Using her characteristic naïve painting style, self-taught British artist Judy Joel portrays five "iconic" UK cathedrals in this year’s Royal Mail five-stamp Christmas issue. The cathedrals are: St Mary’s Episcopal in Edinburgh, Scotland; St. Patrick’s Anglican in Armagh (Ireland); Liverpool Cathedral; St. Deiniol’s /Bangor Cathedral (Wales); and the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral (London).
Cathedrals were chosen as the subject for this year’s Christmas stamp issue because, “‘[they] are a hugely significant part of our cultural heritage and play an important role in local communities. They also offer space for peaceful reflection and a bit of an escape from the challenges of daily life, which can be especially important at Christmas,’” explained David Gold, the Royal Mail’s external affairs and policy director.
“Church-buildings champion,” as the Church Times dubbed her, Janet Gough, whose prior responsibilities for the Church of England include Director for Cathedrals and Church Buildings, consulted on the stamp issue.
Artist Judy Joel explained that when she first got the call requesting that she submit two illustrations for consideration, she wasn’t sure that it was a legitimate call. However, she soon figured out it was. In interviews, she shared that,"[w]hen I was told Royal Mail had chosen my designs in my naive style for this Christmas, it was a heart-stopping moment and I was and am still immensely proud and honoured.”
Joel, who worked as a production assistant at the BBC London in the 1960s, explain on her Saatchi Art page that she has always loved painting. However, it was only after leaving the BBC to start a family that she began to pursue painting in earnest. As she told the Molesey Art Society, where she has been a member since the 1970s, she “found my naturally naïve style was popular.” She had her first solo show in London in 1981 and has sold paintings worldwide for 50 years.
Since the release of the Cathedral stamps has led to a slew of interviews and articles about the cathedrals themselves, the Royal Mail's 2024 Christmas stamp collection presents both a chance to share charming illustrations of the five cathedrals and an opportunity for more people to learn about these famous buildings, including a family connection that links three of them.
Two of the cathedrals, St. Patrick’s in Armagh and St. Deiniol’s/Bangor Cathedral in Wales, trace their histories back to the mid 5th and 6th centuries respectively. In an ITV interview, Dean of St. Patrick’s Shane Forester said he thought Armagh was chosen as one of the stamp cathedrals because of its historic background, including the fact that it sits on the site where in the mid-5th century, St. Patrick built his Great Stone Church. The Cathedral’s website notes, “[t]he building has been destroyed and rebuilt on at least 17 occasions, with the construction of the current cathedral beginning in the 13th century.” The Cathedral continues to be the “capital of Ireland,” the Dean noted in his ITV interview.
The city of Armagh is also home to the Roman Catholic St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The two cathedrals work together through the Armagh Cathedrals Partnership, including “services to mark the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity alternat[ing[ between the two Cathedrals.”
St. Deiniol’s/Bangor Cathedral, “the oldest cathedral foundation in Britain” according to the National Monuments Record of Wales, is named for the saint who founded it in 525 AD and also for the Welsh word for the wattled enclosure or hazel fence that surrounded the original missionary community. Its current structure dates to the “early twelfth century.” Bishop of Bardsey the Rt. Reverend David Morris told the Wales News Service that Joel’s stamp “is a really beautiful design.” He added that the Cathedral’s selection “is particularly significant for us as we prepare to celebrate 1500 years since St Deiniol established a community in Bangor and founded the Cathedral and City we see today.” The North Wales Chronicle explains, St. Deiniol’s Cathedral repeatedly suffered damage, particularly in its first hundred years because of “its association with the native princes of Wales.” The Cathedral underwent restoration efforts in the 1500s, but its most significant restoration cane in the 1860s under the supervision of renowned architect Sir George Gilbert Scott.
The remaining three cathedrals featured on the stamps—St. Mary's Episcopal; Liverpool; and Westminster— are more “modern” in that their histories date back only to the mid-19th century. Two of the three, St. Mary's and Liverpool, share a family connection to Bangor Cathedral.
Sir George Gilbert Scott, architect of the Bangor’s “modern” restoration, was also the architect for St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Edinburgh, which remains the tallest building in that city. The Cathedral’s tower weighs more than 5,000 tonnes. The Cathedral's website notes, Scott’s use of four main pillars, diagonal arches, and buttresses in the outer walls creates, “unusually open views inside.”
