Category Archives: Gothic Down Under: English architecture in the Antipodes

Gothic New Zealand: Wellington 2

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St Paul's Cathedral, Wellington, New Zealand

St Paul’s Cathedral, Wellington, New Zealand

St Mary & the Angels Roman Catholic Church, Wellington, New Zealand

St Mary & the Angels Roman Catholic Church, Wellington, New Zealand

The city of Wellington stands on shaky ground, lying across a major geological fault in an area of constant seismic activity.  When I visited Wellington in February 2011, local people were particularly concerned at the tribulations in Christchurch, a city which had been considered much less vulnerable than their own.

Within a very few years of its first settlement in 1840, two major earthquakes occurred in 1848 and 1855, and as a result all Wellington’s early buildings were built in timber, including what are now called the Old Government Buildings (1875-6), the second-largest wooden building in the world, and the pro-cathedral, Old St Paul’s (1866).

The Anglican diocese of Wellington was about to start the replacement for Old St Paul’s when the Second World War intervened.  Influenced by the effect of the 1931 earthquake in Napier, North Island, the architect Cecil Walter Wood (1878–1947) decided against building a medieval-Gothic building in ferro-concrete and instead used reinforced concrete to create a design that uses Gothic forms, modernised under the influence of Ragnar Östberg’s Stockholm City Hall (1911-23) and the Art Deco movement, and looking towards Sir Edwin Maufe’s Guildford Cathedral (1936-61):  http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/4w25/1/2.

(Similar influences are visible in Charles Towle’s uncompleted design for Holy Trinity Cathedral, Auckland.)

Cecil Wood never saw even the beginning of his St Paul’s Cathedral.  Queen Elizabeth II laid the foundation stone in 1954, and the first phase was opened ten years later.  The bulk of the nave was added in the second phase, 1970-2.  A historic Lady Chapel, formerly the 1905 timber St Paul’s Church, Paraparaumu, North Island, was added in 1991, and the westernmost bays of the nave, the narthex and the bell-tower were finished in 1998.

Though it was criticised from the start, and modified after his death, Cecil Wood’s design has retained its integrity.

I found it attractive – an architectural essay at the furthest edge of anything you could call Gothic – with a traditional layout, high round arches, subtle use of natural light and quirky arcades that reminded me of details from J R Leathart & W F Granger’s late 1920s cinemas, of which the Odeon, Richmond-on-Thames (1929) survives.

The glass entrance-screen is immediately familiar to British eyes, because the engraved angels are by New Zealand artist John Hutton (1906-1978), who also made the Screen of Saints and Angels for the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral (1962).  [See http://wellingtoncathedral.org.nz/index.php/Cathedral_History.]

The Catholic Cathedral in Wellington is the opposite of Gothic:  the Sacred Heart Cathedral is an uncompromisingly Italianate basilica of 1901, replacing the Gothic St Mary’s, built in 1851 and destroyed by fire in 1898:  http://www.shcathedral.wellington.net.nz/history/index.htm.

However, Wellington has a rare example of modern Gothic, the Catholic Church of St Mary & the Angels, built 1919-22 in ferro-concrete by Frederick de Jersey Clere.  It’s a world away from Cecil Wood’s cathedral, yet hides its modern construction within traditional architectural forms:  http://www.historic.org.nz/TheRegister/RegisterSearch/RegisterResults.aspx?RID=36&m=advanced.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Antipodean Gothic:  English architecture “down under”, please click here.

 

Gothic New Zealand: Wellington 1

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Old St Paul's Church, Wellington, New Zealand

Old St Paul’s Church, Wellington, New Zealand

I explained in Gothic New Zealand:  Auckland 2 that the first and only Bishop of New Zealand, George Augustus Selwyn (1809-1878), brought to the antipodes the Ecclesiological idea that a church must have pointed arches and all the architectural paraphernalia of the Middle Ages.

He was an Anglican cleric operating in a context where, until a few years before he reached New Zealand in 1841, Australia had been an archdeaconry in the diocese of Calcutta.  By the time he returned to England for the last time in 1868, New Zealand had seven Anglican bishoprics.

A visible part of Selwyn’s legacy is the New Zealand tradition of building timber churches that have the shapes of masonry construction.

The first Anglican cathedral in Wellington, now known as Old St Paul’s, was designed by an architect-turned-clergyman, Rev Frederick Thatcher (1814-1890), who was closely associated with Bishop Selwyn.

It was the pro-cathedral for the Diocese of Wellington from 1866, when it was built, until 1964, when the bishop’s throne, the cathedra, moved to the new St Paul’s Cathedral.

To save it from demolition the New Zealand Government took on Old St Paul’s as a historic site, and it remains consecrated.

