TODAY, Truro Cathedral is an iconic Grade-1 Listed landmark, but ever since it was completed in 1910, its design has divided opinion, writes Judith Field.

The first phase of the building opened in 1887 with great fanfare. “This beautiful building is given us by God to be a parable,” declared the second Bishop, George Wilkinson, “and I want you to believe that there is a mystery around it… I want you to ask yourselves questions - what is it, why is it like that, what is its meaning?”

Twenty-five years later, in the more cynical world of Edwardian Britain, the son of the first Bishop came up with an unexpected answer. AC Benson, a successful author best-remembered today for the lyrics of Land of Hope and Glory, was enjoying a New Year break at the Riviera Palace Hotel, Penzance. One drizzly day, he took a train to Truro, and he was not impressed.

“We couldn’t see much,” he wrote in his diary, “but the country is hideous with all its mine-heaps: Redruth an accursed city.” Worse still: “The Cath. doesn’t look well from the station, so narrow and top-heavy, like a bunch of carrots”!

Fortunately, comparing the cathedral to a root vegetable didn’t catch on, but Edwin Foore’s 1925 guidebook damned it with faint praise. “An admirable effort of modern architecture… Truro Cathedral is a credit to all concerned; but at best it has an un-English aspect… and as a whole, it resembles no English cathedral in existence,” he wrote, possibly overlooking the fact that Truro is a Cornish cathedral, consciously designed by its renowned architect, John Loughborough Pearson, to reflect historic links with Brittany.

The controversy continued. The poet John Betjeman was a fan of Pearson’s “vistas and variety” and the first Dean, Henry Lloyd, wrote in the 1960s that “the spires, soaring above us, are designed to lift our hearts”.

Others disagreed. Simon Jenkins gave Truro only two stars in his 2016 book England’s Cathedrals, for instance. His judgment that “the building shows no trace of Cornish culture or tradition” would have surprised the 1870s Building Committee, since they despatched the first Clerk of Works, James Bubb, to visit every quarry in Cornwall to find suitable stones.

The clock-tower is green only because it is covered in Cornish copper, and narrow stems of blue-green Polyphant from Bodmin Moor decorate columns in the nave. Anyone viewing the Cornish saints and notables represented in stained glass, carvings, pictures and statues could scarcely fail to notice that the story of Cornwall is deeply embedded throughout.

Roses for Pearson’s grandest project far outnumber raspberries (or carrots!). The Royal Institute of British Architects awarded him its Gold Medal in 1880. He was also a member of the Royal Academy, and his tomb is in Westminster Abbey. But the finest tribute to him is that he succeeded in his stated aim - to design a real place of worship, that brings you to your knees. His tall Gothic cathedral continues to be loved today.