Cathedral of St Michael and St George, Grahamstown

In 1856, Cotterill resigned as Principal of Brighton College to become the second Bishop of Grahamstown, in South Africa. He was so pleased with the house that Sir George Gilbert Scott had designed for him at Brighton that, in 1860, he commissioned Scott to alter and extend his cathedral. The foundation stone was laid and Scott completed drawings in 1861 which were sent out to South Africa the following year.

Nothing happened to Scott’s designs for the cathedral until 1874-9, when the western tower and spire were built in a style similar to that of an Early English parish church and it was not until after Scott’s death that the rest of the work was carried out by John Oldrid to Scott’s design. The work was carried out by W. White-Cooper at a cost of £8700, with the nave and north aisle costing a further £9500 and completed by 1912. The walls are built of local blue sandstone, the dressings of the tower and spire in concrete, the pillars of the nave arcade of black marble. The lectern is a reduced version of his one for Durham Cathedral.

Jones, M. D. W., Brighton College 1845-1995 (Chichester, Phillimore and Co. Ltd, 1995), p. 44.
Scott’s Drawings Collection, RIBA, p. 33.

Clarke, B. F. L., Anglican Cathedrals Outside the British Isles (SPCK, London, 1958), p. 27.

Fisher, G., Stamp, G. and Heseltine, J., (eds), The Scott Family, Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects (Avebury Publishing, Amersham, 1981), 33.
http://dspace.nwu.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10394/6401/No_22(1987)_Berning_JM.pdf?sequence=1
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