Newly decorated chapel at Westminster Cathedral honours English and Welsh martyrs

A new decorative scheme commemorating forty English Catholic martyrs has recently been completed in the Chapel of St George and the English and Welsh Martyrs in Westminster Cathedral. The chapel will be dedicated by Cardinal Vincent Nichols on 28 October.

The chapel contains the cathedral's war memorial and its completion marks the centenary of the Battle of the Somme. The new design by Tom Phillips CBE RA links this event with another chapter in the nation's suffering, that of the English martyrs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The names of the forty Catholic martyrs are emblazoned in mosaic across a dark sky in the chapel vault and their suffering is recalled by a depiction of the Tyburn gallows in marble on the west wall.

'I thought the martyrs should be given their names', says Phillips, 'and be in heaven in the vault, the flames of their burning faith still bright. The west wall shows the gibbet at Tyburn as traditionally represented, with the ladders which served it now depicted as ascending above, into the vault. As you face it you are pointing directly towards the site of Tyburn, two miles away at Marble Arch.'

The ladders also echo Phillips' earlier marble work relating to Elgar's Dream of Gerontius in the adjacent Chapel of the Holy Souls.

The chapel project started over a dozen years ago when Mgr Mark Langham, then Cathedral Administrator, suggested the texts from St Luke and the Nunc dimittis, now realised in contrasting overlaid mosaic in Latin and English over the arches.

The mosaics were executed by Trevor Caley Associates and the Tyburn intarsia by Taylor Pearce Ltd. New marble work at the east end radiates from Eric Gill's last work, his reredos of 1946 and was made by Paye Stonework Ltd to Tom Phillips' design. Under the direction of the Cathedral Architect, Michael Drury, Paye Stonework were also responsible for the carved marble that completed the architectural framework within which the decorative scheme is contained. Drury also directed the decorative work on behalf of the artist and the cathedral.

Canon Christopher Tuckwell, present Cathedral Administrator, expressed his gratitude to the Friends of Westminster Cathedral who funded the project and particularly to Barry Lock who administered the appeal.

Source: Archbishops House

Note: The mosaics feature the names of 34 English and six Welsh martyrs.