Jack Richards admires a contemporary but contextual addition to the Fratry at Carlisle Cathedral by Feilden Fowles

Words
Jack Richards
Photos
David Grandorge

People pass through Carlisle on the train or zip past on the motorway; there’s a sense that its location on the border marks the city as a rest stop, rather than a destination in its own right. But the city’s tumultuous history has resulted in a wealth of impressive historic buildings, albeit knocked about by marauding armies, the inner ring road and time. You’d be forgiven for expecting the impressive castle to be the most battle-scarred of these sites but, having lost more original fabric than any other in England, Carlisle’s cathedral has earned the unfortunate title of the country’s unluckiest.

The nave was pulled down to fortify the town during the Civil War, and the cloisters and chapter house have subsequently been lost. Idiosyncratic setting-out by medieval masons, followed by hundreds of years of looting, subsidence and partial collapse, have resulted in a delightfully wonky cathedral precinct. It’s within this setting, amongst scheduled monuments and picturesque ruins, that Feilden Fowles has completed the first new building in a century, an extension to the Fratry – once the dining hall of the cathedral priory, later an arsenal, a brewery and a library, among other uses, and now an education and events space.

Site plans, historic images, floor plans and section

The Fratry is a brute of a building, partially submerged with four strikingly individual elevations responding to long-lost neighbours. The impressive dining hall and vaulted undercroft, neither of which were fully accessible until now, had become cluttered over time, with clunky timber screens, heavy curtains and the cafe’s kitchen and toilets. In 2005, the cathedral’s newly appointed dean set out on a long path to return the building to its former grandeur.

It was evident that a new building was required to negotiate access to the Fratry and to house some of the more prosaic facilities, but deciding how the extension should relate to the historic building proved a delicate process. The first proposal, orientated along the north wall of the Fratry, failed to win the support of the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England. In 2014, after an abandoned Heritage Lottery Fund application, Feilden Fowles was appointed to rethink the fundamentals of the project.

The Fratry is located across from the main entrance to the cathedral, on the other side of what was a windswept and poorly defined thoroughfare where the cloisters would once have stood. Sitting perpendicular to the two medieval buildings, the new stone pavilion appears almost freestanding but for an intricate, glazed circulation tower at the junction with the Fratry. While maintaining the significant and well-used route into the city centre, the position of the new building creates a relaxed open courtyard that provides an appropriate sense of arrival and, in conversation with surviving ruins, evokes the enclosure and proportions once provided by the lost cloisters.

“Designed in collaboration with engineer Structure Workshop, the new lightweight, Gothic-inspired entrance building will provide a welcoming space where members of the clergy warmly greet visitors and school groups”, says the architect. “Visitors will be encouraged to make their approach through the new grounds and enter the cathedral via the new fully-accessible, inclusive link building.

The sculpted sandstone facade acts as a mediator between the crisply ordered new building and its unruly medieval neighbours. A striking pointed arch, stripped of its tracery and glazing bars, is lifted from the large perpendicular window in the west wall of the Fratry and repeated across the three principal elevations of the pavilion. This motif avoids feeling overly direct on account of the highly modelled loadbearing stone facade, CNC’d to form a series of slinky concave bays within a finely articulated frame. The modelling creates dynamic, ever-changing shadows and manages to be elegant without feeling overly subservient to the historic context.

The refurbished Fratry Hall will host exhibitions and events. Its undercroft will be used for teaching and learning activities. For the first time, visitors have views through its entire length, spanning six vaulted bays.

Although the buildings in the precinct are largely built from red St Bees sandstone, Feilden Fowles opted for a more stratified stone from just north of the border. Carefully arranged in a radial pattern emanating out from each arched window, the stratification adds a delicacy to what could otherwise have felt overly ‘digital’, and helps the new building to sit comfortably alongside the weathered sandstone of its surroundings. It’s a beautiful indication of the time, energy and craft that has gone into this building and holds its own against the intricate stone restoration that has recently taken place around the cathedral’s main entrance.

Whereas the clambering animals and winding vines of the original building could have only been carved by hand, the satisfying swoop of Feilden Fowles’ facade could only have been achieved with automated machining. In this way the new building both implicitly expresses centuries of human progress, and is unashamedly of its time.

If the mention of a glazed link between the historic building and its extension brings about an involuntary shudder, you would have the sympathies of the design team. But rather than an apologetic, characterless space, failing to disappear into the background, the stair tower has a ceremonial grandeur.

Triangular bronze mullions rise to a filigree diagrid ceiling, while a central stair ascends on axis from the cafe to the Fratry’s grand hall, providing an elevated view across the courtyard to the cathedral. A multitude of careful design decisions and conservation work come together at the stair tower, which is full of character even if it doesn’t feel completely effortless. This is understandable when you learn that achieving level access required the demolition of a less-than-reverential porch by leading gothic revival architect GE Street.

To accommodate his design, he had lowered and rotated the medieval doorway to the grand hall, which needed to be returned to its original height and orientation at first-floor level. That the extension was set out from the centre line of a yet-to-be-relocated door added another layer of complexity.

The cafe servery, kitchen and toilets are niftily planned to maintain a sense of openness within the pavilion and adjacent public spaces. Without the shapely complexity of the stonework, the arched windows do feel somewhat graphic from inside the cafe, with the apex uncomfortably close to the flat ceiling, so as to accommodate the structure and services beneath the shallow zinc roof.

When focusing on the architecture of the extension, it’s easy to overlook one of the most successful aspects of the project. By neatly accommodating the necessary back-of-house facilities, the grand hall and the undercroft have been returned to their original state of austere grandeur, and are now fantastic spaces for learning and cultural events.

When appointed to the project, Feilden Fowles had only been established for four years, and project architect Ingrid Petit was a recently graduated Part II. In entrusting this controversial project to a young practice the client showed great faith in the capacity of bold design to form a consensus around the development of a sensitive site. In a profession inhibited by risk-averse procurement, this project – where a passionate team has worked collaboratively to do justice to a unique setting – is a beacon of hope. Six years on, the new building is a characterful addition to the cathedral precinct and a spectacular spot for coffee and a slice of cake. With this new chapter in the cathedral’s story, the spell of bad luck seems to have been consigned to the history books.

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