Like other “Selwyn” churches, it is a warm and welcoming place, the darkness of its walls contrasting with the brilliance of its stained glass windows.

I didn’t have the opportunity to join a service in my short stay, but I sat at dinner with a lady who told me she always visits St Paul’s at Christmas, and at other times, because singing hymns and carols there is “like singing inside a violin”.

For further details, see http://www.historicplaces.org.nz/placestovisit/lowernorthisland/oldstpauls.aspx.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Antipodean Gothic:  English architecture “down under”, please click here.

Gothic New Zealand: Auckland 2

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Old St Mary's Church, Auckland, New Zealand

Old St Mary’s Church, Auckland, New Zealand

Holy Trinity Cathedral, Auckland, New Zealand

Holy Trinity Cathedral, Auckland, New Zealand

The city of Auckland has a special place in the history of the Anglican Church in New Zealand, because it was the base from which Bishop George Augustus Selwyn (1809-1878) set up missions across the two islands as the first and only Bishop of New Zealand between 1841 and 1858.

Selwyn, who rowed in the first ever Oxford-Cambridge boat race and after whom Selwyn College is named, was a fellow of St John’s College when the Cambridge Camden Society, later known as the Ecclesiological Society, began to promote the idea that a truly Christian building should be built in the Gothic manner.

As Bishop of New Zealand he had to face the fact that masonry architecture was out of reach:  the cost and time involved in building in stone meant that the first New Zealand churches had to be timber.

But they could still be Gothic, and the Anglican community in Auckland outgrew a succession of churches until what is now called Old St Mary’s was begun in 1886 to the ambitious designs of Benjamin Mountfort (1825-1898).  Mountfort was a prolific first-generation New Zealand architect, and at St Mary’s he provided all the detail that would be found in a much larger stone-built European cathedral, with a three-sided sanctuary and lancet windows under a generous cat-slide roof.

The largest timber church in the world, it was designated as Auckland’s Anglican Cathedral in 1887 and was completed in 1898.

Its much larger successor, Holy Trinity Cathedral, was begun in 1959 to a reduced version of a twenty-year-old design by Charles Towle that had been stalled by the start of the Second World War.  The choir, transepts and crossing – reminiscent of Sir Edward Maufe’s contemporary Guildford Cathedral in Surrey – were completed in 1973.

The nave, to a much lighter design with a glazed west wall by Richard Toy, was added in 1991-5.  Now a further chapel, to the liturgical east (geographical south) is under way, due to be completed by Christmas 2014, the bicentenary of the arrival of Christianity on the North Island:  http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/digest/index.cfm/2012/5/8/Dramatic-chapel-for-Holy-Trinity.

The conjunction between the two is vibrant:  it’s a very special interior space.  Next door, Old St Mary’s stands – a very different, antique interior – on a new site.  It was transported bodily across the road and turned ninety degrees in 1982.

Update:  Stewart Buckthorp has added a very useful and detailed comment to this article.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Antipodean Gothic:  English architecture “down under”, please click here.

Gothic New Zealand: Auckland 1

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St Stephen's Chapel, Auckland, New Zealand

St Stephen’s Chapel, Auckland, New Zealand

St Patrick's Roman Catholic Cathedral, Auckland, New Zealand

St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, Auckland, New Zealand

It’s all too easy to forget how much history is packed into the nineteenth-century outposts of the British empire.  A country like New Zealand grew to maturity within two or three generations, who brought their baggage with them and established a home-from-home in a land that belonged to others.

When I visited Auckland to lecture to the Auckland Decorative & Fine Arts Society, I wanted to see as many nineteenth-century churches as possible for a lecture I’m researching on Antipodean Gothic architecture.  My host Anne Gambrill propelled me in record time to a succession of unexpected treasures.

She took me to the tiny cruciform St Stephen’s Chapel at Judges Bay, no bigger than a modest bungalow, where the original Constitution of the Church of the Province of New Zealand was signed in 1857 – a location I’d probably not have found unassisted.

She also alerted me to St Matthew’s Church in the city-centre, unmistakably a design by the British architect John Loughborough Pearson, who was responsible for Truro Cathedral in England and St John’s Cathedral, Brisbane.

In fact, the design was completed after his death in 1898 by his son Frank Loughborough Pearson.  This tall, chaste, cruciform, stone-vaulted building was completed in 1905, though without the intended spire.

As St Matthew-in-the-City, the parish has a proud record of social activism:  http://www.stmatthews.org.nz.

