File:Portsmouth Anglican Cathedral, Hampshire.jpg

English: Portsmouth is lucky to have two Cathedrals. The Anglican one, dedicated to St Thomas of Canterbury, is situated in whats known as 'Old Portsmouth'.

Although small as Cathedrals go, this building is unique. The establishment of the Diocese of Portsmouth, which had split from the Diocese of Winchester, in 1927 brought about significant changes. On 1 May of that year, the parish church of St Thomas of Canterbury became the pro-cathedral of the new diocese, becoming the second cathedral in Portsmouth, as the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St John the Evangelist had already opened in 1882. At a chapter meeting in October 1932, a first sketch plan for an extension to the church was submitted by Sit Charles Nicholson. He was called upon to extend the church to a size that would dignify its cathedral status.

The style that Nicholson chose is that of a round-arched 'Byzantine' style that echoed the 'classical' style of the late seventeenth century quire. By 1939 the outer quire aisles, the tower, the transepts and three bays of the nave had been completed.

The base of the seventeenth century tower had been opened up to form the tower arch.

However, with the Fall of France in June 1940 during World War II, work on the extension scheme stopped and the bays of the nave were blocked off with a 'temporary' brick wall. This wall remained there for over fifty years. During the Second World War, the Cathedral suffered minor damage to the windows and the roof. Sir Charles Nicholson died in 1949 and attempts headed by Field Marshal Montgomery to finish the structure in the 1960s proved unsuccessful due to substantive failure to find sufficient funds. However, as the building had been used for many years without its extension, it was quite usable and there was no urgency to finish the work.

By the mid 1980s, however, the "temporary" brick wall was found to have become unstable and in danger of collapse, which made the completion work pressing. The task of the architects was to find a solution to the problem of finishing Nicholson's truncated nave: the nave was originally intended to be longer, in the traditional style of an English cathedral, but the changing needs of the diocese meant that the building was finally built with a foreshortened nave, the final west wall being located close to where the temporary structure had been. Efforts were started to raise the £3 million necessary to carry out the plans. Work began in January 1990 and eventually a fourth bay of the nave, western towers, tower rooms, rose window, gallery, ambulatory, together with the stone altar beneath Nicholson's tester and the new stone font were added. In November 1991, the completed building, much smaller than the original plans envisaged, was consecrated in the presence of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.

The Cathedral is well worth a visit and is very light and very airy. It is not a well known landmark by tourists and so it is quite quiet at most times.