To mark our anniversary, we have invited 50 Catholics to choose a person from the past 175 years whose life has been a personal inspiration to them and an example of their faith at its best Church architects have to perform a double act. From the outside, the buildings need to imaginatively state “church” to the passer-by. Inside, the space has to communicate the grandeur of God and yet offer intimacy, suggesting the possibility of relationship between the human and the divine.Joseph Hansom achieved this with a magnificent series of Catholic churches and cathedrals. Born in 1803 into a Catholic family in York, Joseph Aloysius Hansom was first apprenticed as a joiner, later qualified as an architect and set up in business in 1828. His work included secular buildings such as Bi