The Old Church of Saint Thomas (1851) Restoration of a Landmark Sydney Church : 5

This rare image is reproduced from a glass plate negative in the collection of the NSW State Archives.  It was taken on the railway lines running eastward from Summer Hill towards Petersham in 1885 or 1886.

A section of the image was discovered to depict the old church of Saint Thomas of Canterbury (founded 1851) and the adjacent Catholic cemetery.  The cemetery, as shewn in this photograph, extended from the church fully to the righthand side of the image.  It is believed that almost 4000 burials took place in the cemetery, but all of the graves were relocated in the first 40 years of the twentieth century.

The image was digitally enhanced by The Saint Bede Studio.

Click on the image for an enlarged view.

Restoration of a Landmark Sydney Church : 3 The Old Church of S' Thomas (1851)

Lewisham's first Catholic church was built when the city of Sydney was less than 65 years old.  In 1851, when this church was commenced, Lewisham was known as Canterbury and was a village some seven kilometres south-west of the centre of Sydney. It is thought that this early church was given its name because of the village where it was built, but hallowed by the name of the great English mediaeval martyr, Saint Thomas Becket, who was murdered in his own Cathedral of Canterbury in 1170.  Subsequently, the district Canterbury became known as Petersham and Lewisham, all English names.

Figure 1.
This photograph depicts the chancel of old Saint
Thomas' church and the graves of a number of
Australian pioneering priests.
From this photograph we see a fine four-light tracery
window in the east wall of the sanctuary.
Part of the two-room sacristy is shewn on the left.

The old church was designated Saint Thomas of Canterbury when its foundation stone was laid in 1851 by the coadjutor bishop of Sydney, the Right Rev'd Charles Henry Davis OSB.  Thus far, research has failed to reveal the name of the local architect and builder of Saint Thomas' church, but it is reasonable to assume that the design was derived from plans prepared for the use of the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney either by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin or by Charles Hansom, the renowned Gothic Revival English architects.

The laying of the foundation stone in May, 1851, was reported in the Sydney Catholic newspaper The Freeman's Journal :

On Monday last, the first stone of a new Church at Petersham was blessed by the Right Rev. the Bishop Coadjutor, assisted by the Clergy and Choir of the Cathedral. The Church is to be dedicated under the invocation of St. Thomas of Canterbury. It will be of simple but strictly correct architecture in the Early English style, with nave, chancel, sacristy, and, we believe, a tower, and spire.

The old church was not very large, but fine in its proportions and charming in its appearance.  All its Gothic detailing was "correct" and well built.  It comprised a nave and separate chancel, both made from stone, and roofed with slate.  It had an entrance porch on the northern side of its nave, in the usual position for small churches of this design.  A two-room sacristy with pitched-roofs projected from the southern wall of the chancel.  Evidently one of these rooms was also intended to provide accommodation for the resident or visiting priest.  No details have been uncovered of the appearance of the church's interior, but it is certain that the nave ceiling would have been of open-timber work, as all the pioneering Sydney churches were.

Figure 2.
This photograph of an old English
church shews a twin-gabled
bellcote similar to the one which
surmounted the western facade
of old Saint Thomas' church.

Although there is a reference in The Freeman's Journal report of the church having a tower and spire, these were not part of the completed building.  But the distinctive feature of the old church was a twin-gabled bellcote over the western facade.  Bellcotes were not an uncommon feature of nineteenth Australian churches, but very few had the twin-arrangement.  Two bells were hung in this bellcote.

Old Saint Thomas' did service as the parish church for only 37 years before it was replaced by a larger stone church built a very little distance away.  In those intervening years, however, a very large graveyard grew around the church containing the remains of around 4000 pioneering Catholics.  Australia's first Catholic bishop, John Bede Polding OSB, was laid to rest in this cemetery in 1877.  Many other pioneering Benedictine monks and secular priests were also buried in that ground, some of whom remain buried in the precinct.

Figure 3.

