Saint John's Catholic Cathedral (Portsmouth) | Roman Catholic church

 cathedral, Roman Catholic church

Roman Catholic Cathedral for the Diocese of Portsmouth.
Opened on 10 August 1892.
Before 1791 it was illegal for Catholics to have Chapels within towns of Borough status, like Portsmouth. The Second Catholic Relief 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 Fr.John Cahill who had a Chapel in a private house in Unicorn Street. He was succeeded in 1794 by Fr.Joseph Knapp who opened a purpose-built Chapel in 1796 in Prince George Street to seat 300 people.
This Chapel was enlarged in 1851 because of the ever-increasing number of Catholic 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, 100 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.