reorganisation and destruction of irish catholic churches
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Isi Metzstein
Isi Metzstein, who has died aged 83, was an influential architect working in the European modernist style of Le Corbusier and the American Frank Lloyd Wright.
(High Altar, College Chapel, St. Peter’s, Cardross)Metzstein worked closely with Andrew MacMillan at the Glasgow firm of Gillespie, Kidd & Coia, and taught at the Glasgow School of Art. Their masterpiece is generally reckoned to be St Peter’s Seminary in Cardross. Completed in 1966, the three-storey concrete ziggurat stood on the banks of the Clyde, a shining tribute to Corbusier. But as well as worldwide acclaim, it also attracted fierce criticism. Some called it “the spaceship”.
The team’s design for St Peter’s exterior was inspired both by Corbusier’s chapel at Ronchamp, completed in 1955, and his monastery at La Tourette, which opened four years later. The interiors at Cardross were panelled in solid wood or veneer, echoing the style of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
Even traditionalist magazines like Country Life praised it, while specialist journals such as Concrete Quarterly found it “a splendidly virile and rugged building”. In 1967 it won Gillespie, Kidd & Coia an award from the Royal Institute of British Architects. But before long there were reports of jammed windows, door handles falling off, the chapel flooding and a series of ominous creaks emanating from the huge beams that soared above the sanctuary.
The building’s descent into disrepair was hastened further when the Second Vatican Council decided to train priests in local communities rather than at seminaries. The building began its slide into ruin. It eventually shut down in 1980 and, after a spell as a drugs rehabilitation centre, was abandoned and vandalised. As its owners and the authorities dithered, the buildings were ransacked, smashed and set ablaze. Polished corridors leading to the glass-sided refectory were wrecked, along with the skylit chapel with its vast granite altar.
The interior was gutted, and it now stands as a monument to decades of abuse and decay. As the Scottish architectural academic Frank Arneil Walker put it in The Buildings of Scotland, “in little more than a generation, God, Le Corbusier and Scottish architecture have all been mocked”.
Israel Metzstein was born on July 7 1928 in the Mitte district of Berlin, to Jewish parents originally from Poland. He was one of five children brought up by their mother after her husband died during a routine operation in 1933.
With war looming in 1939, Britain offered to take a quota of Jewish children up to the age of 17 under the Kindertransport (Child Transport) scheme. Isi, then 11, was sent to Scotland, where he lodged with a family in Clydebank, and later in a Jewish hostel, until being reunited with his mother and siblings.
At 18 he was hired by Gillespie, Kidd & Coia and, with MacMillan, who joined the practice in 1954, he flourished in the atelier system set up by Jack Coia, one of the original partners. Together, Metzstein and MacMillan were given free rein to develop their professional and artistic skills and went on to design many Modernist schools, colleges and churches. The Roman Catholic Church was the practice’s biggest single client.
In 1956 Metzstein and MacMillan started work on the St Paul’s project in Glenrothes, Scotland’s second post-war New Town. Later they designed the red-brick Robinson College, Cambridge; the library at Wadham College, Oxford; and the halls of residence at the University of Hull.
In later life, Metzstein complained about the “disturbing superficiality of current architecture”.
“Recent and current practice,” he wrote, manages “ to dissociate the façade from internal and external obligations.” What he called “highly seductive stretch-wrapping techniques” deprived architecture of “much cultural and historic richness”.
Metzstein taught at the Glasgow School of Art and, as half of the duo fondly known as Andy and Isi, received the RIBA Annie Spink award in 2008 for excellence in architectural education.
Isi Metzstein married Danielle Kahn, who was also of central European Jewish parentage, and had been born in the south of France during the Nazi occupation. They had three children.
