Sunday’s Communion service, from Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral will be ITV’s most ambitious church broadcast. Two ABC outside broadcast units will televise the service, and special equipment never before used will illuminate the vast cathedral. Seven cameras will take viewers round the cathedral, the origins of which are described by the man who has made it his life’s work

I DON’T think I realised when I decided to enter for the competition to design Liverpool Cathedral in 1901 that it would affect my whole life. It was a small beginning, just a blank sheet of paper, a well-sharpened pencil, and the need a vision for what I knew I wanted to do.

I was living with my family in a flat overlooking London’s Battersea Park. My father, an architect, had died while I was still at school, and I was articled to a church architect, Mr Temple Moore.

The terms of my articles said I must not undertake any outside work without permission so I sought the permission of Mr Moore. “It will be good experience you, my boy.” he said. A truer word was never spoken. I have been working on the cathedral ever since, and I shall never see it finished.

Architects, of course, employ different techniques. Broadly speaking. I like to try several lines before I make my choice. But once I have an idea I like on my blank sheet of paper, the task becomes a joy.

That is, just how it was with Liverpool Cathedral. The only hardship for me, once I had got started, was going to bed.

When I was doing my drawings for the competition, I used to leave the office on the early side and get there in the morning a little late. I went to bed around 1 am.

After I had won the competition — I was then 22 – Mr Moore asked: “However did you find the time to do such wonderful drawings?” I told him about my late and early finish at the office. I don’t think he minded.

Now I am 78 and there is nearly another quarter of the cathedral to be completed. Since winning the competition, I have never looked back. I never had to struggle with “early beginnings.” The cathedral gave me a flying start in life.

Because of my youth and inexperience on the business side, the executive committee responsible for building the cathedral appointed me a joint architect with Mr G. F. Bodley, one of their advisory architects.

The design went through three stages: the first was my competition design; the second was that design much modified by Bodley; and the third came after 1907, when Mr Bodley died and I was left in sole charge of the building. I then redesigned it.

At that time we did not have what is called now “contemporary architecture.” We used past styles. There was the Gothic style, which emphasises the perpendicular lines of a building, and the classic, such as St Paul’s, which emphasises the horizontal.

I preferred the Gothic because its vertical lines appear to disappear into the skies where we believe, I never can quite understand why, Heaven lies. Hell is down below. I felt that for a church, this vertical style has much more of a religious inspiration than the classic.

Drawing the plans in small scale was only a part of my work for the cathedral. It is no good saying to the builders, stonemasons and other craftsmen: “There are the plans Get on with it.”

I have drawn in full scale every line of that cathedral. I have had the drawing paper on my office floor, crawling over it, drawing mouldings to full scale. I have done plans of every piece of intricate masonry.

Sometimes I have expected the craftsmen to come back to me with scores of questions. But they have not done so, and am delighted to record my admiration for the craftsmen who have worked on the cathedral.

They are the finest in the world. I am sometimes astounded how they have done such intricate work so that everything falls perfectly into line.

Naturally, Liverpool Cathedral is my own child. I love it all, for I have watched it grow, stone by stone. And I think my favourite interior view is looking up at the central vault from the central space.

It was in the central space that I once met a woman sightseer who, not knowing who I was, murmured: “I do think it extraordinary that the architect of this building could have so big a thing in so small a brain.” In a quiet way I was rather flattered.

During the war. when mercifully the cathedral was spared any serious structural damage, we had some old stonemasons continuing with the work.

In my life I have designed hundreds of buildings: Waterloo Bridge, Battersea Power Station, the re-building of the House of Commons, the restoration of London’s Guildhall … and the public telephone kiosk – though I didn’t choose its beastly red colour.

As an old but nevertheless active and practising architect, I am just a little sad that I shall never see my greatest work, Liverpool Cathedral, finished. But I have every hope that my son and partner, Richard Gilbert Scott, will.

• The cathedral was completed in 1978, but not to the additional plans drawn up by Richard Gilbert Scott – Ed

The post My vision in stone appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

One of the least-known success stories of television is the constantly-growing interest in ITV’s religious programmes. During the last 12 months the Sunday night programmes between 6.15 and 7.25 have increased their audience by 40 per cent. Now they are regularly watched In 2,500,000 homes. One man who has played a leading part in developing religious television is

PENRY JONES

for six-and-a-half years religious advisor and producer to ABC Television and the creator of The Sunday Break, which returns to your screen on July 5. Another programme he writes about here is About Religion, screened at 7 p.m. on Sunday. Now Religious Programmes Officer of the Independent Television Authority, he writes here about the purpose of religious television—and its future

I KNEW that The Sunday Break had “arrived” the moment I saw the cartoon in a big circulation daily newspaper. It showed a TV repair man looking at a set while the lady of the house said: “There must be something wrong. I keep getting The Sunday Break on Mondays.”

