying the sort of congruity rarely seen in buildings constructed 500 years apart.
In this case, the decision to insist on the ruins being retained and the new cathedral built alongside is a masterstroke, providing the kind of unique building and space impossible in any other circumstance. Inside the cathedral does not disappoint, providing opulence, showmanship, and grandeur, suitable to this unique and exceptional building. The ribbed folded plane of the roof echoes the great European cathedrals, not in a superficial way, but deep within its very bones. It’s a very special building, full of the sort of stuff that you expect to see in a building like this, but each with its own unique twist. Like a lot of great epoch era straddling pieces of architecture, it feels like it’s simultaneously from the future and the past.
Later that afternoon, went to watch our Cambridge friends defeat the Coventry University team, and then took another stroll back through the roofless cathedral that evening before departing back to Cambridge that night.
HWLK