Hanley Cathedral

The Gothic cathedral that stands in the city centre in Hanley, next to the Potteries Shopping Centre, is currently being rebuilt following a fire caused by a faulty lava lamp. What not many people know is that this will be the seventh place of worship constructed on the site over the past 1,500 years.

Hanley Cathedral, yesterday

Although the present cathedral is recognised as a place for Christian pilgrimages, it is considered mysterious by many other faiths. Before the Romans inhabited this region on the River Trent, some ancient priests of an unknown religion constructed a stargate on the site.

The Druids, Celtic priests of Britain, made the stargate a centre for the study of their religion. Here a Druid priest had a vision of a virgin who would bear a child; this chosen one would go on to spread the Celtic beliefs around the world. To honour the vision, an image of the virgin with the babe feeding at her bountiful bosom was carved on a giant palm tree (widespread in Stoke before the industrial revolution) and placed next to the power point within the stargate. When the first Christians slaughtered the locals and appropriated the area in the sixth century, they built the first church on the site of the stargate and placed the image of the virgin in the church’s crypt, afraid of the powerful busty imagery.



The Duke of Bradwell burned down the first church in 743 during the Staffordshire Civil War; Vikings destroyed the second in 858 fearing the stargate still worked and would lead to an invasion by enemy races. The third and fourth churches were burned down in 962 and 1020 by chip pan fires, and the first of the cathedrals on the site was destroyed by partygoers in 1194.

Each time the place of worship was burned or crumbled, faithful Christian townspeople bullied builders, architects and peasants into rebuilding the structure using blackmail and threats. But the identity of the master builders who constructed the majestic Hanley Cathedral that stands there today remains unknown. It is thought by some that friendly beings entered through the stargate, believed to be still buried beneath the cathedral, and built the holy place.