Old Saint Thomas of Canterbury's church, Lewisham, as it appeared in the late 1870s.

Surrounding the church is the cemetery in which burials commenced from around 1865.

Copyright of the Saint Bede Studio.

Over the intervening years, all but a handful of those gravestones have disappeared, along with the handsome structure of Old Saint Thomas'.  When it was demolished in 1939, its stonework was re-used to make substantial fences around the church ground which are everywhere in evidence today.

Figure 4.
The substantial stone wall in the foreground was built
from the stone walls of old Saint Thomas' church.
From the quantity of stone now forming such walls
around the churchyard, it is obvious that
the old church was taken down stone by stone.
Copyright The Saint Bede Studio

Figure 5.
Buried upside down in a concrete path behind the present church is a capstone from
one of the gables of the old church of Saint Thomas. The tracery, which can be seen 
in one face of the stone, was carved on each of the four sides.
This stone would have sat at the apex of the eastern gable of the nave
or of the chancel, and can be viewed in situ at Figure 1.
Copyright The Saint Bede Studio

The Genius of AWN Pugin 2 : The Gate of Heaven

Entrance to the Blessed Sacrament Chapel of
Saint Giles' Church, Cheadle UK.

PORTA CAELI (the Gate of Heaven) ! These were the words uttered by John Henry Newman when he entered the Blessed Sacrament Chapel of Saint Giles' Church Cheadle (Staffordshire UK). The Cheadle Church was the creation which gave its architect - AWN Pugin  - the most satisfaction.

Reserving a fuller study of this glorious Gothic Revival church for another occasion, here we simply wish to comment on its Blessed Sacrament Chapel.

In the first instance, it is somewhat rare - even unusual - to find a parish church from the 19th century with a special chapel for the Reservation of the Blessed Eucharist. In most churches - and even many Cathedrals - the Blessed Sacrament was reserved in a tabernacle on the High altar. The former Ceremonial of Bishops did expect that a Blessed Sacrament Chapel would exist in Cathedral Churches, but even so this was widely ignored, as is illustrated by many Cathedrals in the "Old" and "New" worlds right up until the 1960's.

Pugin's desire to build a church in all respects mediaeval and correct liturgically, of course, motivated his design for a distinct Blessed Sacrament Chapel at Cheadle.  But how exactly he managed to convince Ecclesiastical authorities of the desirability of such a plan is unknown to this writer.

The altar and tabernacle of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel.
On the right can be seen a liturgical wash-basin called piscina in which
the priest may purify his fingers having distributed Holy Communion.

The decorations of the Cheadle Chapel are lavish and inspire awe : precisely the effect that was intended. We find a gate leading from the southern aisle of the church into the Chapel, made of brass and figured with motifs of the Blessed Eucharist. The arch leading into the chapel is magnificently stencilled on its every face and chamfer.

In these times, the Chapel is lit brightly with electrical lamps. But Pugin intended to create a mysterious corner where the Faithful may not enter and which glowed only with the light of candles and the filtered light of stained glass windows.

The walls of the Chapel are all stencilled, its ceiling vaulted in stone, its floor paved with magnificent geometric tiles of terracotta red, gold and blue.

The Altar of this chapel is equally beautiful, proportionate and fitting. This was not an altar on which Mass was intended to be celebrated and we note that although the Church was consecrated in September 1846, this altar was not consecrated. There is no predella or altar platform elevating the height of this altar above the pavement : a requirement for altars of the Roman Rite. No this altar was purely intended for the Reservation of the Most Holy Eucharist.

The altar has no gradines or little steps upon its table, but only the Tabernacle, being a box-like form, enriched with enamelled metalwork. A retable, which is the full width of the reveals of the stained glass window above it, is formed from magnificent encaustic tiles, arranged geometrically. It is to be well noted that there are no figures of the saints or the angels in this retable.

The face of this alabaster Altar, however, is beautifully enriched with five niches containing images of the Seraphim. We find the Seraphim also depicted in the three-light stained glass window above the altar.

