Then at the end of the 15th century, James Stanley II (warden 1485–1506 and later Bishop of Ely 1506–1515) was responsible for rebuilding the nave and collegiate choir with high clerestory windows; also commissioning the late-medieval wooden internal furnishings, including the pulpitum, choir stalls and the nave roof supported by angels with gilded instruments.

[7][b] Construction of the predecessor parish church between the Rivers Irk and Irwell and an ancient watercourse crossed by the Hanging Bridge started in 1215 within the confines of the Baron's Court beside the manor house on the site of Manchester Castle.

A priest for more than 50 years, he was granted a licence from King Henry V and Pope Martin V to establish a collegiate church in Manchester in 1421.

He appointed John Huntingdon as the college's first warden who, between 1422 and 1458, rebuilt the eastern arm of the parish church to provide the collegiate choir.

James's stepmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort was mother of Henry VII and through their alliance with the Tudor dynasty the Stanleys acquired both fabulous wealth and access to architects and craftsmen working on royal commissions.

On stylistic grounds, the chancel arcades and clerestory of the cathedral are attributed to John Wastell, the architect for the completion of Kings College Chapel, Cambridge.

[10] James Stanley was responsible for the embellishment of the nave roof with supports in the form of fourteen life-size angel minstrels; and for the endowment of his own chantry chapel (now destroyed) near the north-east corner, in which he was buried in 1515.

Its future was uncertain when Elizabeth I succeeded in 1559, but was assured when she granted a new charter in 1578, allowing a warden, four fellows, two chaplains, four singing men and four choristers.

[2] In the early 16th century an almost complete sequence of chantry chapels was constructed along the north and south sides of the church creating a double aisle around the parochial nave, which is consequently much wider than it is long.

On the north side, William Radcliffe of Ordsall Hall endowed the Holy Trinity Chapel in the northwest corner in 1498.

[11] The brass from atop Stanley's tombchest was rescued from the wreckage, and remounted vertically against the rebuilt north wall of the Regiment Chapel.

The western chapels are no longer demarcated, as the screens that divided them have been removed giving the appearance of double aisles on either side of the nave.

In practice, this religious duty fell on the pastoral chaplain employed by the Warden and fellows; who from 1790 to 1821 was the eccentric figure of the Revd.

[12] As the population of Manchester increased further; so the numbers of christenings, weddings and funerals celebrated in the collegiate church also grew.

Under the Ecclesiastical Commissioners Act 1840, the warden and fellows of the collegiate church were translated into a dean and canons in preparation for becoming the cathedral of the new Diocese of Manchester which came into effect in 1847.

All stained-glass windows were blown out, the organ-case over the pulpitum was destroyed, and the medieval choir stalls toppled inwards so as to meet one another.

The walls and internal piers were originally constructed in a dark purple-brown Collyhurst sandstone formed in the Early Permian period.

This damaged the structure so severely that most internal and external stonework had to be replaced in the later 19th century restorations in buff-grey Fletcher Bank Grit from Ramsbottom.

Basil Champneys added the vestry, canons' library and western porches in 1898; while Percy Worthington provided further accommodation to the South-east, originally as a choir school, but subsequently converted to offices.

[16] The nave roof brackets are supported by fourteen angel sculptures, each playing a different late medieval instrument, believed to be the gift of James Stanley II.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon's poetical illustration, Collegiate Church, Manchester, to an engraving of a picture of the interior by Thomas Allom was published in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1833.

[23] In the course of the 19th century restorations of the interior, the cathedral was provided with an organ mounted over the medieval pulpitum in an elaborate case designed by George Gilbert Scott.

Notable previous organists include Edward Betts (d.1767), Joseph John Harris (1848–1869), Frederick Bridge (1869–75), Sydney Nicholson (1908–1919), Norman Cocker (1943–1954), Allan Wicks (1954–1962) and Gordon Stewart (1981–1992).

These scholarships were subsequently modified in the 1970s, so as to support both girls' and boys' voices; the first statutory choir in the Church of England to make this change.