Isi Metzstein, born July 7 1928, died January 10 2012
A.W.N. Pugin
The Royal Mail has issued a special stamp to mark the bicentenary of Pugin’s birth. It is a first class cover in the britons of distinction series:
Architect, designer and advocate of the Gothic style whose commissions included the interiors of the Palace of Westminster. The stamp shows Pugin’s interior of the Palace of Westminster.
A. W. N. Pugin
How not to celebrate the bicentenary of his birth:
St. Mary’s Oratory, Maynooth College, which we are mendacously told “was again restored and conserved in 1999 for the new Millennium, to celebrate the great jubilee of the Lord’s birth“.
The funds were subscribed by St. Joseph’s Young Priests’ Society which would have been better spent paying for the education of clerics -for which they were subscribed.
The Oratory has already been the object of comment from this webpage. Those comments still stand and, in some measure, have been vindicated by the Apostolic Visitators to the College who regarded it as a Quaker meeting room, refused to use it, and transferred major ceremonies to the College Chapel. The problems in Maynooth cannot not simply be reduced to erecting partition doors – as is clera from the “final solution” applied to St. Mary’s Ortory. It is somewhat spine-chilling that not even the Western Wall survived the iconoclastic frenzie – at least that much survived of the Second Temple following the destruction of Jerusalem.
http://www.maynoothcollege.ie/location/SaintMarysOratory.shtml
Some Cork Stained Glass
http://pmsphotography.com/StainedGlass/Stained%20Glass/album/index.htmlMaynooth College Chapel organ Rebuild
Organ RestorationThe great organ of Maynooth’s College Chapel is being restored
The original organ of the College Chapel was built by the Stahlhuth firm of Aix-la-Chapelle around 1890. After 120 years of great service, it is needing a total rebuild, as many of the 3,000 pipes are no longer playable.
Each stop (see photograph) has a distinct sound, and so 61 pipes in a rank are called into service when a stop is pulled out. When any one of these pipes is damaged or out of tune, the whole group become redundant. Thus it is most important that a pipe-organ be maintained regularly.
The organ has had two major rebuilds in its life, in the 1920’s and in the 1970’s. In addition, it has been regularly maintained, with several modifications. However, by now, a total rebuild is required, and companies in Ireland, England, Hungary and Italy have competed for the job. The firm of Fratelli Ruffatti of Padua in Italy has been selected to do the work, which will take two years.
In recent months, all the pipes have been removed from the Organ-Case. Some of the ranks will be totally replaced while others have been shipped to Italy to be voiced and polished. We hope that the restored and newly commissioned pipes will be returned to their setting in the summer of 2013.
In the meantime, a temporary electronic system has been employed, with speakers concealed in the Organ-Case. We hope that the music from the rebuilt instrument will fill the College Chapel at the Carol Service of 2013 and for many of the College liturgies in the future. The rebuilding of the Organ is the last major component in the restoration of the College Chapel.
We need your help
We have been able to get the project started because one major donor has come forward. However we need help to complete the project which will also include the renovation of the Gallery and the restoration of the Western wall.The budget for the organ is €750,000.00. This values each of the 3,000 pipes at an average of €250. Each time a stop is pulled out, a rank is engaged which consists of 61 notes. Each rank will therefore cost about €15,000.00. Gifts over €250 are tax-deductable, and can be of added benefit to the donor or the College.
Could you fund one pipe for €250?
Could you fund one rank or stop for €15,000?The College is seeking one hundred Patrons of the Organ, who will contribute €5,000 each towards its reconstruction. Each Patron of the Organ will be presented with a newly designed memento, utilising parts of the original College Chapel Organ.
•One of the small metal pipes made of a tin / lead alloy, which is not being used in the reconstruction, will be restored, voiced and polished.
•This will be mounted on ablock of Sipo African Mahogany reflecting the quality of the woodwork in the newly restored organ.
•As each pipe will be of a different size and have a unique voice and characteristics, each memento will be unique.
•An engraved plaque with the name of the donor will be fitted to the base, and presented by the President of the College.
