The Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Truro, Cornwall, England; is Church of England in the city of Truro, Cornwall.
It was built between 1880 and 1910 to a Gothic Revival design by John Loughborough Pearson on the site of the parish church of St Mary. It is one of only three cathedrals in the United Kingdom with three spires. The Diocese of Truro was established in December 1876, and its first bishop, Edward White Benson, was consecrated on 25 April 1877 at St Paul's Cathedral. Construction began in 1880 to a design by the leading Gothic Revival architect John Loughborough Pearson. Truro was the first Anglican cathedral to be built on a new site in England since Salisbury Cathedral in 1220. It was built on the site of the 16th-century parish church of St Mary the Virgin, a building in the Perpendicular style with a spire 128 feet (39 m) tall. The final services in St Mary's were held in 1880 and the church demolished, leaving only the south aisle, retained to serve as the parish church. From 24 October 1880 until 1887 a temporary wooden building on an adjacent site served as the cathedral. The seats were free and unappropriated, accommodated fewer than 400 people and was extremely hot in summer and cold in winter but It was in this building that Benson introduced the new evening service of Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve, 1880. The service of consecration took place on 3 November, performed by E. W. Benson, by then Archbishop of Canterbury. His successor as Bishop of Truro, George Wilkinson, and twenty other bishops were also present. Frank Loughborough Pearson took over architecturally and whose other works include St Matthew's, Auckland in New Zealand, a reduced version of Truro Cathedral. Pearson's design combines the Early English style with certain French characteristics, chiefly spires and rose windows. Its resemblance to Lincoln Cathedral is not coincidental. Four kinds of stone were used: Mabe granite for the exterior, and St Stephen's granite for the interior, with dressings and shafts of Bath and Polyphant stone. The spires and turret roofs are of stone, exce
Size: 6544px × 4912px
Location: Trruro, Cornwall, UK
Photo credit: © Philip Chapman / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
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