The mother church of the Catholic diocese of Auckland is the ornate St Patrick’s Cathedral, designed by the Auckland father-and-son practice of Edward (1824/5-1895) and Thomas Mahoney (1855-1923) and completed in 1908.  The third church on the site, St Patrick’s is revered as the base of the original Catholic mission on North Island, led by Bishop Jean Baptiste Pompallier (1801-1871).

The nineteenth-century development of New Zealand churches – alike in the sense of congregations and buildings – was extremely fast.  An entire heritage of individual endeavour and architectural heritage evolved within the first three generations of Europeans to settle.

And each of those church-building generations, Catholic and Anglican alike, looked back to the home country for the styles and imagery of their places of worship.

The Anglican diocese of Auckland, however, ended up with a more complex and distinctive architectural legacy…

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Antipodean Gothic:  English architecture “down under”, please click here.

Christchurch earthquakes

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Christchurch Cathedral, New Zealand: Wednesday February 16th 2011

Christchurch Cathedral, New Zealand: Wednesday February 16th 2011

On Tuesday February 22nd 2011 I left Christchurch airport on the 1100 flight to Auckland.  Less than two hours later the most destructive of a succession of earthquakes hit the city [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMAT7jaEYEg and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BynOX9fj07o].

I was tremendously lucky.  Apart from avoiding the danger, the trauma and the disruption, I had the good fortune to experience Christchurch, which had already endured two major tremors almost without casualties, immediately before it was wrecked.

New Zealanders kept reminding me that Christchurch is their most English city, and asking if I agreed.  Up to a point, I said:  its nineteenth-century architecture grew directly from Victorian architecture in England.  The gridiron street-pattern, however, reminded me inevitably of America – and of Adelaide.

In the days before February 22nd, local people told me how lucky they’d been that the previous, more powerful earthquake, on September 4th 2010 at 4.35 am, had caused so few casualties, but that they were unsettled by the succession of aftershocks and the continuing disruption caused by damage to buildings.

The February 22nd disaster was altogether more destructive of life and property.  New Zealand has a population of a little under 4½ million, a quarter of whom live in the South Island, where Christchurch is the biggest city (pre-earthquake population just over 390,000).  Consequently, every New Zealander was affected by the tragedy, either directly, through acquaintances or by association with the city.

Most of the 181 fatalities on February 22nd occurred in buildings designed in the 1960s and 1970s, but many of the city’s heritage buildings will not survive.  Traditionally-built masonry structures with load-bearing walls react badly to being violently shaken.

Astonishingly, no-one was taking a tower tour at the moment when the Christchurch Cathedral tower collapsed.  The spire had been damaged in three previous earthquakes, 1881, 1888 and 1901, after which the tip was replaced by a hardwood structure covered in copper.  This time the entire spire and the belfry came down.

Further damage in subsequent aftershocks, including the collapse of the west rose window, has led to speculation that the entire cathedral will have to be demolished and reconstructed, possibly on another safer site.  If so, it is unlikely to be a slavish reproduction of George Gilbert Scott’s 1864 design:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6S4EZPCIfg,

According to a recent press report, http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch-earthquake-2011/5150179/Cathedral-future-now-uncertain, the decision hinges on the wider question of whether the entire city-centre needs to be shifted.

It’s almost impossible to imagine, in general or in detail, what the inhabitants of Christchurch have to put up with as the slow process of recovery gathers momentum.  The journalist Pam Vickers has contributed a series of dispatches to the BBC News website:  see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13141491, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12805131, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12664290 and
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13452122.  BBC news provided a nine-month update at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-15786697.

Christchurch will never be the same.  A huge debate about its future is under way among the citizens of Christchurch and with the national government:  well-wishers from outside can only hope that the resurgent city gains new beauty to replace what is lost.

Update:  Despite some popular outcry, it seems inevitable that the ruins of Scott’s Cathedral must be demolished.  Its planned temporary substitute, on a nearby site, is innovative:  http://www.ecumenicalnews.com/article/new-zealand-cardboard-cathedral-approved-1334.

Further update:  The new cardboard Christchurch Cathedral opened in August 2013:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23698795.

Another update:  Eventually, the decision was taken to rebuild Christchurch Cathedral as it was before the earthquake.  This drone footage shows the start of its restoration:  New Zealand: Fixing the ruined Christchurch Cathedral that’s frozen in time – BBC News.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Antipodean Gothic:  English architecture “down under”, please click here.

Exploring Australia 1: Perth & Fremantle

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St Mary's Roman Catholic Cathedral, Perth, Australia

St Mary’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, Perth, Australia

The first and most striking quality of life in Western Australia is the light.  I did see overcast skies for an hour or two, but for most of the daylight hours Perth glows with sunlight and the blueness of the sky.  It’s a place to be cheerful, full of cheerful people.