Tax-efficient way of making your donation
Republic of Ireland: Make cheques payable to Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth and forward to The President, Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth, County Kildare.•Payments over €250 are tax-deductible.
•If you are a PAYE taxpayer, Saint Patrick’s College can claim the tax paid on the gross income relating to your gift. If you pay tax at the higher rate of 41%, the value of a gift of €500 becomes €820 to the College.
•Companies or self-assessed tax-payers can deduct their donations as an allowable expense.Northern Ireland & UK: Make cheques payable to Maynooth Educational Trust and forward to The President, Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland.
•Maynooth Educational Trust will reclaim the tax you have paid on your donation at the standard rate of 25%.
•On receiving your donation, we will provide you with a Gift Aid Declaration which you will sign and return to us, to enable us to reclaim the tax.
•In addition, if you pay tax at the higher rate, you can reclaim the tax difference between the 40% rate and the 25% rate.USA: Make cheques payable to Irish Educational Development Foundation (IEDF) and forward to The President, Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland.
•Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth receives tax deductible support from U.S. benefactors through the Irish Educational Development Foundation, Inc.
•Gifts made to the IEDF are deductible for US income tax purposes and the Foundation fulfils its duties and obligations as a US tax-exempt organization under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.Maynooth College Organ
Can anyone confirm that the restration of this organ carried out in the late 1970s and early 1980s was done by Kenneth Jones and company?
Maynooth College Chapel Organ
Perhaps we have an answer here:
Kenneth Jones Pipe Organs.
Kenneth Jones and Associates design and handcraft unique pipe organs. Each instrument is custom designed architecturally, musically and technically, for its particular location and musical requirements.
The founder of the firm and its chief executive is Kenneth Jones, who was born in Longford, Ireland, in 1936, was educated in Dublin and holds degrees in engineering and in arts. He practiced as an engineer in West Africa for seven years and started organ building there in 1961, having studied the craft in theory since his schooldays.
Kenneth Jones’ executive director and owner is Derek Byrne. The firm of Kenneth Jones Pipe Organs Ltd. (the corporate name) has a staff of fourteen.
Several members of the team are practicing musicians, organists and singers and this contributes to the artistic dimension in every hand-crafted organ which comes from Bray. Kenneth Jones himself has been a frequent performer (harpsichord, organ, piano-accompaniment) on radio and television and, for some years, was principal conductor of the Dublin Orchestral players.
The work of the firm can be found in cathedrals and churches of all denominations, in major institutions including Trinity College Dublin, University College of Dublin, St. Patrick’s College Maynooth, the Royal College of Music London, the University of Cambridge, the College of Music Dublin, and in many private homes.
In addition to their work in Ireland, Kenneth Jones and Associates have been commissioned to design and build instruments for other countries, notably the United States, with representatives in several areas. Installations in the United States now comprise a significant part of the firm’s work, and considerable experience has been built up from as far south as Florida to as far north as Alaska.
Since he started organ building with his own firm over twenty-seven years ago, Kenneth Jones has been responsible for an Opus list of over 120 organs. Over 80 of these organs have been new (of all sizes up to four manuals) and the others include major rebuilds and historic restorations.
A W N Pugin
Archbishop Peter Smith of Southwark has formally established Pugin’s church of St Augustine in Ramsgate, Kent, as a shrine of the ‘the Apostle of the English’.
In an official decree the Archbishop grants the shrine canonical privileges and designates it as a place of pilgrimage.
The establishment of this new pilgrimage site fills a 500-year gap created when the last shrine of Augustine was destroyed in the 16th century. A shrine to St Augustine existed on the Isle of Thanet before the Reformation and so this new place of pilgrimage recovers an ancient tradition.
St Augustine’s is a Catholic church already dedicated to the saint and stands closer than any other to the place of Augustine’s landing, his first preaching and his momentous encounter with King Ethelbert of Kent in 597AD. The official day on which the foundation of the shrine will be remembered is 1st March. This is Pugin’s birthday and recently the day of popular bicentenary celebrations in his honour. This day also links the erection of the shrine with the church’s founder who is buried within.
