Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral
Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral
The Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King is a Grade I Roman Catholic cathedral on Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, mother church of the Archdiocese of Liverpool: Sir Frederick Gibberd’s circular 1960s cathedral raised over Sir Edwin Lutyens’ unfinished crypt.
- Location
- Liverpool, Merseyside
- Country
- England
- County
- Merseyside
- City / town
- Liverpool
- Address
- Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, Merseyside, L3 5TQ
- Postcode
- L3 5TQ
- Built
- Crypt from 1933 (completed 1958); cathedral 1962–67
- Consecrated
- 14 May 1967
- Architect
- Sir Edwin Lutyens (crypt); Sir Frederick Gibberd (cathedral)
- Denomination
- Catholic Church
- Dedication
- Christ the King
- Diocese
- Liverpool
- Parish
- Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King
- Grade
- I
- Style
- Modern; circular plan with lantern tower
- Materials
- Concrete with Portland stone cladding and aluminium roof covering
- Opening hours
- Cathedral: Monday to Sunday: 7.30am to 6pm. Lutyens Crypt: Monday to Saturday: 10am to 4pm.
- Access
- Accessible toilets in church. Accessible toilets nearby. Level access to the main areas. Non-accessible toilets in church
Overview
Gibberd won a 1959–60 international competition to design a cathedral that would relate to the existing Lutyens crypt, be built within five years, and express the reformed liturgy of the Second Vatican Council. Construction began in October 1962; the cathedral was consecrated on the Feast of Pentecost, 14 May 1967. The building is concrete with Portland stone cladding and an aluminium roof. Its circular plan, about 195 feet in diameter, places the altar at the centre under a lantern tower, with sixteen concrete trusses, flying buttresses and thirteen perimeter chapels. Lutyens’ vast classical cathedral, begun on Whit Monday 1933 on the former Brownlow Hill workhouse site, was abandoned after wartime interruption; only the crypt, finished in 1958, was completed. The Lutyens crypt was listed Grade II* in 1975; the listing was extended to the whole cathedral in 1994 and upgraded to Grade I in 2025.
The cathedral is open daily; the crypt has separate visiting hours.