Westminster Cathedral
The site on which the cathedral stands in the City of Westminster was purchased by the Diocese of Westminster in 1885, and construction was completed in 1903. Westminster Cathedral is the largest Catholic church building in England and Wales and the seat of the Archbishop of Westminster.
Sacred Heart Cathedral, Wellington
The first church to be built on the Hill Street site was the wooden, neo-Gothic, St Mary's Cathedral, blessed and opened in 1851. It was gutted by fire on 28 November 1898, during repainting. It was decided that a new cathedral should be erected near Mt Victoria and a parish church built on the site of the old cathedral.
However, the new church, called the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, was intended as a substantial building. Its foundation stone was laid in 1899 and the building blessed and opened two years later. The money to build Sacred Heart was partly taken from the fund for the new cathedral; the new cathedral was never actually built. It was not until 1984 that the Basilica was elevated to the status of a cathedral, and on 18 March 1984, the Cathedral was consecrated by Cardinal Thomas Williams, the fifth Archbishop of Wellington. In 1985, the building was listed as a Category 1 Historic Place.
The Cathedral is largely built of Oamaru limestone with brick facings. Designed by architect Francis Petre, with an axis of east-west rather than the west-east of its predecessor, Sacred Heart was built on a classical basilican plan. However, its portico of Ionic columns of Oamaru stone, whose pedestals rest on elongated plinths, and a high pediment closely reflect those of a Roman or Greek temple, and, in that respect, its most obvious model is the Maison Carrée, Nimes, which has full-length, Corinthian, columns. The building is within the classical proportions and forms a parallelogram (accommodating a clerestory with rows of arch-topped windows) of about 42 metres by 19 metres by a height of 18 metres. The main entrance is reached by means of a flight of seven steps. Out of the portico are three pairs of folding doors. The main pair in the centre give entrance directly to the church (originally, through a vestibule). The frieze of the Cathedral pediment carries the Latin inscription in gold letters: "S.S. Cordi Jesu Dedicatum. A.D. MCMI" which may be translated as "Dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. A.D. 1901."