This festive season, the Royal Mail’s 2024 Christmas stamp collection contains a series of evocative snowy scenes of iconic UK cathedrals.
Illustrated by British artist Judy Joel, each stamp captures the fantastic thing about these sites dusted in winter snow, evoking a way of peace, tradition, and seasonal spirituality.
Five cathedrals across the UK are featured: Liverpool, Edinburgh, Armagh, Bangor, and Westminster. The latest stamps offer a tour through Britain’s architectural past and its spiritual heart. Each image highlights the cathedrals’ unique histories and cultural significance, giving a glimpse of each well-known and hidden details about each site.
Liverpool Cathedral is well known as the biggest cathedral in Britain and ranks because the fifth largest on this planet. This architectural giant, known for the world’s heaviest and highest ringing peal of bells, attracts countless visitors annually, not just for its grand scale but in addition for its imposing neo-Gothic design, which stands out dramatically against the Liverpool skyline.
Moving north to Scotland, St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Edinburgh appears in all its Victorian Gothic beauty. Celebrating its one hundred and fiftieth anniversary, the cathedral’s cornerstone was laid in 1874, and its triple spires mark it as certainly one of only three cathedrals within the UK with this unique feature, a distinction shared only with Lichfield and Truro. St Mary’s can be known for its pioneering spirit in music; it was the primary UK cathedral with a day by day choral service to ask girls to sing alongside boys, a progressive change made in 1978.
Across the Irish Sea, Northern Ireland’s St Patrick’s Cathedral in Armagh brings ancient history to this festive collection. Perched on the hill that offers the town its name, Ard Mhacha, the cathedral’s site is alleged to this point back to 445 AD, where Saint Patrick himself founded a church. Its architecture, shaped by centuries of reconstruction and restoration, is an eclectic mix that reflects the various epochs through which it has endured.
Wales also finds its place on this collection with Bangor Cathedral, a site steeped in Welsh history and legend. Dating back almost 1,500 years, it has withstood the turbulence of history, including episodes of destruction and reconstruction, and serves because the burial ground of notable Welsh princes. The cathedral is devoted to its Sixth-century founder, Saint Deiniol, anchoring it as a deeply significant site for the Welsh people.
Rounding off the gathering is Westminster Cathedral, the biggest Roman Catholic church in England and Wales. Though construction concluded in 1903, Westminster Cathedral stays unique resulting from its unfinished interior mosaics, which proceed to be crafted and added to this present day. The structure itself, with its Byzantine architecture, stands aside from the more Gothic style related to English cathedrals, making it an architectural marvel in its own right.
This 2024 stamp series offers greater than a festive touch; it presents a celebration of the UK’s Christian and architectural heritage, connecting modern observers with centuries of seasonal culture, faith, and history.
