John Betjeman remarked that 'J F Bentley's basilican cathedral is a series of surprises. First, when near to it, you notice the fine quality of brickwork contrasting with the Portland stone. The external detail is precise and delicate, the grouping of turrets, entrances and windows and blank spaces is carefully contrived and never dull, never fussy.... From outside you do not expect what is the greatest surprise of all, that the cathedral looks larger inside than it does from the outside.'
In 1821,after nearly 300 years of persecution, the Roman Catholic church was emancipated; Roman Catholics were now allowed to sit in Parliament and to hold all offices under the Crown except those of Lord Chancellor and the Viceroy of Ireland). The next 20 years saw an increase of interest in the religion; the growing congregations were primarily due to the influx of refugees from Ireland escaping the famine and a surge of conversions, the most significant being John Henry Newman, a predominant figure in the Oxford Movement, and the author of Tract 90 which set out to prove that there was nothing in the 39 Articles, which every Anglican clergyman had to accept upon ordination, which was in opposition to the original Catholic doctrine. In 1850 Pope Pius 9Th reinstated the hierarchy of Bishops in England the Diocese of Westminster was created with a new Archbishop, Cardinal Wiseman. This in turn led to the question of constructing a Cathedral but due to a lack of appropriate funding this was not realised until Wiseman's death when it was felt that a new Cathedral would serve as a suitable memorial to him.
Cardinal Manning bought a number of sights in and around London, the last of which was the site of the Old Tothills prison in either 1867 (Pesvner) or 1884 (guidebook). The Cathedral allowed the new Archbishop, Herbert Vaughan to pave the way for what the hoped would become the 'head and heart of the life of the (Catholic) church in England' (4, Pitkin). Following a rather unsuccessful competition to find an architect for the Cathedral, Cardinal Vaughan chose John Francis Bentley. Bentley, himself a Catholic convert, hailed from Yorkshire and had been in independent practice since 1862 and was best known at the time for his Holy Rood, Watford, which was in the Gothic style. Vaughan din not want a Gothic Cathedral because of limited funding which meant that decoration could not be interval to the design and would have to be added later as the monies became available; Manning himself wished something in the Italo-Byzantine style so as to avoid confusion with Westminster Abbey. As a result of this, Bentley was sent to Italy for inspiration. He returned excited by what he had seen in Venice and Ravenna; he chose for the external decoration a Neo-Renaissance style to match the surrounding buildings. The foundation stone was laid on 29 June 1895. Some 12 million bricks were used in its construction with no iron reinforcements used anywhere as Bentley considered iron 'that curse of modern construction.'.
