Buildings that Speak

The new Bishop Edward King Chapel at Cuddesdon Theological College

I don’t entirely buy into the idea that Church isn’t a building.  Of course I understand the point that’s being made – that essentially the Body of Christ is a community – but to those ‘outside’ such a community the church building is often their first contact.  So what our buildings feel like and the message they convey is, in effect, an extension of us and of our limited understanding of God.  In my view church buildings are important signposts.

This year’s Royal Institute of British Architecture’s Stirling Prize (the Building Community’s equivalent of Literature’s Booker prize) has the new Bishop Edward King Chapel at Ripon College, Cuddesdon on its shortlist – hurray!  (The BBC website featured it this week at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24045643 )

This new chapel costing over £2m has been made possible because the Anglican Sisters of Begbrook in Oxford have recently sold their property and moved into Ripon College.  This small religious community of nuns brought with them the finances that have made this architectural masterpiece possible. 

I became interested in this story because about three years ago the Baptist Union Retreat Group stayed at Begbrook with the sisters and they were just beginning to contemplate a different future having put their extensive Priory up for sale – so it was fascinating to catch up with this stage of their journey.

So what, I wonder, have the five church buildings I’ve had the privilege of working in had to say to both worshippers and passersby? 

Fuller Baptist in Kettering where I began is an imposing Victorian non-conformist ‘preaching station’ able to seat a thousand.  It has a ten foot high pulpit which means the preacher is at eye level with folks sitting in the gallery.  In many ways it’s a challenging Sanctuary today simply because it is so vast and was built for a different time.  I wish the congregation all the best as they apply for the necessary permission to re-fashion parts of the worship space to suit a more contemporary style.

 

Walsworth Road Baptist Church in Hitchin just had the most wonderful location. It grew out of a
Railway Mission Chapel into an imposing neo-gothic building situated at a cross-roads just off the centre of the town.  With its beautifully kept garden I always thought it made a very positive statement to the town – enhanced by the recent addition of an imaginative vestibule connecting church and hall.

Possibly the most beautiful church I’ve served in has been Malvern Baptist in Worcestershire.
It was built in a liturgical crucifix form once again in the neo-gothic style.  With its timber roof and stained glass I always felt ‘enveloped’ whenever I entered it – there is a very special atmosphere at Malvern.  However, this beautiful church building had one great disadvantage – Lady Foley, the lady of the manor and a staunch Anglican, agreed for it to be built as long as it was constructed up a long drive away from the road – it’s almost as if she wanted it hidden! Her Christian generosity only went so far!


 

Yeovil Baptist couldn’t have been more different, occupying as it does a central position in the town for over three hundred and fifty years.
Ten years ago it was completely rebuilt.  However, its ‘Listed’ status meant the Georgian roof and Victorian frontage had to stay in place.  What resulted is something of an architectural curiosity in that one side of the church is nineteenth century and the other is twenty first century – when I was there none of us had really worked out what was the front and what was the back!  Yet it works and I well remember talking to one of our Boys’ Brigade fathers from the community one Wednesday evening and he said to me he thought our church was the most spectacular building in town – praise indeed!

 

And now it’s Amersham Free Church – a building that owes a great deal to The Revd Neville Clark’s ministry – a pastor/theologian who wanted this building, constructed in 1962 at the height of the Free Church Liturgical Renewal Movement, to say something about what we believe.The soaring beams in the Sanctuary pointing upwards, the splendid space around the communion table dedicated to the celebration of The Lord’s Supper, the gold band on the floor that encircles table, baptistery and font – emphasising the Sacraments of the Church, and the pulpit and prayer desk still in use every Sunday fifty one years after the opening .  Along with our newly refurbished church hall this is a building that ‘lives’ and ‘speaks’ of welcome and worship.

So ‘well done’ to the architects and sponsors of Bishop Edward King Chapel at Cuddesdon – not just for being shortlisted for the Stirling Prize but for continuing that worthy tradition of striving to fashion space we might dare to call sacred.

With best wishes,

Ian