Tag: william thackeray

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Architecture Art People

SABBATH PLUS ONE Church of the Holy Sepulchre Jerusalem + Queen Helena

Heir of All Things

“They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means ‘the Place of the Skull’).” John 19:17

That palimpsest of architectural taste, a panoply of passion, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre marks “the unexpected … unforgettable” (Pierre Loti, La Galilée, 1895) spot. Or at least one of the spots identified as the place where Christ was crucified. It’s the most ecumenical building imaginable, shared by a cluster of Christian denominations: Armenian Apostolic; Catholic; Coptic; and Ethiopian, Greek and Syriac Orthodox. Priests and their acolytes competitively stride round, swinging incense, ringing bells and chanting loudly. Emperor Constantine the Great built the founding church in the 4th century to commemorate his conversion to Christianity. “The most magnificent of his monuments,” claim Teddy Kellek and Moshe Pearlman in Jerusalem Sacred City of Mankind (1968).

Emperor Constantine’s mother Queen Helena had identified the site based on the discovery of the remains of three crosses and a nearby tomb known as ‘Anastasis’ (Greek for resurrection). “Just the place for a basilica,” Evelyn Waugh imagines she would say in his historical novel of 1950, Helena. Adrian Wolff summarises Her Majesty’s achievements in Israel: A Chronology (2004), “327 AD Queen Helena (St Helena), a devout Christian, travels to Palestina, identifying original Christian Holy Sites connected with Jesus, constructing Byzantine style churches on these sites.” Todd Fink (Jerusalem and Central Israel, 2021) expands on Queen Helena’s oeuvre, “She helped establish the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the Church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives (currently known as the Pater Noster Church), the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.” Reverend Andy Rider (Life is For Giving, 2018) adds, “God’s presence is thicker in ancient churches through hundreds of years of prayers. Step into it!”

William Thackeray gasps in Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo (2017), “The situation of the tomb (into which, be it authentic or not, no man can enter without a shock of breathless fear, and deep and awful self humiliation) must have struck all travellers.” Through the centuries, battling the pedagogy of the unpredictable, the church was destroyed, rebuilt, set on fire, hit by an earthquake and finally restored by King Abdullah II of Jordan. The Rock of Calvary is encased in glass: a divine vitrine. Private tour guide Ibrahim Ghazzawi suggests, “The crosses would likely have been wedged into cracks in the rock.” There are three domes; Orthodox Christians believe church domes represent heaven’s vaults. Philip Larkin’s poem Church Going (The Less Deceived, 1955) contains the line “A serious house on serious earth”. It is what it was.

Daphne du Maurier (Not After Midnight and Other Stories, 1971) describes a tour guide’s experience: “On, on, ever upwards, ever climbing, the dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre rearing above him … the Church of the Holy Sepulchre enveloped him. He was aware of darkness, scaffolding, steps, the smell of many bodies and much incense.” The church contains the final five Stations of the Cross. The earlier nine Stations line Via Dolorosa. “‘The royal banners forward go, the cross shines forth in mystic glow,’” quotes The Right Reverend Rowan Williams in God With Us: The Meaning of the Cross and Resurrection, Then and Now (2017). “To sing that hymn for the first time each successive year is for many of us the real beginning of the Passion season.”

Andre Moubarak’s 2017 guide One Friday in Jerusalem sets out the importance of Via Dolorosa, “On a narrow street only 2,000 feet long in Old Jerusalem, the storey of redemptive history drew to its agonising glorious climax. Maronites served as the first tour guides of the Holy Land for visiting Europeans – first the Crusaders, then pilgrims.”

Centre for Action and Contemplation teacher Cynthia Bourgeault believes, “The Passion is really the mystery of all mysteries, the heart of the Christian faith experience. By the word ‘Passion’ we mean the events which end Jesus’s earthly life: His betrayal, trial, execution on a cross, and death.” Reverend Jennie Hogan recommends, “Christ makes the way for us.”

Reverend Robert Willis details in The Architectural History of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem (1849), “The Church in its general plan may be described as a Romanesque cruciform structure, having a circular nave to the West, a north and stransept, and a short Eastern limb or choir terminated by an apse. An aisle runs through the circular nave, on three of its sides. Also there is an aisle at the end of each transept, and on the east and west sides of each transept; and an aisle passes around the apse, and has chapels radiating from it, in the usual manner.” Henry Van Dyke (Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land: Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit, 1908) mentions its “dim and shadowy” interior. Borrowing from Joseph Roth’s The Wandering Jews (1927), “Candles burn now for all the dead. Other candles are lit for the living.”

Simon Goldhill notes in Jerusalem City of Longing (2008), “The first shock to anyone used to the great cathedrals of Europe such as Chartres or Notre Dame, or ever to the vast institution of the Vatican, is just how hard it is to find the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.” This unresolved siting is matched only by the architecture: what the aforementioned author calls “the irredeemable confusion of the church itself”. George Knight (The Holy Land Handbook, 2011) considers it “gangly and unplanned”.

“When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified Him there, along with the criminals – one on His right, the other on His left.” Luke 23:33

(Extract with alternative imagery from the bestseller SABBATH PLUS ONE Jerusalem and Tel Aviv).

