The Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy Fathers in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England, asked me to make a preliminary design for a new church. In this article I want to explain a little of the theology and thinking behind the design I have produced in conjunction with Subdeacon Guy Maxfield.
The Aim: a church design incarnate in the west
At its present rate of growth, the twenty-five year old parish is going to outgrow its current church, and so plans are afoot to buy new property and build a new church. We all knew that this was a wonderful opportunity to design a church which was more than a simple import from Byzantium or Russia. Its design needed to marry the wisdom of Byzantine church architecture with the rich tradition of the earlier Orthodox west, suitable contemporary building techniques, and the materials used locally in Shropshire.
Although a few purpose-built Orthodox churches do exist in Britain, all have been simple reconstructions or even copies of Greek, Russian or Serbian designs, without adaptation to their British environment or any recognition of the Orthodox history of Britain in the first millennium or so after Christ. This naturally gives the impression to outsiders that Orthodoxy is entirely a foreign import. This church desing was a golden opportunity to right this wrong.
The design needed to relate both to Greeks and to British. The parish was founded by an English priest, and its congregation is approximately 45% British converts, 45% Cypriot, and 10% Russian, Rumanian and Serbian.
Proposed design for the Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy Fathers.
Domed or basilican design?
We decided to use the domed cross in square church developed in the east (we shall call this the Byzantine floor plan) as our basis, whilst drawing as much as possible on elements of Anglo-Saxon and Romanesque design. The Byzantine design is theologically richer than the simpler basilican plan. It offers a rich variety of interior surfaces on which to fresco and devlop theological themes. Also, the transition from dome to drum to pendative to nave offers a vertical narrative as well as a horizontal one, something lacking in the basilca.
Isometric view of the domed basilica of Agia Sophia, Thessalonica, 8th century.
Basilica of St. Clement, Rome, c. 380
The Roofing
Once this was decided, the next step was to study early western Church architecture – up to the 13th century – and see what elements to draw from this. We saw that rarely were roofs domed or curved, they were either hipped or pyramidal. Where domical roofs are seen, as in St Paul’s London, it is in architecture trying to revive pagan Roman architecture rather than Christian. So we roofed our dome with an eight sided pyramid, and the drums inside with hipped roofs. This design harmonizes with much local builidng of Shropshire, and has the added advantage that it is cheaper to construct and maintain than domed roofs.
St. Peter’s, Worms, Germany, 12th-13th century.
Materials
There were various options for materals. For the roof, slate or plain clay tile. Options are open here.The water colour shows slate, though plain tiles are warmer in colour. For the walls the main options in descending order or expense were: stone; stone corners and windows with brick walls; stone or brick corners and windows with plaster render elsewhere; everything rendered. The design goes for brick corners and wndows and lime plaster render. This limited use of stone allowed us to quote from Anglo-Saxon architecture, hence the dormer windows in the roof.
Windows
The window designs are all drawn from extant Anglo-Saxon churches, dated from around 800 to 1,000 A.D.
Anglo-Saxon windows.
Other Influences
Makvaneti Church, Georgia
Atrium of St. Clement’s, Rome.
Doorway at Kilpeck, England. c. 1140.
Doorway from Studenica Monastery, Serbia, c. 1190.
Floorplans
Proposed design of the church and courtyard.
Proposed layout for parish hall.
Bells. Where are you going to hang the bells?
Good point! It can be difficult for non-Anglican churches to get planning permission for bells of any substance, so our bells may have to be a smallish affair. Perhaps we can have an small openl tower over the west door.
Hello Aidan,
I noticed you posted two pictures of doors with carved tympaniums. Is there a plan to have these in the design? After seeing the marble work you did for the iconostasis in Amsterdam it seems it would be a great addition.
Oh, I saw on the side door, there was an icon there… carved or painted?
I imagine ideally a mosaic, or else a covered fresco.
Certainly, I would like there to be a carved tympanum. My original text spoke about the tympanum as one of the great contributions of the west to the iconographic schema. A lot of theology can be woven into it.
I applaud your conception and your result. I only wish the US had such a rich architectural heritage to draw on as we create indigenous Orthodox church buildings.
Lovely! A number of questions — what’s the projected cost? Was this designed with a particular budget in mind, and/or are there any features that are presupposed as being nice to have on paper but that everybody understands will be the first to go when cuts have to be made? Any sense of what the acoustic properties of the nave will be? Will a separate architect have to generate the actual blueprints?
@Katherine: I’m not certain that it’s that there isn’t a heritage from which to draw so much as that some of the people making the decisions are concerned with getting up four walls and a roof as quickly and cheaply as possible.
Thank you, Richard. No detailed costings have been done yet, but a builder did a rough estimate of £1.8 million for church, atrium and hall combined. My brief was to design the ideal church and we would work from there. Our thought and experience is that it is easier to raise larger funds for an inspiring project than less funds for one less inspiring. If funds prohibited us from this sort of design, I imagine we would go for a basilica.
Acoustics are best when there are curved wall and ceilings, so with the dome of barrel vaulted ceilings this design fits the bill. Probably even better would be curved north and south walls on the arms as well, as in many Athonite churches.
An architect would certainly draw up actual blueprints. I have already worked with an architect in this way. This watercolour is only the first draft, and I expect, even if we could raise the money for this design, that various aspects would be adjusted when we involved an architect.
With a congregation that is half Cypriot, why haven’t you incorporated any Cypriot influenced features into the architecture? There is a rich tradition in the Cypriot church for art and architecture it seems a bit of a shame to not try and incorporate it into this church.