Clifton Cathedral, Bristol
Built 1965-72
Designed by Percy Thomas Partnership
Modernist Bristol
Bristol’s modernist and brutalist buildings are rarely celebrated. Some are listed, many are threatened, a few are already gone. This book is a record and an appreciation of the buildings and the era that made them possible.
“A sermon in concrete.”
Clifton Roman Catholic Cathedral was completed for the sum of £601,268. Described as the “ecclesiastical bargain of the 1970s.”
It is the first Catholic Church built in the 1970s to be Grade II* listed.
It was the first Cathedral to be built under new guidelines from the Second Vatican Council which wanted to make the congregation feel more involved.
Pevsner’s Architectural Guide to Bristol wrote that the Cathedral was a “sermon in concrete.”
Mike Jenner called it “one of the great interiors of the last 50 years in Britain.”
