ABSTRACT
There is no better place to study the conflicting attitudes towards church restoration in the late 19th century than Peterborough Cathedral. Like most medieval English churches, Peterborough saw a series of repairs and renovations in the 19th century. But it was not until the late Victorian period that it underwent its most comprehensive programme of works. Between 1882 and 1897 the cathedral was extensively repaired and refurbished under the direction of the Gothic Revival architect John Loughborough Pearson. He designed new liturgical fittings and furnishings for the cathedral, and also tackled some of the long-standing structural problems of the building, taking down and reconstructing both the unstable central tower and the north gable of the west front. Both of these structural works provoked major public controversies. The aim of this paper is to examine the rebuilding of the central tower and west front as well as the public debates surrounding these projects, and what they tell us about late 19th-century perceptions of restoration and conservation.
