Old Cathedral and Church of St Michael

It's easy to get confused and jamb different facts (and cathedrals) together to form one incorrect story. It does open up an interesting thought though - how much of a structure can be replaced before it's no longer the original structure? The interior obviously survives quite well (give or take a change of ornament) until, as with St Michael's and the Cook Street Gate, the roof is gone but then the clock starts ticking on the rest.

Having a quick browse round the internet and the newspaper I have come to the conclusion that no way would you call it "Built from the foundations up" Benjamin Poole mentions that interior was renovated in 1849. and yes much work was carried out in the 1880's but most of this was to the spire and making the building safe. There is a good description of the restoration in Abbeys and churches book, in the link I have attached, scroll down to page 87. I am sure we can still consider it the same building, we would not expect a building that old to be in its original condition. If you have your roof retiled and brickwork repaired you would still consider it the same house, so don't fret Rob ! Did find somewhere that it cost £44,000 Abbeys and Churches 1887

Not very clear, hope you can read it, The British Architect June 1885

That's wonderful, Anne, thank you - including that link you added above, which I've not read before. Fascinating!

Rob kindly scanned a lantern slide of the cathedral for me. The tower still hadn't been repaired and you can see how eroded the stonework was.

The formal opening of the restored nave and chancel took place on Wednesday 13th April 1887. It was attended by about 2,000 people. The finishing of the spire was going to take another few years. The ceremony for the laying of the cap stone on the spire took place in August 1888 !

Edited to get the location order of the organs correct. Thanks Philip, I never thought of that. While initially churches disapproved of instrumental music, the pipe organ was introduced amazingly early. The history of the pipe organ. By the time St Michael's resembled what we recognise from before the war, it would have had an organ of sorts. At its last refurbishment the organ was situated on the south wall, just to the right of the small doorway leading down the double sided steps onto Bayley Lane. From Rob's excellent collection - Before that the organ location was in the more prominent position at the west end, between the tower and the west entrance. One of the best pictures of the organ in there from Ben and Coventry Digital -

Most continental churches have west end organs with a smaller chancel organ for service music. It may be related to the change of the mechanism from tracker where the pipes are mechanically connected to the keys and pneumatic action where air pressure is carried by conduit pipes that lead from the keys to the speaking pipes. Tracker organs could only get bigger by growing vertically where there was room at the west end but pneumatic ones could be fitted into deep spaces. Without the choral tradition that returned after the restoration but was destroyed in Europe by revolution, the romantic version of the organ was used to highlight dramatic and contemplative moments in worship. Evensong's Walmisley in D minor and Noble in B flat requires a large organ to be near the choir. The plainchant of the Catholic offices only needs a small organ near the choir. I think it is somewhere in Thomas Hardy's "Under the Greenwood Tree"" where he bemoans the replacement of the village orchestra by the organ and the loss of traditional musical skills to the professional organist. I will need to investigate the history of St Michael's choir and see if it fits with my hypothesis. Did it have a choir when the organ was at the west end? It was a remarkable feat to create a choir to restart cathedral music in 1962.

There is 'choir' marked on the plan just in front of the west end organ but none specifically marked when it was on the south.

Actually, I may have got the oldest organ location the wrong way round. The plans of the layout aren't dated but the Sacristy changed. I will investigate further.

They would probably only mark "choir" specifically if the reserved space was different to the "Choir", normally east of the choir screen.

I can find reports in the newspapers of a choir in St Michaels from about the 1820's

Hi Helen, Hi all, The position of the organ is told by the evidence from the blitz. The reason for the total destruction in the area of the organs location, is because the pipes accelerated the inferno by increasing the air supply to the blaze, behaving like chimneys.

Fortunately this did not happen at Notre Dame.

I've a feeling that I've read that one of the reasons why the destruction of the cathedral was so great was the way they repaired the roof in the 1800s. From the early lantern slide you can see a very different roof to the one seen later in the photo from Coventry Digital of the October 14^th 1940. The description of the fire from the Birmingham Post and Mail - the team of four men spent the evening dashing around the cathedral roofs, attempting to rip open the lead with axes so that water could be poured onto the fires. The construction of the roof hampered the teams efforts, - the inner wooden vaulted ceiling being separated from the wood and lead sheeting outer roof by an eighteen inch gap, inside which many incediaries rested and blazed away, out of reach to the fire watchers. So originally the lead might have hugged the wooden roof inside and any penetrating bomb would have ended up in the cathedral interior, where it could have been seen and tackled?