Please Help Our Catholic Heritage!

After the Dean of St. Chad's Cathedral, Fr. Brian Doolan, gave the Brothers of the Little Oratory such a wonderful tour of the Cathedral's Crypt, I feel inspired from the 19th Century Catholic Revival of this country, to its future preservation and promotion; and encourage you to support a great project for the crypt of Birmingham's Cathedral.

Pugin designed this in the Norman style to emulate the great English Cathedrals which were built upon several layers of previous church buildings. The results are quite stunning. Indeed, the crypt culminates in St. Peter's Chapel, which is built upon the site of the original 1808 church. The rest consists of side chapels and chanceries, most notably of which is the Hardman Family's private requiem chapel. Here it is beautifully adorned and stencilled, and recently restored. Pugin's second wife is also laid here.

It is planned for this simple but glorious crypt to be put to its best possible use: An Education and Heritage Centre for the 21st Century. Most importantly, this will be a place to display the treasures of the Cathedral, including many of Pugin's originally designed vestments. It will feature displays on the history of the Archdiocese and the Cathedral, audio-visual facilities, and a place for refreshments. With the regeneration project of the surrounding Snow Hill area, this is the perfect time to open up St. Chad's to the rest of Birmingham and to a wider tourist audience.

The Cathedral was built as a beacon of English Catholicism; it survived impending doom in the 1960s when the creation of the inner ring road was set to completely demolish it; it has even been hugely restored after the ill-advised changes of 1967; now it is ready to show the world the beauty of our Faith. Please support this project, which requires little over £800,000 for completion.

To see more details, and for a superb virtual tour, visit the Cathedral website.