Click on the images for an enlarged view.

Updated 29th January.

Another view of the Chapel entrance.
Photograph of Father Lawrence Lew OP.

The Genius of AWN Pugin : 1 Saint Edmund's College Ware (UK)

In 1812 was born one of the most important figures in the history of architecture and the decorative arts: Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin.  

The son of the French émigré Augustus Charles Pugin (who himself was an architectural draughtsman and topographical watercolourist), AWN Pugin is arguably the greatest British architect, designer and writer of the nineteenth century.  Pugin was responsible for an enormous quantity of buildings, and also for countless beautiful designs for tiles, sacred vestments and paraments, metalwork, furniture, wallpaper, stained glass and ceramics.  Some of his best known work includes the magnificent interiors of the Houses of Parliament, the church of St Giles, Cheadle, in Staffordshire, and his own house, The Grange, in Ramsgate (Kent), together with the nearby church of Saint Augustine, which he built and paid for himself and where he is buried.

Through his buildings, designs, and particularly his forceful and witty writings, such as Contrasts (1836) and the True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841), he made people think in a new way about what architecture was.   Pugin taught that only a caring and "good" society can raise buildings that are truly honest and beautiful.  For him, Gothic architecture was the greatest style of building, and therefore the Middle Ages, the period in which these buildings were conceived, must be the closest man can get to a perfect society.  Pugin's beliefs and ideas have implications beyond his own immediate preferences, and so for many reasons he was, and is, therefore, hugely influential, both on other architects and designers of the Gothic Revival throughout the Victorian era and also on many subsequent architects, theorists and writers.

The above paragraphs were adapted from the website of The Pugin Society.

Shrine of Saint Edmund in the Collegiate Chapel at Ware (UK)
Image : http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2013/09/adeste-fideles-and-other-treasures-at.html#.VKnUomSUeds

There are so many architectural and liturgical jewels which Pugin created in his short life, but in this post we wish to discuss a detail to reveal the layers of Pugin's creativity, rather than give an overview of his achievements. We look at the photograph included above of a shrine in the Chapel of Saint Edmund's College, Ware, one of the last buildings designed by Pugin and completed in 1853, after his death.

This is a shrine to the patron of the College, Saint Edmund. An elaborate reliquary is the centrepiece of the shrine, situated in a reredos above the altar. Most obviously, this shrine is decorated in a beautiful and tasteful manner. The stonework of the reredos is enhanced with polychrome work and gilding, down to the finest detail. In several places, in the script Pugin favoured, is the letter " E " for Saint Edmund and around the base of the reliquary, with its alternating panels of blue and red, Saint Edmund is honoured with the words : Hail, flower and comeliness of England. The angels, which adorn eight of the nine carved recesses are all treated differently and have so much more vigour that the statues of the baroque (we will pass over without mention the genre of plaster statue).

But the shrine is also a study in ingenuity. In a shallow alcove, set-off from the main part of the chapel, the reredos sits into a large arch : it does not protrude from the wall. It might be a window behind that, but, of course it isn't. Pugin has skilfully used different forms of arch to create a reredos in this space, giving the impression that it was an afterthought, but an ingenious one, filling a blank area in the chapel. A further master touch was the use of curtaining of rich dark red velvet in the central recesses of the reredos. It gives the impression of the curtained stage of a theatre. The arches here are distinctly different and free of the structural ornament which the other arches have; their shallow slope becomes the foundation from which further archwork springs. But their form, together with the curtains, also gives the impression of a substantial space behind the shrine, although in fact there is none at all.

The curtains, of course, may be drawn across the Reliquary, if desired, during the celebration of Mass or during Passiontide.

This Shrine is a small example of the many wonders which flowed from the creative mind of AWN Pugin.

Below are some other links descriptive of Pugin and his work:

http://pugin.com/

http://www.puginfoundation.org/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/feb/24/pugin-gothic-architect