Perth is one of the remotest cities on earth:  it’s actually closer to Singapore than it is to Sydney.  Its population is 1.6 million, and it has the confident air of a community that looks after itself.  To arrive first in Australia, as I have, in this place feels a little like landing in the UK in Norwich, but without the crazy road system and all the people rushing about.  Perth people take their time without being lazy:  they’re comfortable and courteous and personable.  I sat in a coffee shop near two uniformed firefighters sitting by the open window taking their break:  in perhaps twenty minutes three passers-by greeted them and shook hands.

Getting acquainted with Perth is easy:  there are three free bus loops, called CATs [Central Area Transit].  After an hour or two of spinning around the streets I was dizzy and disorientated.  At one point I thought I’d seen two cathedrals, and only when I got off the bus did I realise that it was the same building – St Mary’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, initially built in straightforward Gothic in the 1860s, and brought up to date in a post-Modern variant design in 2006-9.  (I missed the Anglican cathedral, St George’s, which is more modest, tucked down a side-street near to the river-front.)

At the river front ferry-terminal there’s a strange sculptural building – a combination of sails and a spire – that turned out to be, of all things, a homage to clocks and bells in general, and English change-ringing in particular.  The Swan Bell Tower houses a peal of eighteen bells, twelve of which are a donation from St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, a 26-bell carillon and the Joyce of Whitchurch clock from Ascot Racecourse.  I learnt more about change-ringing from the explanatory video than I’d ever known in England.

Rather than pay a lot of money and spend a lot of time swanning down the Swan River to Fremantle on a ferry, I caught the train, which cost A$3.40 [slightly over £2] and took twenty minutes each way.  Fremantle, which the locals call ‘Freo’, is entertaining, full of bars and people shouting loudly in a genial manner – rather like Great Yarmouth.  Its main street is awash with fine nineteenth-century facades and feels like the set for a Gold Rush western, and there is a superlative maritime museum that clearly needs half a day at least.  The harbour cafés celebrate fish and chips.

Fremantle has its own CAT free bus-service.  The one I caught also had two Aboriginal guys, one entertaining the passengers with a digeridoo.  A digeridoo on a single-deck bus is impossible to ignore.

I must return to both places.  Between them, they deserve a week.  The only problem is, they’re so far away from everywhere.  Which is part of their charm.

Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Gothic Down Under:  English architecture in the Antipodes explores the influence of British architects, and British-trained architects, on the design of churches and other buildings in the emerging communities of Australia and New Zealand.  For details, please click here.

 

Exporting pointed architecture

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St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne, Australia

St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne, Australia

If asked to make a list of what the British Empire exported to the colonies – tangible and intangible items – it’s unlikely that most people would, unprompted, include churches with pointed arches, towers and spires.

Wander around any city in a former British colony and it’s more than likely you’ll encounter a Gothic cathedral.  On my travels I’ve found examples in Hong Kong, Singapore and every Australian city I visited.  In fact, each of the major Australian cities – Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Hobart – has not one but two cathedrals, one each for Anglicans and Roman Catholics.

Stepping inside these churches, even in tropical heat, immediately evokes Englishness, whether the denomination is Anglican or Roman Catholic.  The moment you set foot in the particularly splendid Anglican St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne [http://www.stpaulscathedral.org.au], its stripey polychrome stonework is immediately recognisable as the work of William Butterfield, an English architect who never actually saw the place.

I’m intrigued by the way English ideas of architecture and worship were exported virtually intact to the other side of the world.  Several major Victorian architects had a hand in Australian cathedrals:  William Butterfield provided plans for the Anglican cathedrals in Adelaide and Melbourne, and fell out with the sponsors of both;  George Frederick Bodley designed St David’s Cathedral, Hobart;  at the end of his life, John Loughborough Pearson, builder of Truro Cathedral, designed the Anglican cathedral in Brisbane, though actual construction was overseen by his son, Frank.

Most other Australian cathedrals were designed by English immigrants:  Edmund Blacket (St Andrew’s Cathedral, Perth) was born in Southwark;  Benjamin Backhouse (who built St Stephen’s, Brisbane alongside a chapel by A W N Pugin) was born in Ipswich.  William Wardell, designer of two magnificent Roman Catholic cathedrals (Melbourne and Sydney) was British, a friend of A W N Pugin.

I want to know more about the men and women who envisioned, conceived, constructed and paid for these resolutely European places of worship in places that had hardly seen masonry until their lifetimes.

Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Gothic Down Under:  English architecture in the Antipodes explores the influence of British architects, and British-trained architects, on the design of churches and other buildings in the emerging communities of Australia and New Zealand.  For details, please click here.