The Catholic Cathedral of St John the Evangelist, Portsmouth
This Cathedral was built in 1882 to accommodate Portsmouth's rapidly increasing congregation of Roman Catholics. It replaced a Chapel built in 1796 in Prince George Street, Portsea, half a kilometre to the west. In 1767 there were only two catholics recorded as living in Portsmouth. But by 1791 there were at least 130. Many of these were desscendants of people who, at the time of the Reformation in the mid 16th century, refused to recognise the Sovereign as head of the Church in Britain. They kept the pre-Reformation faith, which recognised the Sovereign as their temporal head but the Pope as their spiritual head. Consequently their loyalty to the British Crown was suspect. So, in spite of their asertion of loyalty to the Crown and Government in temporal matters they were subjected to a series of harsh Penal Laws designed to encourage them to conform to the Protestant Church of England and keep them under surveillance. By the second half of the 18th century events began to show that their loyalty could be trusted, so that these Penal Laws were gradually repealed between 1778 and 1829.
Before 1791 it was illegal for Catholics to have Chapels within towns of Borough status, like Portsmouth. The Second Catholic Relied Act of 1791 allowed Catholics to open a Catholic Chapel in Portsmouth. A group of Catholic lay-people in the town appealed to the Catholic Bishop in London for a priest whom they would support. The first priest was John Cahill who had a Chapel in a private house in Unicorn Street. He was succeeded in 1794 by Joesph Knapp who opened a purpose-built Chapel in Prince George Street seating 300 people in 1796. This Chapel was enlarged in 1851 because of the ever-increasing number of Catholics soldiers in the British Army, about 30%, and Portsmouth was a major garrison town. By the late 1870s an even larger church was needed. The land that this Cathedral is built on was purchased from the War Department in 1877 because Portsmouth's defensive ramparts, a hundred metres to the west, had become redundant and were demolished.
The new church was opened for worship in August 1882 and was immediately made the Mother Church of the new Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth. The old Chapel was closed. The Cathedral wsa completed in four phases: 1882, the nave; 1886, the crossing; 1893, the chancel; 1906 narthex and west Porch. The Cathedral was badly damaged when enemy bombing in 1941 destroyed Bishop's House next door. Since restoration in 1950 after the war the inside of the Cathedral has been re-ordered three times in 1970, 1982, and 2001. Until 1884, the Cathedral, and Chapel that preceded it, were the only Catholic Churches in the Portsmouth area. In 1884 St Swithun's Church was opened in Southsea. There are now seven Catholic churches within the City of Portsmouth. Beisdes its function as the Mother Church of the Diocese, St John's Cathedral serves a parish of some six square kilometres with regular services.
The Cathedral may be described architecturally as 19th century French Gothic because it has a curved apse and shallow transepts. It was originally designed by John Crawley to have a tall spire at the south-west corner, but the underlying geology made this impossible. Crawley died just as building started and his partner Joseph Hansom took over the project and modified the design. The Church is built of Fareham Red Brick with Portland Stone dressings. Most of the stained-glass windows sustained bomb damage in 1941, especially those over the High Altar. The round window in the south transept was the only one not damaged. An elaborate baldacchino surmounting the high altar was removed in the 1970 reordering. The last part to be built was St Patrick's Chapel in 1924.
Now for the cache...
This multi cache requires you to make some observations outside and inside the Cathedral. At each point you will need a single digit value for the letters A to F, as the cache can be found at N50 47.ABC W001 05.DEF.
At the given coordinates, you will find a very impressive statue of St John the Evangelist. Look on the back of this statue and you will see a stone engraved with some text. On the second line of text, please count the number of letters in the fourth word. This equals A.
Now move a short way to the front of the Cathedral (West Doors). Each door is made from the same number of wooden panels. This number equals B.
You now need to enter the Cathedral via the South Doors (Trailhead given). You will find yourself in the West Porch. Along the western wall you will see several plaques dedicated to various people. Find the plaque concerning Edward Alexander Harding and you will see his age written on here. The last digit of his age equals C.
Proceed through the double glass doors into the Narthex. Turn right, and head to the South Alcove, if you look up and to your left you will see a shelf and some Roman numerals on the edge of it. The value of the Roman numerals is D.
Standing in the same position you can also see a rather impressive statue of St Peter, and an information board infront of it. On the left hand side of this information board is a bible passage from the Book of Matthew- the last digit in the numbers following 'Matthew' is E.
Turn around and walk to the statue directly opposite, on the information board there are details about the Sacred Heart Chapel. At the bottom right hand side of the information board is a year. The number that occurs twice in this date is F.
The checksum for all fifteen digits of the coordinates in 62.
You are looking for a small magnetic nano cache, unfortunately due to local cache saturation it is a short stroll away. The cache itself can be found 24/7 however due to the need to go inside the Cathedral, the information required can only be found whilst the Cathedral is open. Please be stealthy when retrieving the cache as the final GZ is almost always busy, the hint has made it nice and easy so hopefully too much searching will not be required. Good luck and happy hunting!
***CONGRATULATIONS STARBUG24 ON FTF***
If you would like to add to the Church Micro series yourself then please look here
http://churchmicro.co.uk/
There is also a Church Micro Stats & Information page that can be found at
http://www.15ddv.me.uk/geo/cm/ index.html