Elisabeth Frink’s bronze lectern for Basil Spence’s Coventry Cathedral was her first major commission. She was known at the time for her sculptures and drawings of birds – one made while she was a student was exhibited in 1952 and bought immediately by the Tate Gallery – and the lectern was to take the traditional form of an eagle. Unlike these early works, where the figures seemed aggressive but also vulnerable, and often had militaristic overtones, Frink’s lectern eagle is confident, in control of its powers – Spence thought it looked ‘as if it has just settled there after a long flight’. Its outspread wings, whose blocky, textured feathers Frink created by setting kindling into the plaster, echo the flock of wooden thorn-like shapes in the canopy of the choir stalls (built to designs by Spence’s partner Antony Blee) behind.

The project for the ‘Black Madonna and Child of Covid-19 Lockdown’ (Our Lady of Kilburn) arose from the community’s experience during COVID lockdown. St Mary’s is a Black majority congregation, with most being women of working age. Many were aware of significant racial and gender differences in the effects COVID had.

Originally sculpted for the chapel at Kelham Hall in Nottinghamshire, and commissioned by the Society of the Sacred Mission, the Rood now sits in the south nave of St John the Divine where the SSM was founded in the 19th Century.

Behind the altar table in Holy Trinity Church in Blythburgh, Suffolk, is a powerful altarpiece by Laurence Edwards. Cast in bronze from the mud, wood and hogweed that can be found all around the Suffolk locality, Edward’s sculpture brings the precise beauty of the outside marsh into the church in a way that combines imagination, emotion and spirit.

In response to the invitation by the Westminster Cathedral Art and Architecture Committee to Giacomo Manzu that he should produce a low relief bronze wall panel showing St Thérèse of Lisieux for the Cathedral, Manzu submitted a sketch in 1956. This was immediately approved and the commission awarded. Manzu then proceeded to design and produce the bronze in Italy with casting taking place in Milan.

Rona Smith’s North Window panel is constructed from a web of whirling squares suspended in the window alcove. The squares spiral out from a central 'eye' whilst the panel itself curves into the space forming a sculptural arc which echoes the two dimensional pattern.

In 2014, Ripon Cathedral acquired an installation acknowledging the Great War. ‘A Tribute to Wilfred Owen’ by Charles Gurrey is set on the wall above the altar in the chapel of Peace and Justice at the west end of the north aisle of the nave in the position of a reredos.