Construction of the first stone church was begun in 1843 under the direction of
Aubrey Spencer, the first
Bishop of Newfoundland and Bermuda. Little progress was made on this relatively modest edifice beyond the laying of a cornerstone before Spencer resigned due to ill health. The stone church was destroyed in the
Great Fire of 1846. The present cathedral was begun in 1847 by
Edward Feild, the second Bishop of Newfoundland and Bermuda. Feild commissioned plans from a leading Gothic Revival architect,
George Gilbert Scott, who envisioned a more impressive cruciform structure, with varied ornamentation in the 12th-century English style. The nave, built between 1847 and 1850, served as the entire cathedral church for 35 years. Scott's assistant, architect
William Hay, oversaw the nave's construction. In the
City of Hamilton, in
Pembroke Parish (where ''St. John's Church
was already the parish church), Bermuda, a chapel-of-ease (designed by James Cranston of Oxford in 1844 and completed in 1869) named Trinity Church
was also erected, with an adjacent Bishop's Lodge
. This was destroyed by arson in 1884 and William Hay, who had been consulted on the construction of Trinity Church in 1848-1849 and again in 1862, was hired in 1885 with his partner, George Henderson, to design the current structure, which was completed in 1905 and became the Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity when the Bishop of Bermuda was established as separate from the Bishop of Newfoundland'' in 1919). Construction on the choir and transept section did not commence until 1880 and was completed in September 1885, under the direction of
Bishop James Kelly. The additions to the nave gave the cathedral the shape of a Latin cross. It continued the era of
Gothic Revival architecture in the construction of nineteenth-century Anglican churches in
Newfoundland. . The building was not completely restored until 1905. On July 8, 1892, in an unhappy coincidence to the fate of its chapel-of-ease in Bermuda, the cathedral was extensively damaged in the
Great Fire of 1892. The roof timbers ignited, which caused the roof to collapse, bringing the clerestory walls and piers in the nave down with it. The intense heat caused the lead to melt in the glass windows, resulting in the complete destruction of all but two; the sole surviving window can be seen in the Sacristy. Restoration of the Cathedral commenced in 1893, again under Kelly's direction. By 1895, the
Chancel and
Transepts had been rebuilt, while the Nave reached completion in 1905. The restored cathedral is renowned internationally as one of
North America's best ecclesiastical
Gothic Revival structures. The church was re-consecrated in a service on September 21, 1905. A window in the restored Cathedral was dedicated to Kelly, who died in 1907. In 1923 the Congolese-English sculptor
Mahomet Thomas Phillips, and his son Lancelot, completed a
reredos for the cathedral that took them 2,779 hours to create. The
Te Deum Window was donated in 1952 in memory of
Bermudian-born Sir
Joseph Outerbridge by his family. A large four-manual organ was constructed by
Casavant Frères in 1927. The Cathedral remains incomplete as the structure still lacks the spire which its designer, Scott, had envisioned. Although an engineering team has established that the proposed tower and steeple is structurally feasible, the cost was estimated to be $3,000,000. The people of the Cathedral Parish have no plans to add the spire. The cathedral was designated a
National Historic Site of Canada in 1979 as a nationally significant example of
Gothic Revival architecture. The building was also designated as a Registered Heritage Structure by the
Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador in 1991, and a City of St. John's Heritage Building in 1989. ==Design==