St. Augustine's Church, Kilburn, London
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| @ By Diliff - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38346535 |
Slight moan here. Have watched part of a programme about St.Augustine's church in Kilburn, Westminster. Gorgeous revival Gothic architecture during the Victorian period. It was built for the poor! Yes all that money that created a beautiful artwork, for that is what it is, went on a building rather than helping the poor. Well no, it was supposed to bring them to the knees for the sheer beauty of the building and the god who it was dedicated to....
On reflection with my beloved, he says that they were creating a place of beauty as well, and self aggrandisment may have come into play, and yes we have inherited beautiful churches.
It is Anglo-Catholic, up near the top for holiness, but those entrepreneurial Victorians, for whom I have the greatest respect in their ability to fund buildings (sometimes very ugly buildings though). Were a bit like people who planted trees, they were building for posterity. If I were to take you to Whitby, I would show you Brunswick Street, it has three churches at the bottom, of different denominations in the Anglican tradition. One has become a book store for a dealer but cannot hide its late Victorian art work. Whitby drips churches, turn a corner and there is one, the ultimate of course being St.Mary's next to Whitby Abbey high on the cliffs, though to be honest give them a couple of hundred years and the cliffs will have crumbled and all will be in the sea, including the vast churchyard of graves of course.
Thinking about St.Mary's at this time of year and I remember we visited to see the collection of Xmas trees decorated by local people.
caedmon's Poem
Look at Whitby
caedmon's Poem
Look at Whitby
Love Whitby - haven't been for ages. It will be a bit breezy there today though.
ReplyDeleteLove your Summer header too.
Whitby always seems to sufferfrom the weather, probably because it is on the East coast, never stops visitors though.
ReplyDeleteTucson has San Xavier that is beautiful and was built by native laborers for them... supposedly. The Southwest and Mexico are full of them. The irony is they were often build on sites that those first here considered sacred-- to take away their sites or enrich the outside religion's power somehow?
ReplyDeleteI think it was to take away the pagan aspect, superseding them. Though in this country, sometimes a church could be built on a prehistoric site and the renewal of churches went on on the same site, it had become 'sacred' land.
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