Architecture Update: Liverpool listing

THE Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool, built in the Sixties to the designs of Sir Frederick Gibberd (with a crypt by Sir Edwin Lutyens) has been listed Grade 2* by Peter Brooke, Secretary of State for National Heritage. It also becomes the first post-war cathedral to receive grant aid from English Heritage - pounds 1.5m over the next three years - towards the pounds 6m needed to complete major repairs to its space-capsule style concrete structure and roof. Mr Brooke said: 'The cathedral is clearly a major imaginative work of Sixties architecture and one that has found a place in the affections of many people on Merseyside.' Its striking and elegant lantern tower has come to be recognised as an entirely successful addition to the Liverpool skyline, complementing the neo-Gothic grandeur of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's Anglican cathedral, which stands at the other end of Hope Street.