.jpg)
image for illustration: El Pollock / Model of Lutyens’ Catholic Cathedral, Museum of Liverpool (Wikimedia Commons)
IHBC members of all categories can enjoy the Lutyens Trust’s on-site explorations around Liverpool and Lutyens, across 6 & 7 November, all at Trust member rates, from Full and Day (7/11) Conferences to talks, walks and more.
IHBC members over 30 should select rates for ‘Member’ when booking HERE as follows, with options including:
– Members (Inc IHBC) Full Conference Ticket, 6 and 7 November 2026: £120
– Members (Inc IHBC) Day Ticket, Saturday 7 November: £100
– Student / Under 30 Full Conference Ticket, 6 and 7 November 2026: £50
– Student / Under 30 Day Conference Ticket, Saturday 7 November 2026: £45
The Lutyens Trust writes:
Liverpool and Lutyens’s fascinating contribution to it, is enticingly subject of this year’s conference. Just 2¼ hours away from London by train, a walkable city, rich in late C19 and early C20 masterpieces, this exploration is overdue.
Liverpool in the late 1920s was a vibrant city, one of ‘rugged solidity and sublime grandeur’, shaped by commerce and the broad River Mersey. Lutyens’ extraordinary design for the Roman Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral, commissioned in 1929 and described by his son Robert as standing‘quite outside time and period… a totally isolated work of art’, would have been a climax of more than two centuries explosive growth, combining extreme wealth and poverty. By the late 19th century, over 40% of the world’s trade passed through its port and Liverpool regarded itself as the ‘second city’ of the British Empire.
The goal of this conference is to examine the rich complement of contemporary public and religious buildings in Liverpool in the seven decades before, during and after the commission and its abandonment in favour of a smaller and less ambitious scheme by Sir Frederick Gibberd. We shall also hear how the cathedral design fits into Lutyens’ wider ecclesiastical work, together with a consideration of how the Liverpool School of Architecture became a leader in architectural education during the interwar years.
The conference will begin on the Friday afternoon in the Museum of Liverpool at Pier Head with an optional talk on and visit to the extraordinary model of the Metropolitan Cathedral, the climax of the 1981 exhibition on Lutyens at the Hayward Gallery London. A self-guided tour of the Pier Head and its iconic buildings can follow. On Saturday there will be guided visits to both Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s majestic Anglican Cathedral and Lutyens’ stupendous Crypt, remarkable even without the cathedral above it that he planned to rival St. Peter’s in Rome.
See full details and Book here
See the draft programme
See more on the Lutyens Trust
