Westminster's Roman Candle

In 1853, in what Cardinal Newman called the 'second springtime' of English Catholic life, the idea of a cathedral in London began to germinate in the minds of Catholics. But more than forty years elapsed before the foundation stone was laid by Cardinal Herbert Vaughan on June 29th, 1895, and a vast basilica in an Italianate-Byzantine style began to rise behind a row of houses in Victoria Street. Immediately it invited criticism and derision.