The cult of St Augustine is fully in tune with the heart and mind of Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852). He wrote in his letters that he selected the Ramsgate site because ‘blessed Austin landed nearby’ and he personally chose the dedication name and wanted the church to be a memorial to the founding identity of Christian England and its early saints.
There already exists a strong local interest and devotion to the saint. His feast day each year in celebrated in Ramsgate with a festival of Catholic history and culture called ‘St Augustine’s week’. Prayers are said and hymns sung in his honour.
St Augustine’s has already functioned as a quasi-shrine and pilgrims already journey there from all over England and beyond to learn about the conversion of the English and the beginnings of Christianity in this land.
In 1997, thousands descended upon the St Augustine’s site to celebrate 1500th anniversary of the Augustine landing. Hundreds of Monks joined Cardinal Hume and Archbishop Bowen in the pilgrimage. In the year 2000 St Augustine’s was a ‘Jubilee Shrine’ and had special indulgences attached. This continued a long pilgrimage tradition surrounding St Augustine in Ramsgate and Thanet.
St Augustine’s attracts a huge number of Christians from other churches and communities who are interested in learning about common roots in the faith of Christ. Many secular visitors enjoy the architecture, the art and the atmosphere of the place and thereby enhance their relations with the Catholic Church. Local schools have a visiting programme to learn about the saints and about Pugin.
The church is adorned with a collection of images of St Augustine in the finest stone and stained glass including a ‘Hardman Powell’ series of windows above Pugin’s tomb relating the story of Augustine’s mission and especially the moment of setting foot on a land explicitly demarcated as ‘Thanet’.
Fr Marcus Holden, parish priest and custodian of St Augustine’s commented: “This is amazing news for us. Pugin’s church is secured by this added living identity which also fulfils many of his own dreams in honouring the English saints and St Augustine in particular. There was need here not only to rescue the church as a great work of art but also to find a fitting spiritual significance for the future of the site. Through his decree, the Archbishop has done just that. The shrine will now draw pilgrims keen to learn about the early saints and to pray for a conversion of England in our own times”.
The church is presently being restored and brought back to its former glory and major celebrations are planned this year surrounding the feast day of St Augustine.
The shrine will highlight the close bond between Rome and England as St Augustine was sent on his mission directly by Pope Gregory the Great.
One of the pastoral recommendations of the Holy See for upcoming year of faith proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI is precisely to ‘work toward the dissemination of a knowledge of the local Saints ’ because the saints give an ‘authentic witness to the faith’.
In renewing devotion to England’s apostle, Archbishop Smith is responding directly to the Holy Father’s call for a new evangelisation and a deepening of faith.
@Praxiteles wrote:
St Augustine’s attracts a huge number of Christians from other churches and communities who are interested in learning about common roots in the faith of Christ.
@Praxiteles wrote:
The shrine will now draw pilgrims keen to learn about the early saints and to pray for a conversion of England in our own times”.
Is there not a slight dichotomy here Prax?
Or does ‘conversion of England’ just mean to Christianity in general?
Nice church though, what happened to the spire?
Thank God for the Irish social network
Date:
23 Feb 2012Fr Gerry Kane reports on how niftydetective work helped a church refurbishment
Some work was done in Harold’s Cross Church in Dublin nearly eight years ago, in October 2004. An alcove was converted into a beautiful recess for prayer. Some old doors were taken down and left outside to be carted away.
Recently, we decided to set up a reconciliation room, to encourage reception of the sacrament. Our architect advised that the original doors would have been the best solution, in keeping with the design of the church.
We looked at a similar set of doors, to a store room off the church, and wondered about moving them.
We could replace those doors with something modern. New doors wouldn’t be as obvious there as they would be in the body of the church.
