Crafting Sacred Spaces
Buildings constructed for sacred purposes are among the most ambitious architectural achievements in history.
Genius Loci
Translated from Latin as 'Spirit of Place', this relates an idea rooted in Roman mythology, where the genius was a protective spirit associated with a place. No building is more essential to historic urban form than a temple or church for worship.
The Spire
The spire is the dominant urban form, a cypher for the heart of any community, even in the secular age, these structures are like maypoles, figuratively protecting the buildings in their stead. Originally built to house the peeling bells so they could be overheard over rooftops.
The Victorian Era
With increased population, urbanisation and religious tolerance, buildings for worship and commemoration underwent a boom over the course of the 19th & 20th centuries.
South Elevation to the United Reformed Church, South Street, Farnham, Surrey (1871) by Wonnacott, TThe Blower Foundation
Often, these new churches, chapels, memorials and other like structures were built anew and while there was much reconstruction and restoration, sacred building was a true Victorian vocation, even a civic responsibility.
Stone details to the United Reformed Church, South Street, Farnham, Surrey (1871) by Wonnacott, TThe Blower Foundation
An eye for detail
Along with railway stations, banks, schools, and other more prosaic buildings, almost no expanding town escaped new church building. True to the Victorian ideal of building an authentic English architecture, they mostly followed the Gothic styles of mediaeval church builders.
These styles harked back to the great monuments of mediaeval craftsmanship, and although brick was widely used, monumental stone was also still preferred where possible, either dressed or often times rusticated in tune with social ideals of the time for a distinctly native sensibility.
Proposed Church at Addlestone, Albert Road, Addlestone, Surrey (1938) by Stedman, AJThe Blower Foundation
Non-conformism
There was growth in non-conformist faith groups in the recent two centuries, with smaller congregations and whose needs differed from Established Church communities. There was also a flurry of building for the Roman Catholic faith as persecution receded into history.
The newly built Palace of Westminster of the early 19th century is of course the key example of how Victorians wished to make sense of their monumental architecture in an urban context. Many Victorian church buildings evoked these architectural forms.
Proposed alterations and additions to St. Peters Church, West Molesey, Surrey for Rev'd E.A. Sydenham (1931) by Stedman, AJThe Blower Foundation
Rubble stone walls with dressed stone details around windows, plinths, and junctions are a defining feature, especially in small chapels and non-conformist churches, where modest scale echoes early Anglo-Saxon architecture over grand elements like spires or height.
Chapels
Chapels, for much smaller congregations would also tend towards an almost domestic scale and are very much of a family with the Victorian school building programme of the era. In fact, many of the (church) schools are indistinguishable with the smaller church of the same period.
Ambition
Even so, ambition remained and some larger or emerging new towns of the 19th century would commission quite monumental church building. Cathedrals were restored but not built, leaving a market for large churches. Many of these were built in brick and stone.
Drawing of proposed war memorial at St Laurence Church, Seale, Surrey (1946) by Aylwin, GThe Blower Foundation
War Memorials
While brick could suit a church, often with stone ornamentation, only stone was deemed appropriate for memorials due to its durability and long-standing association with remembrance.
Churches are perhaps amongst the most romantic of the buildings we have inherited. We have a complicated relationship with them though, as they are sort of redundant in some ways, hard to use, expensive to maintain and not always suitable for new forms of worship.
Fortunately, unlike other beloved buildings, many built for worship or commemoration are protected, Listed or communally owned. After much destruction during and after War, they are less threatened than in recent decades, although they are costly for their congregations.
The struggle is now how to maintain them or find suitable alternative uses. But Imagine a place without its genius locus?
Watercolour of Elstead Church, Westbrook Hill, Elstead, Surrey by Michael Blower (2003) by Blower, MThe Blower Foundation
Genius
It is hardly possible to think how the English townscape and landscape would appear without these treasured structures.
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