Below is the latest update from the Development Team at St. Paul’s Cathedral, which includes details of the Cathedral’s upcoming Christmas schedule, as well as details of two major projects that have been completed this year.
As the autumn colours fall away and the days draw in we can at least look forward to the Christmas season and the joy this brings. Here at St Paul’s we have our traditional line up of carol services and concerts. Our full schedule can be viewed at https://www.stpauls.co.uk/christmas.
All of our Advent and Christmas Services, along with our regular patten of services, are free to attend and everyone is welcome. This year, tickets are needed to attend our 4pm Carol Services on the 23rd and 24th December, in addition to A Celebration of Christmas on the 14th December. Tickets for all of these will be released in the coming weeks so please do follow St Paul’s on our social media for updates on when bookings become available.
The Cathedral has been very busy over recent months, we have welcomed a significant return of overseas tourists, and this has made a tremendous difference to our post pandemic financial recovery. We are also very pleased this summer to have completed on two major projects, which have enabled us to reopen our 17th Century Wren Library and the Whispering Gallery.
The Whispering Gallery is one of our most spectacular architectural features and a very popular tourist attraction. Sitting 30m high, the Gallery offers unrivalled views of the Cathedral floor and the Sir James Thornhill painted inner Dome. Its unique concave shape also allows soundwaves to travel around the entire circumference making them audible at any location within the Gallery. Major works have now been completed to significantly enhance the safety of the Gallery – a new balustrade guard rail has been installed, the paving has been levelled and new lighting introduced. The craftmanship of the works is superb and aesthetically in keeping with the inner Dome, as the photo below shows. We are grateful to our generous project donors for making all of this possible.
With the reopening of these popular tourist attractions, we have had several enquiries about organising bespoke private tours of the Cathedral. Our Triforium tour is especially popular and includes the Library, the Great Model and the Geometric staircase,. If your Company would like to arrange a special visit, then please do reach out to our Admissions team at [email protected]
This September, we welcomed our first girl probationers to the Cathedral as part of early plans to introduce girl choristers. Over the next two academic years, the girls will undertake their training alongside the boys and will be day pupils until we have the boarding facilities in place.
At the start of the 2025-26 academic year we should have a full cohort of girls to allow the establishment of a separate choir of equal size and profile to our current one for the boys. We need to raise £8.5M for our ‘Girls’ Voices’ programme, to enable us to make the necessary infrastructure changes at the Cathedral School (including creating a new boarding accommodation) and to provide the girls with exactly the same fully funded scholarship programme as we currently offer the boys. Fundraising for this is well underway and we are especially keen to discuss support opportunities with you for our girl chorister programme.
Maintaining our world-renowned heritage for our all to enjoy is of paramount importance. We have identified significant structural repairs that we need to undertake to our iconic Cupola, including the ball and cross, which rises above the Cathedral Dome to grace the London skyline. This will require a multi-million-pound restoration and conservation project, which will also help train apprentices and raise awareness of the heritage craft skills involved. So we are incredibly grateful to have just been awarded a Landmark Grant of £500,000 from the Goldsmiths’ Company towards this major project.
As always, our heartfelt thanks and appreciation for all that you and your Company do to support our work and strengthen our wider City community.