Before a final decision, we tried to find the original doors. Checking through our records, we saw that a company called Peter Johnson Interiors were involved in the renovation in 2004.
Beth Fitzpatrick, who had organised the work, confirmed they were the people to contact. They were extremely helpful, and remembered the job.
After a few phone calls, they suggested that the doors might have been taken away by the man who put in new flooring. He was from down the country somewhere. Either that or they could be in some salvage yard nearby.
I tried one of the salvage yards, off the South Circular Road. Again the man in charge was very helpful, and had all the time in the world to help in this wild goose chase, once he heard the story.
(Pictured: Alan Moore – left – and Brendan Conlon with one of the rescued doors)He brought me through his bewildering array of store rooms and warehouses, looking at all the many doors he had in stock. No sign of our doors though.
When he heard it was a set of double doors, intact, he suggested that they were probably in some pub by now, and maybe a pub crawl would be in order!
Again checking our records, the man down the country turned out to be Brendan Conlon, a craftsman from Kinnegad, Co. Westmeath.
However, his invoice was now way out of date, and the phone number redundant. A Google search revealed many websites offering silly information on various Brendan Conlons throughout the world, most of them in the USA.
But no phone number or details for the man we wanted.
Last chance — I tried the old-fashioned Irish Google: the family and friends network. I rang a cousin of mine, Phil Flynn, also living in Kinnegad.
No, she didn’t know him. But her sister Edel might — she was in the business. Within a few minutes, I had Brendan’s mobile phone number.
A nicer man you couldn’t talk to. Yes, he remembered the job. He had seen the doors outside waiting to be taken away when he was finished, so he had offered to do it.
They were probably still stored in his brother’s shed where he left them. He would check, just to be sure.
He rang the following morning. Yes the doors were there intact, after eight years.
Time and again, he had been offered money; for the brass handles, one door, the glass, the wood, whatever.
But for some reason, he said no. They were still in the same condition in which they had arrived.
As another brother, Fr John Conlon in Duleek in Meath said, they were just meant to be returned to where they belonged. So, Brendan offered to bring the doors back to us in a day or two.
Thanks be to God Ireland is such a small country. Thanks be to God for old-fashioned Irish Google.
And thanks be to God for gentlemen craftsmen, for whom life is more than the quick buck and the fast sell.
Indeed, than God for the duirt bean liom go nduirt ban lei… system.
There is an even more fascinating tale to be told about the recovery of the grille of the west door of the Honan Chapel which had been carefully stored away by gentleman buisness man of much more discerning taste those who had dumped them in a scrap metal yard!!
The grille is regarded as one of the most important pieces of Celtic revival metal work.
@gunter wrote:
@Praxiteles wrote:
St Augustine’s attracts a huge number of Christians from other churches and communities who are interested in learning about common roots in the faith of Christ.
@Praxiteles wrote:
The shrine will now draw pilgrims keen to learn about the early saints and to pray for a conversion of England in our own times”.
Is there not a slight dichotomy here Prax?
Or does ‘conversion of England’ just mean to Christianity in general?
Nice church though, what happened to the spire?
If anybody wants to know about the meaning of the conversion of England, they should attend the prayers said every day (since about 1750) for this intention in Santa Maria in Campitelli in Rome.
They were instituted by Henry Benedict Cardinal Stuart, Duke of York and eventually de iure Henry IX.
A.W.N. Pugin
Some more on St Augustine’s Ramsgate
The Abbey Church, Collegeville, Minnesota
The artwork is by Br. Clement Frischauf, OSB (1869-1944), an artist of the Beuronese school.
He was also responsible for the decoration of St Anslem’s in the Bronx, New York
The Beuronese School
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beuron_Art_School
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beuroner_Kunstschule
Kostel Panny Marie Růžencové in Budweis
Kostel Panny Marie Růžencové in Budweis
Tiles & Architectural Ceramics Society (TACS)
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