St. Mary’s is also famed for its choral tradition, which dates to 1879 and includes performances (in international venues like Taiwan and Tokyo), broadcasts, and recordings. The Cathedral's websites notes that St. Mary's is the only church in Scotland that has both regular weekday and Sunday choral services.
Continuing the family tradition, Sir George Gilbert Scott’s grandson, Sir Giles George Scott, designed the Liverpool Cathedral, “the largest cathedral in Britain and the fifth largest in the world.” Giles Scott was only 22 years old when he was selected via a competition. “[He] was still an articled pupil working in Temple Moore’s practice, and had no existing buildings to his credit. He told the assessors that so far his only major work had been to design a pipe-rack,” according to the family's website, which chronicles the history of this four-architect family dynasty. The Cathedral celebrated the 100th anniversary of its consecration in July. Just as the Indianapolis Museum of Art will display the Sassoferrato painting featured on the USPS 2024 Madonna and Child Stamp this festive season, Liverpool Cathedral will display “an enlargement of [Joel’s] original [Liverpool Cathedral] art work during the festive season."
Completed in 1903 after just eight years of construction, Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral in London is an awe-inspiring Neo-Byzantine structure comprised of 12.5 million “handmade bricks.” Its nave is 109 feet high, four feet higher than Westminster Abbey’s. Featured on the fifth Christmas stamp, the Cathedral, with its “candy stripe” design of red-brick and Portland stone and “its massive Byzantine domes and wide interior space,” is the vision of the third Archbishop of the dioscese Cardinal Herbert Vaughan and architect John Francis Bentley.
Due in part to a number of parliamentary measures (Westminster's website describes them collectively as the "Restoration"), the Catholic Church in England enjoyed a revival in the mid-late 19th century. According to the site, in 1850, Pope Pius IX created 13 new dioceses in England and Wales and “restored the Roman Catholic hierarchy [bishops etc.] in England.” The church’s congregations grew in part due to emigration from Ireland. Beginning in the 1870s, plans for a cathedral in London were made, including the purchase of the land on which the Cathedral now sits. However, pastoral care and social justice matters took precedence and so, despite purchasing the land on which the Cathedral now sits, no design progress was made. Vaughan, who became Cardinal in 1892, was armed with “a new vision for a new diocese” and a determination to get a cathedral built.
The new Cardinal's goals included: a large open space reminiscent of the “Italian type” churches of the ancient church rather than a narrow-Gothic space; a building that could be built within in 10 years; one that could be built with brick; and one that could be built within a limited budget. As the Cathedral's site explains,“[s]ensitive to the politics of the age” he did not want a structure that would “compete with the Gothic grandeur of Westminster Abbey, a near neighbour.”
Architect Bentley, a convert to Catholicism, was chosen because he was the “’best’ Catholic architect in England,” notes the Cathedral's website. After spending four months in Italy exploring churches, basilicas, mosaics, and architecture in Rome, Milan, and Naples among others, as well as reading a leading treatise on Byzantine building and the Church of Sancta Sophia in Constantinople, Bentley concluded that he needed to develop “his own version of Byzantine design [in order to] meet Vaughan’s requirements.”
The use of brick and stone, sometimes described as “candy cane,” on the building's exterior is an ode to the “mansion house flats in Ambrosden Avenue [one of the streets adjacent to the Cathedral],” explains the Westminster site. Brick was easy to obtain, cheaper than stone, and thus was budget friendly, a requirement of Vaughan’s brief. Interestingly, Westminster's website notes that Canon Law dictates that construction debt must be paid off before a Cathedral can be consecrated. Despite Cardinal Vaughan's generally successful fundraising efforts, the Cathedral was not consecrated until 1910.
The Cathedral's single 284-foot bell tower, “can be seen from across the city” as well as in Alfred Hitchcock’s film Foreign Correspondent, notes the Westminster site. Luckily for those of us who are not in London, we can get a glimpse of it on the Royal Mail Christmas stamp.
Information about the images used in this article is available here. Read about how USA Festive Season Stamps, which include stamps for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Winter generally, are a pathway to learning about art, people, and culture.
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