The spire of Wakefield Cathedral is the tallest in Yorkshire, however barely makes the British top 20.
Wakefield Cathedral retains visible examples of being a parish church that has been extended many times. Amongst these are the single church tower with spire and long attached nave, plus extended aisles showing the church was built outwards without being built upwards by increasing the height of nave.
The bulk of construction of Wakefield Cathedral happened between 1329 and 1435 in Perpendicular Gothic style.
It was built on the site of a collapsed Norman church that in turn had replaced a destroyed earlier Saxon church, likely ruined during the Harrying of the North by William the Conqueror.
Restoration was carried out in the 1860s by George Gilbert Scott.
The church, then known as All Saints Parish Church, became a cathedral in 1888 which triggered a spurt in construction about a decade later.
John Loughborough Peterson was brought in as the architect to build a new eastern transept that gives the church a semi cruciform figure and moves it more to the shape a cathedral would be expected to resemble. He had previously worked on Truro Cathedral.
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