Religious programmes have been going for a long time — About Religion for nearly nine years and The Sunday Break for nearly seven — and this is quite an achievement. Yet you wouldn’t at first sight call them popular programmes — after all they are neither horse operas nor soap operas.

They have included some first-rate — and deservedly popular — items. I shall always remember “Christ In Jeans” and “Image of Majesty” produced by Michael Redington for the About Religion series.

Then there was the award-winning film about the preparation of a nun called “Love’s Calling”.

My own work has been mainly with editions of Sunday Break and Living Your Life, and exciting work it has been.

You may recall earlier The Sunday Break with traditional jazz and discussions. I shall certainly never forget the long arguments before each programme with the crowds of teenagers, or the series on the various churches with Dr. Heenan, the Archbishop of Westminster, and the Bishop of Woolwich standing up to tough questions from young agnostics.

Or the superbly moving passion play “A Man Dies” performed by Bristol teenagers.

It is remarkable that as the number of possible viewers has increased, year after year these religious programmes have maintained a sizeable audience. I couldn’t pretend to tell you why.

In one sense I couldn’t care less about the “ratings”. You see, we have never devised religious programmes with the sole object of getting good ratings.

We have never said “Let’s put a little sex in The Sunday Break or a little sadism in About Religion just to get the viewers.” Anyway I hope that by now viewers can distinguish between the honest programme and the programme that is just a botch-up of spicy ingredients designed to entice viewers.

This doesn’t mean that religious TV should be dull. We have tried to be lively and interesting without sacrificing our basic concern with Christianity. In another sense I would be mad to say I didn’t care about the ratings. I’m delighted that more people are watching them. I’d like everyone to watch them — provided we didn’t have to drop the serious purposes.

Religion ought not to be a hole in the corner affair. Some people, including some church people, make it seem like that — as if it were some Sabbattarian segment cut off from the rest of life.

Religion may be like that, but Christianity is about the whole of living. That is why our programmes try to relate to everything in life.

Any man (most children, too) worthy of the name asks himself certain important questions:

“Is there a being or a mind behind things?” “Why and how am I different from an animal?” “Why do I worry about justice (or at least injustice against me)?” “Why is the world a bit of a muck-up?” “Is it worth doing the right thing?” “What is the right thing anyway?” “Do I live on after death?”

Basic questions — the kind the Book of Genesis asks and the Bible sets out to answer. Basic that is, not just to churchgoers but to all men. That is why I am interested in the ratings — if high ratings mean that religious programmes are not just hole-in-the-corner affairs for churchgoers only. I’d be interested to know whether this increase means that many people are helped by the way we discuss these basic questions.

But television does not stand still. It is always in ferment and neither producers nor viewers should get settled down, hardened or congealed into a permanent groove.

The TV producer — religious or otherwise — who does not see the sands of time running out on his favourite format is a dull, safe, unimaginative man indeed. The ratings may be good, but there must be new ways of doing things, of touching men’s minds and hearts.

Religious television must try to do several kinds of jobs. One is to provide quite literally, a service for people who would normally go to church. The regular morning services are not intended as a substitute for going to church, since clearly nothing can replace actually joining in worship with other people.

But there are many people ill in hospital, too old to go out regularly or looking after young children who are prevented from going out. For them the televised church service is a great value.

One of the by-products of church services on television is that people can see Anglican, Free Church and Roman Catholic services, and I believe that this has contributed to a greater tolerance and a more genuine understanding of our different ways of worshipping God.

Other religious programmes should try to state as clearly and lucidly as possible what Christians believe — give a Christian viewpoint on our common life and above all provide for the great debate about the meaning of things.

I would expect some changes therefore — experiments in style — in About Religion and The Sunday Break. I hope they will provide an opportunity for new young writers. It would be good to have a children’s programme on Sundays which adults could also enjoy.

Whatever we do in the future, I hope the rise in ratings means that people have realised that these programmes are not just a kind of religious propaganda — but honest programmes on things that really matter to everyone.

The post Sunday success story appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

The post Religion appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.