Cardinal Vaughan's railway station

Tim Knox tells the story behind the construction of Westminster Cathedral
THIS YEAR MARKS the centenary of that arresting evocation of Byzantium off Victoria Street, the red and white banded Catholic Cathedral of Westminster. The vision of a great metropolitan cathedral, to express the new-found confidence of the "Old Religion", was that of Cardinal Wiseman, the first CardinalArchbishop of Westminster.
His successor, Cardinal Manning, bought the land on which it was to be built, but his two successive schemes for a great Gothic church remained unrealised. Cardinal Vaughan, inheriting a site and funds, appointed John Francis Bentley as architect. It was he who decided that the Cathedral was to be Byzantine in style.
A Byzantine Cathedral was chosen for practical considerations; it was cheaper to build than a Gothic or Classical structure and therefore enabled the cathedral to be erected immediately. Moreover, being Byzantine, it would not compete with its venerable and genuinely Gothic neighbour, Westminster Abbey.
Bentley's architectural office in the Adelphi has been recreated in the exhibition. The visitor peers into the polite Adam room littered with architectural impedimenta, while beyond, Gothic tracery serves as a reminder that until the Westminster Commission, Bentley was a committed Goth.
Vaughan sent his architect on a grand tour of the Continent to look at Byzantine architecture. Bentley travelled to Milan, Ravenna and Rome before journeying on to Venice to examine San Marco, with excursions to Torcello, Padua and Verona. He was only prevented from visiting Constantinople by an outbreak of cholera. However, Lethaby's Santa Sophia made up the deficiency, Bentley himself later admitted. "San Vitale in Ravenna, and Lethaby's book really told me all I wanted," he said.
Within six weeks of his return, thoroughly steeped in Byzantine art but without any sketches or notes, Bentley produced the first tentative designs for the great church. By 1895 the design was settled and on 29 June Vaughan laid the foundation stone of his new cathedral.
Construction proceeded quickly. Erected and roofed within four years, the brash new cathedral provoked considerable comment it soon earned the soubriquet "Cardinal Vaughan's Railway Station".
The focus of the exhibition is the celebrated wooden model of the cathedral. It is one of the great English architectural models, ranking in importance only after the Great Model of St Paul's and Lutyen's model for Liverpool Cathedral.
Commissioned in 1899, the year of the completion of the Cathedral, the model was probably made to assist fundraising.
Having completed the carcase of his building, Bentley worked feverishly upon its decoration, clothing the raw brickwork with sheets of coloured marble and mosaic. No effort was spared in procuring rare or impressive specimens the colossal shafts of Verde Antico which support the nave were extracted from the same quarries as that used in the Hagia Sophia. Seized by the Turks as spoils of war in 1897, the monoliths were only set in place in 1899.
Several large-scale coloured drawings by Bentley for the decoration are on display some for embellishments which remained unexecuted. Proposals for a coloured marble pavement were vetoed by Cardinal Vaughan, who feared that expanses of freezing marble would prove inimical to the health of elderly worshippers. Only in later years was the sanctuary paved with marble, saving "the baldacchino from the indignity of rising from a platform of woodblock".
There were other frustrations. To Bentley's fury, whilst on a visit to Rome, Vaughan ordered an incongruous marble pulpit and throne from the statuary Aristide Leonari "just as if from Tottenham Court Road".
Despite this, Bentley entrusted much of the inte rior decoration to other hands at one time John Singer Sargent was to have decorated one of the chapels. This never materialised, but Sargent did suggest that the border of W Christian Symonds' hanging rood was painted green to "provide a jewel-like effect in the setting".
Bentley died in 1902, worn out from anxiety and overwork, and Cardinal Vaughan died the following year. Nevertheless the decoration of the cathedral carried on under the direction ofJohn A Marshall. While some important elements like the baldacchino, supported on shafts of pale yellow Veronese marble were faithfully carried out to Bentley's specification, others, such as the exquisite inlaid portable lectern, are by Marshall, and possess a fragile, Hadrianic luxury which provides a welcome antidote to the massive Byzantine splendour of their setting.
Westminster Cathedral was finally consecrated in 1910, its decoration only partially complete. Since then embellishment has continued. The wealth of the fourth Marquess of Bute made possible the Chapel of St Andrew and the Saints of Scotland, designed by Robert Wier Schultz, with its "pavement like the sea" of Scottish "marbles"; dark • Alloa, red Peterhead, grey Aberdeen granite and seagreen Iona marble.
Departures from Bentley's original prescription have proved remarkably successful the Stations of the Cross, represented by Eric Gill's original sketches, must rank as one of the great commissions of sacred art this century.
Even in the 1950's, when appreciation of Bentley's intentions was at its lowest ebb, work continued on the marble revetment of the nave.
The architectural elements of the exhibition are supplemented by treasures from the Cathedral Sacristy. These include the mitre of St Thomas a Becket, as well as superb 17th century Flemish metalwork like the Furness Ciborium, and a 1669 monstrance by Jan Moerman.
Westminster Cathedral still fulfils the sacred function for which it was built.
Vaughan and Bentley ensured that the cathedral was structurally complete, but left it to the piety of future generations to complete its decoration.
It is heartening, therefore, that the work of clothing the interior of the great church with mosaic and marble still proceeds apace, just as its founders had intended