Qualla: Sheffield Cathedral

Sheffield Cathedral: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Green from Bradford, CC BY 2.0. Walk into the chapel of St George at Sheffield Cathedral and look up at the screen. It is not made of carved oak or wrought iron. It is made of bayonets and swords - the actual fighting weapons of the first battalions of the York and Lancaster Regiment, arranged in a tight metal grid as a memorial to the men of Sheffield who carried them. The swords point upwards, signifying readiness to serve; the bayonets point downwards, representing the laying aside of weapons. Beneath, in the crypt chapel of All Saints, light filters through Christopher Webb's Te Deum window. Above, the gilded angels of a 16th-century hammerbeam roof spread their wings - those particular outstretched wings being a modern gift from 1960s craftsman George Bailey. Sheffield Cathedral is medieval, Victorian, modern and unfinished, all at once. It is exactly the building you would expect from a steel city that did not know it was becoming a cathedral city until 1914.

Read more: Sheffield Cathedral on Qualla

Image: Tim Green from Bradford | CC BY 2.0

Sheffield Cathedral: From Lovetot to Cathedral

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Warofdreams assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY 2.5. The site has been holy ground for longer than the city it now serves. The shaft of the 9th-century Sheffield Cross, now in the British Museum, is believed to have stood here before any church was built. A parish church was almost certainly raised in the 12th century by William de...

Read more: Sheffield Cathedral on Qualla

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Warofdreams assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY 2.5

Sheffield Cathedral: The Cathedral That Was Going to Be Different

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chemical Engineer, Public domain. Sir Charles Nicholson's original 1900s design called for a radical rotation of the church's axis by 90 degrees - a dramatic re-orientation that would have remade the cathedral entirely. The World Wars came. Funds collapsed. Materials were rationed. Nicholson's vision was scaled b...

Read more: Sheffield Cathedral on Qualla

Image: Chemical Engineer | Public domain

Sheffield Cathedral: Fire and Arson

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit allen watkin from London, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0. Twice the cathedral has burned. On 17 July 1979, a fire began inside the belfry in the early hours of the morning, spreading down to the ground floor and up to the clockroom. At least 35 firefighters from Division Street station fought to save the spire, narrowly winning. The 197...

Read more: Sheffield Cathedral on Qualla

Image: allen watkin from London, UK | CC BY-SA 2.0

Sheffield Cathedral: What the Walls Still Show

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rept0n1x, CC BY-SA 3.0. The east end is the oldest, with stones from the 13th-century church still visible in the sanctuary wall. The 15th-century cruciform church once had lofts and a rood chapel - Elizabeth I ordered them removed in the 1560s as part of the Protestant settlement, and you can still see...

Read more: Sheffield Cathedral on Qualla

Image: Rept0n1x | CC BY-SA 3.0