The Memory Man

MGR. CYRIL TAYLOR -1.v-• doesn't forget much. He's a kind of unofficial historian-cum-encyclopaedia of Liverpool Cathedral. "It all started," he says, "in 1853 when they first had the tho idea of build ing a Cathe dral. The tf.A Lady Chapel was built first fill"-4%,#k„, and opened in 1856. It's at AIIIIIICA/111111 parish church now . . .— And so it goes on a veritable kaleidoscope of dates, personality sketches and background information.
He remembers the Archbishops of Liverpool back to Archbishop Whiteside. "It was his successor, Archbishop Keating, who started the fund for a new Cathedral. He collected £122,000. Then Archbishop Downey came along and bought the present nine acre site, commissioned Lutyens and launched the slogan 'A Cathedral in Our Time.'
"Archbishop Godfrey was next. He prayed to the Holy Ghost. Then Archbishop Heenan came along and got the whole thing moving."
Right now Mgr. Taylor is a busy man. He's on just about every committee concerned with the new Cathedral, he's parish priest at Waterloo and he writes a weekly column in the Catholic Pictorial. "That way," he says, "I earn an honest penny."
He likes the new Cathedral. "But I liked the Lutyens design too. It was a building of massive grandeur, but now I'm very much attached to the new building. It conforms to the requirements of modern design and it hasn't put the massive burden on the community that a stone building would.
"Mind you," Mgr. Taylor adds, "we're still £11 million in debt, but it's a wonderful achievement, isn't it."