Thursday, December 23, 2004
Two posts a day! Aren't you lucky?
Anyway, having been aFlickring, and ended up looking at Strang's photographs. Can anyone tell me what is wrong with the image of the church [on the right]? Not really the image, more the church itself.
It's bizarre. It is a church which apparently was based on English churches, but no way could it be English. The main window is wrong for a start. Just the shape of the arch. If it were just the arch alone, with no other clues, I'd put it down as a Tudor fireplace. The only windows I have ever seen in that shape, and on that scale, are those of the chapels some of the Oxbridge colleges. Which aren't quite what I'd describe as rural.
God only knows what the top of the tower is supposed to be, although it looks like it pines after its St Petersburg roots [and I don't mean the one in Florida].
Even the proportions and the positioning of the elements seem odd. The mini-rounded staircase tower abutting the main tower? There are too many things which just don't sit together.
Partick states that it was built in the gothic period. I presume he means Neo-gothic, as he also suggest that the church is Perpendicular in style, which given Perpendicular grew out of Gothic... [and I'm not terribly convinced any part of it is strikingly Perpendicular]. It also is far too big and homogenous to be original gothic. Although one has to admire the painstaking attention to detail in keeping the scaffold holes.
A brief Google does not bring up much, but I don't know the Swedish for church or saint. All I could find was one pdf, in Swedish, which suggests the church is only a 100 years old [assuming I'm reading 100 år, 1904-2004 right]. I'm guessing kyrkan means church then, and that they write St. as S:t. And I presume församling means something like parish or congregation (having decided it couldn't mean baptist. Well, it did say S:t Johannes församling).
Isn't it wonderful want one can learn simply by being bemused by what someone sees as English architecture? And here was I thinking there wasn't much to any of it, having tried to get a Norwegian flat-mate to teach me Norwegian, only to be very disappointed the learn that, in Norwegian, the word for people is folk. So just Norway and Norfolk, and probably Nova Scotia as well then? But then I managed eavesdrop on her conversation with a friend (she was having it in corridor outside my room, so it was a bit hard to miss), and understand it fine, until I realised she was speaking Norwegian. And then I tried thinking about it, and suddenly could not understand a thing.
Back to churches. Une chapelle anglaise. Eine englische Kirche. Una iglesia inglesa. Een Antiguaanse kathedraal in de stijl van een Engelse kerk.
Ok, so the Dutch is stretching it a bit, as it's basically baroque. The Spanish one does have a chapel in it. Part thereof. Somewhere.
So in a blatant "I've always wanted to do this" rip-off of GfB stylee...
Swedish word for the day: Församling - Tester pot.
Anyhoo,
