Issue 41 Spring web - Flipbook - Page 70
Jonathan Louth
ARCONSULTING
Above, Craze’s flat roofs of 1958 on Pugin’s aisles created a blind
Triforium& Clerestorey that abut Pugin’s Westwork awaiting an
unrealised spire
Geoffrey Clarke [sculpture] and George Edmund Street
[Apse] in Bruce George’s Royal Military Chapel of 1963
now hosting Harrison & Harrison’s new orchestral organ
Development Advice from an Architectural Perspective
years before his canonisation] statues in the niches of a
stone screen or relics in boxes on a wall are just displays:
admittedly a ‘spur’ to thought, to devotion and contemplation but not yet a ‘place’ of prayer.
Conservation and Consultancy for the Built Environment
www.jonathanlouth.co.uk
References
1. cf. The Victorian Web>Home>Visual Arts>
Architecture>Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852),
https://victorianweb.org
By contrast, one can see that a relic, in a reliquary, with a
likeness, at an architectural place, interpreted with embellishments by an artist, becomes a place of prayer and
pilgrimage.
2. Ps.120 to Ps.134, the fifteen Psalms of Ascents each with a
superscription Shir Hama’aloth, sung by Jewish pilgrims
travelling up to Jerusalem for three great feast
And in order to site such places of pilgrimage one wants
to look at the sequence of Arrival, Gathering, Reception,
Adoration, Communion, Devotion, Private Prayer, and
Fellowship, within the logic of the plan of the great
church. One can learn from catholic traditions of private
devotion at the shrines after the Mass and defer the
protestant rush to fellowship over coffee.
3. Ps. 127 V.1 The Cathedral Psalter version
4. The Equilibrium between Conservation and Spirituality was
the theme of the 2023 European Cathedrals Conference held in
Malta and Pisa
5. ed. Oscar Verkaaik 2013: 25
6. Irvine 2013: 25
In his second article, Jonathan Louth will expound the
sacramental and devotional zones underlying the
architectural plan of St George’s cathedral and report on
the most recent insertion of shrines and statuary at the
cathedral.
7. John ch.14 v.1ii
8. Dowd 2022: 84
9. Cited in Dowd 2022: 143
10. cf. Toulouse: https://www.khanacademy.org/ humanities/medieval-world/romanesque-art/beginners-guide-romanesque/a/pilgrimage-routes-and-the-cult-of-the-relic
11. www.southwark-rc-cathedral.org.uk (virtual tour by
www.views4d.com)
12. Designed by Craze, the Lady chapel and Baptistery were constructed in 1963 and 1966 under executive architects, The
Broadbent Partnership
13. Ps. 125 v.2 Church of the Servant version
Bibliography
Verkaaik, Oscar. ed., Religious Architecture: Anthropological
Perspectives. Amsterdam (2013 Amsterdam University Press)
Irvine, Richard D.G., ‘Stability, Continuity, Place: An English
Benedictine Monastery as a Case Study in Counterfactual Architecture.’ (in Verkaaik, Oscar. ed., 2013 as above: p.25)
Dowd, Mark, My Tsunami Journey: The Quest for God in a
Broken World. Eugene, Oregon (2022 Wipf and Stock)
Stainless steel gates were constructed by Steel Options Ltd:
the Holy Door by Universal Stone Ltd and joinery by A W
Gowers Ltd.
i
i
Conservation & Heritage Journal
68