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Architects Architecture

Church Hill House Model Farm + Drummond Hotel + Presbyterian Church + Bridge House + Let’s Really Talk About The Unsung Hero of Early 19th Century Irish Palladianism Richard Suter Who Transformed Blink and You’ll Miss It Ballykelly Londonderry

Northern Lights

Breaking the fourth wall to borrow theatre speak, not architectural parlance, we’re all up for a challenge but there’s only so much paparazzo lenses and post shoot editing can achieve. A sea of car parking around County Londonderry’s finest Palladian villa may be an unfortunate modern necessity for its new use as a private hospital but it doesn’t make for the most photogenic foreground. And so we made use of a series of strategically placed shrubs and trees to camouflage the vehicles. Our intelligent readership (more fourth wall breakage) will ably piece together the jigsaw of photographs to get the full picture of that tremendous quinquepartite façade.

English novelist William Thackeray, passing through the village on his 1842 tour of Ireland, was a fan despite not being a nonconformist enthusiast: “In Ballykelly, besides numerous simple, stout, brick built dwellings for the peasantry, with their shining windows and trim garden plots, is a Presbyterian Meeting House, so well built, substantial, and handsome, so different from the lean, pretentious, sham Gothic ecclesiastical edifices which have been erected in late years in Ireland, that it can’t fail to strike the tourist who has made architecture his study or his pleasure. The gentleman’s seats in the district are numerous and handsome; and the whole movement along the road betokened cheerfulness and prosperous activity.”

Ballykelly has been the subject of academic research by Donald Girvan in Buildings of North Derry, 1974, and The History, Architecture and Planning of the Estates of The Fishmongers’ Company in Ulster by James Curl, 1981. Both are Ulster Architectural Heritage Society publications. The land where the village stands was granted by James I in 1613 to the Fishmonger’s Company, one of the ancient Livery Companies of the City of London. The Company’s English architect Richard Suter and Irish builder James Turnbull combined their design and delivery acumen to transform Ballykelly into a village of architectural note. Buff pink sandstone has never looked so good.

James relates, “One of Suter’s first and most happy compositions came off his drawing board and the designs were realised in 1824. This was Church Hill, the Model Farm for the Estate. The cost £900 and was built of Dungiven sandstone by James Turnbull. It consists of a two storey house, three windows wide, with a low hipped roof and wide eaves. High rubble walls link this central building to the single storey rectangular pavilions that again have hipped roofs. These pavilions have semicircular headed windows set in blind arched recesses. The Ordinance Survey Memoirs thought the farm was too ambitious and expensive to be relevant to the circumstances of most farms in the parish. However, the Model Farm remains one of the most distinguished buildings on the estate.”

Church Hill is Palladian in style and function. Palladio’s villas of Veneto were farmhouses. The lefthand pavilion of Church Hill was stables; the righthand one, stores. Behind the connecting high walls lay a walled farmyard. The pavilions were increased in height by 75 centimetres to allow another floor to be inserted into them: the change of material to brick makes this apparent. The overall impact still gives a powerful punch: a noble design separated from the road by a meadow. The central block is almost square in footprint with a double piled roof. In 1988 planning permission was granted to convert the Model Farm into the North West Independent Hospital. A two storey extension for 18 additional bedrooms and services was approved in 2002 for Kingsbridge Private Hospital. The façade remains uninterrupted, a mini Russborough.

Don’t blink when driving through Ballykelly for high up on the opposite side of the road are two more of Richard Suter’s accomplished set pieces: Drummond House (now Drummond Hotel) and Ballykelly Presbyterian Church. The bare pilasters and clean mouldings of Drummond House are late neoclassicism at its most reticent. Donald records, “Turnbull created Drummond House to designs by Suter as a ‘commodious house built by the Fishmongers’ Company for the residence of their agent’. The designs dated from 1822 show Drummond House was a handsome structure, double fronted, three windows wide, and two storeys high. It had the stripped down neoclassical manner to be found at the schools anad the two churches, and had dressed sandstone corner pilasters. Windows had segmental heads and elegant sashes. The porch was added by Turnbull.”

Richard Suter replaces Palladio with Inigo Jones as his chief inspiration for the Presbyterian Church. The boldness of the 30 degree high pediment and deep overhang with moulded soffits are straight from St Paul’s Church Covent Garden, London. Over to Donald: “Ballykelly Presbyterian Church was begun in 1826 and completed in 1827. There is a two storey arrangement of windows as would be expected in galleried churches. The upper windows have segmental, and the lower have straight heads, arranged in six bays along the length of the church, and flanking the central blind arch in which the pedimented entrance doorcase is set. Over the blind arch is a massive keystone. Once more, the building is constructed of coarsed rubble with Dungiven sandstone dressings, and once again the masonry is of superlative quality. Glazing bars are of cast iron.”

Having driven past Church Hill on one side and Drummond Hotel and the Presbyterian Church on the other, still don’t blink. There’s one more architectural treat in store courtesy of our favourite architect and builder duo. Donald Girvan tells all: “Bridge House, 1829. Builder James Turnbull. Cost £2,000. A fine two storey, five bay Dungiven sandstone house, with attic. It was originally the house of the dispensary surgeon and the mark where the dispensary door was can still be seen between the first two bays on the left. Above hung the Dispensaries’ Arms, which the Ordnance Survey Memoirs felt ‘were too thick and clumsy, like the house itself’. The house is three bays deep with extensive offices behind. It is attractively set at an angle on the road.” In 2002 planning permission was granted to restore and convert Bridge House to three apartments and develop its surroundings for 17 townhouses.