Issue 42 summer 24 web - Flipbook - Page 120
Above, Romilly Craze designed Archbishop Amigo’s effigy monument in 1958: it was relocated to the North door in 2023 with the
seminary statues of SS Augustine & Thomas of Canterbury
Commemorating the sacramental presence of those
priests who have served the faithful in this place, made
by the cathedral’s preferred joiners and carvers to my design, the new nameboards are of oak veneered plywood,
ensuring stability against the external wall, with solid oak
and boxwood trim, painted lettering and polychromed
crests: the three crests [which are not formally heraldic
coats-of-arms] are free-carved and painted limewood on
back fixings, and can be changed at future dates. The
diocesan bishops are identified from others, each with
their blazon painted on ebony.17 A cruciform staff echoes
a consistent detail designed since 2003 in the gates,
balustrades and lighting at cathedral.
of the cathedral - properly belongs in the ‘sacramental
aisle’, in the company of Mother Cabrini, Cardinal Wojtyła, Provost Doyle, and Archbishop Cowderoy, where
the current ordering of devotions in this church honours
those whose presence actually graced the cathedral.
The plaster of this wall, much damaged by previous crack
repairs and alterations, has been renewed in the same
specifications as previously researched for North aisle
plasterwork.18
The monument stands on the 1958 floor slab. The
Granwood floor tiles remain in place under the monument. Structural analysis prior to installation indicated a
need to lay down a reinforced bearing layer to resist the
risk of the floor screed cracking.
Archbishop Amigo
Archbishop Peter Amigo19 championed the rebuilding
but died before its commencement. What became of his
effigy monument removed from the North transept in
2023 was, in part, generated by the theological ordering
of the cathedral’s ‘spiritual plan’. Amigo’s effigy - of a
personage, pastor and bishop who physically trod the floor
GPRS20 data exactly located the position of under-floor
water-filled heating pipes so the monument is set on a
stainless steel spreader with resilient pads carrying load in
between the pipes.
Craze’s post-war reconstruction provided relatively few
uninterrupted, blank segments of wall. Locating Craze’s
table monument for Amigo as a back-stop to the North
aisle pews creates a “point of arrival” at the Holy Door, in
the place where the roll call of bishops and deans and the
memorial of those buried in cathedral have been newly
set up.
Thus Amigo has found his place, alongside his fellow
priests in the new locus of remembrance, associated with
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