Maufe’s Vision

To produce a design definitely of our time, yet in the line of the great English cathedrals, to build anew on tradition.

From the original architects’ competition conditions

Guildford Cathedral is not a building that evolved over many centuries but was the concept and design of a single mind: architect Sir Edward Maufe. 

This Grade II* twentieth-century building is a precious part of our national heritage:

• The last Church of England Cathedral consecrated on a new site, in 1961
• Of a unique design, by Sir Edward Maufe, combining Gothic tradition and twentieth-century construction techniques
• the first modern cathedral, conceived and built in the twentieth century with a simple aesthetic design and decoration

The Cathedral is one of only three Church of England Cathedrals constructed in the twentieth century. Artistically it bridges the gap between Scott’s Gothic Liverpool Cathedral and Spence’s modern Coventry Cathedral.

The Cathedral is a fusion of the conquest of space, light, massing and principles from the Gothic tradition coupled with twentieth-century constructional techniques, notably the innovative use of high level cast in-situ concrete. This makes the building’s construction very unusual and the best example of Maufe's fusion of modern and traditional.