As 14th November draws near, Coventry Society member David Porter considers how close the city came to losing the Cathedral ruins …
Coventry Cathedral is surely the most emblematic building in the city and is the focus of interest both here and abroad. In 1999, a Channel 4 poll resulted in the Cathedral being selected as the most popular twentieth century in the country, and at the time of writing Basil Spence’s ‘jewel casket’ is featured in Kevin McCloud’s Listed Buildings series concerning noted Grade 1 structures.
In addition to this, the ruins of the earlier Cathedral destroyed in 1940 continue to attract attention with the recent publication by Cambridge University Press of an article entitled Ruins of War into Memorials of Reconciliation: Coventry Cathedral and the Dresden Frauenkirche, 1940–2010, which in discussing the attitudes towards the ruins in Coventry included the following observation:
“It is a wrong and debilitating sentiment to want to perpetuate a ruin,” a publicity brochure of 1945 stated, adding that, “It is more noble and energising to rebuild as a symbol of triumph over evil.” Thus, the original plan foresaw the demolition of most of the ruins, except for the spire (which miraculously had escaped serious damage), in order to make space for the new cathedral.
This seems to confirm reports that not long after the destruction of the Cathedral it was felt that the ruins should be removed because to leave them in situ might serve as a permanent reminder of the pain of the raids and thereby cause widespread depression among the inhabitants of Coventry.
The original plan referred to here was that devised by the renowned architect Giles Gilbert Scott, while the brochure in question was the New Coventry Cathedral Plan and Scheme. This plan featured in the recent exhibition held in the Cathedral to mark the 75th anniversary of the competition to select a design for the new Cathedral, which conveyed an impression of how Scott’s scheme would have resulted in the loss of much of what remained of the older building.
Of course, this plan was rejected and the plan proposed by Spence was adopted in its stead, which saved the ruins in the form we see today. Indeed, of the 219 competing designs submitted for the competition, Spence’s proposal was unique in that it was the only one which called for the ruins to be retained as they stood, although – as reported on the Coventry Society website earlier this year – the fight to conserve the ruins continues to the present day with the launch of the Coventry Cathedral Building Hope campaign seeking to raise funds to carry out much-needed repairs.
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