St Phillips Cathedral Birmingham

ST PHILLIPS CATHEDRAL BIRMINGHAM!

The Cathedral Church of Saint Philip is the Church of England cathedral and the seat of the Bishop of Birmingham. Built as a parish church and consecrated in 1715, St Philip's became the cathedral of the newly formed Diocese of Birmingham in 1905. St Philip's was built in the early 18th century in the Baroque style by Thomas Archer and is located on Colmore Row, Birmingham, England.^[1] The cathedral is a Grade I listed building. St Philip's is the third smallest cathedral in England after Derby and Chelmsford.

Cathedral

With the growth of industrial towns in the 18th and 19th centuries, there was a consequent growth in the number of parishes, and a need for new administrative centres. Birmingham became a city in 1889. While the cities of Liverpool and Truro constructed new cathedrals, in a number of other cities existing churches and ancient abbeys were raised to the administrative status of cathedrals. Through the actions of the statesman Joseph Chamberlain and the Bishop of Worcester, Charles Gore, St Philip's became the Cathedral of Birmingham in 1905, with Charles Gore as its first bishop.

Second World War

During the Second World War, the cathedral was bombed and gutted on the 7 November 1940. Its most significant treasures, several windows by Edward Burne-Jones, had been removed in the early stages of the war by Birmingham Civic Society, and were replaced, unharmed, when the building was restored in 1948.