This volume is the latest in a line of multi-authored English cathedral histories over the past forty-five years embodying recent research on religious, architectural, liturgical and musical history in relation to cathedrals. Manchester differs from England's ancient monastic and secular cathedrals in originating as the parish church of a vast Lancashire parish, re-founded and richly endowed as a collegiate church in 1421 by royal, local, aristocratic, mercantile and episcopal interest, only becoming a cathedral in 1847. Although the adjoining college buildings for the Warden and Fellows survive (as Chetham's School of Music), it is not set apart in a walled close or precinct, but lies at the heart of the life of a regional centre which became a manufacturing and commercial metropolis. This volume sets the account of its complex institutional and religious evolution in the wider context of national and regional political, economic and social events as well as religious history. It draws on a wide range of sources beyond the cathedral's own extensive archives (re-ordered for this project) including biographies, social documentation, parliamentary papers, newspapers (including the Manchester Guardian) and the material culture of the building's fabric and furnishings, in the context of the extensive secondary literature of the relevant periods. It is an important contribution to understanding the history of religion in northern industrial and post-industrial centres from the late Middle Ages.

Beyond Jeremy Gregory's introductory essay seven narrative chapters discuss the institutional history of the college and cathedral. Peter Arrowsmith investigates the limited evidence for the pre-collegiate parish church. Lucy Wooding describes the church's refoundation in 1421, amidst the hopes and fears following the English victory at Agincourt, through strong renaissance and humanist influences (including the foundation of Manchester Grammar School) and the upheavals of the Henrician and Edwardian reformations in the conservative north, its location in a new diocese, of Chester, and its refoundation by Mary i. Ian Atherton continues the story of the struggle to identify a role for a collegiate foundation in the reformed Church of England, and its emergence as a centre of the ’godly’. It was all but dissolved twice, in 1559 and 1635, refounded in 1578 and 1635 and dissolved again in 1645 to be restored in 1660. Henry Rack recounts the history from the Restoration to the changed world of 1829, through strong Jacobite and nonjuring influence, the emergence of Manchester's strong Presbyterian and later Unitarian communities and Manchester's development as a major manufacturing centre, and the rise of political radicalism, throwing new light on the Peterloo massacre. Arthur Burns takes us from Reform to the eve of World War I, including the complexities of a collegiate church achieving a new role as cathedral of a new diocese for the industrial north-west, as well as being the parish church of ‘Cottonopolis’, through legal, sectarian and ritual disputes. Matthew Grimley continues the story from 1914 to 1983, through two World Wars and Manchester's industrial decline and the emergence of significant new roles, in memorialising the city's dead, celebrating aspects of the city's life and raising the profile of social justice. Jeremy Morris concludes the narrative from 1983 with the cathedral's reinvention as the public face of a city recovering from de-industrialisation as a centre of leisure, entertainment, consumerism and art. The 1996 terrorist bomb significantly damaged the cathedral, but opened the way to redeveloping the area around the cathedral to again place it at the city's heart, with a new role, as an events venue.

The collection concludes with five chapters discussing the fabric, furnishings, music, monuments and stained glass. Clare Hartwell's account of the church's late-medieval rebuilding sets it in a regional and national context in relation to its patrons and benefactors. Susan Boyer's discussion of music (and liturgy) valuably complements the post-Reformation narrative chapters with further illustrations of the implications of the complexities that the successive constitutions provided for a building used as both a college or cathedral, and a parish church. Tony Wyke uses the cathedral's monuments to illustrate its strong links with Manchester's mercantile and manufacturing community. John Dickinson places the magnificent choir stalls and misericords in the wider contest of renaissance craftsmanship, as well as providing a commentary on figurative carving. Finally Marion McClintock describes the lost medieval and Victorian glazing schemes and the post-1970 introduction of abstract designs by leading contemporary artists. These too illustrate the esteem and generosity of local benefactors for the cathedral.

These essays provide a history in miniature of the Church of England in an urban context from 1421 to the twenty-first century. A number of important themes emerge: the significance of constitutions in enabling religious corporate bodies to function (or not); the related difficulty clergy have in working together; and the capacity of these corporate bodies for both continuity and change and to re-invent themselves in offering Christian worship and witnessing to the Christian faith in rapidly changing circumstances over six hundred years. Unusually again among most English cathedrals, there is a strong strand of lay involvement, as founders and parishioners, subsequently providing officers, notably churchwardens and vestry members, and munificent benefactors from the foundation into the twenty-first century. It illustrates the continuing strength of Anglican lay engagement in what from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries was often considered the heart of wealthy radical Dissent and Nonconformity.

This is an important and accessible collection of essays throwing considerably new light on the Church of England in the north-west amidst the challenges of radical dissent from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, and of nonjurors and Jacobites in the eighteenth century, and of industrialisation and modernity from the late eighteenth century.