An aqueduct without mortar, a tilting library, a house sandwiched between two boulders … Stone, a new book by William Hall, celebrates some of the world’s finest buildings, built with one of its oldest and most durable materials
When a 4,000-year-old wooden post was found near the church, it suggested that area was used for ritual purposes since the late Neolithic period
It took a lot of faith for Manitoba’s early pioneers to travel here some two hundred years ago from the European continent, and to survive the rigours of wild,
We hesitate to use words such as charming or sweet here as they might imply excessive cuteness, but the recently completed tiny chapel on Cyprus does have a welcoming, approachable appearance that made us contemplate tiny, cozy spaces.
An aqueduct without mortar, a tilting library, a house sandwiched between two boulders … Stone, a new book by William Hall, celebrates some of the world’s finest buildings, built with one of its oldest and most durable materials
A tiny chapel clings to a precipice above Germany’s gemstone capital.
A small church with a big heart We are paying a tribute to the smallest church in the southern hemisphere. It's design is based on a wing of Cardiff Cathedral in Wales. This unimposing little building sits on the pass between Harrismith and Ladysmith. Blink and you’ll miss the sign and the small road leading to the church Tiny it certainly is, about 20 bricks in length, with a small curved apse, and the front façade just 15 bricks wide. It is charming, resting under old trees on its sandstone base, with its quaint bell-tower surmounted by a stone Celtic cross. Below is a marble circle with the inscription ‘Landaff Oratory 1925’. Only one person at a time can fit through the entrance. Inside, there is a narrow aisle leading to a small altar and, beneath the beautiful stained glass windows with their iris motif are just four pews, each able to seat two. There is no doubt that the tiny church was built by eccentric local Van Reenen Magistrate Maynard Mathew in 1925. Mathew was a peculiar man who was the grandson of Viscount Llandaff 2 of Ireland and he was a friend of General Jan Smuts. The death of his favourite son, Llandaff, affected him deeply. And therein lies a story that is huge, the story of a retired magistrate Maynard Mathew, whose son Llandaff died while saving miners from a coalmine accident at the Burnside Colliery in KwaZulu-Natal on 19 March 1925. Llandaff’s bereft father, Maynard, was determined to erect a plaque to comemmorate his son’s bravery and that his son should not be forgotten. He decided to build his own church and sidestepped the restrictions by building a church himself. He had plans drawn up on a similar design to a wing of the famous cathedral in Cardiff Wales. So he purchased a quarter acre of land from Bob Bloy of the farm Scottstan and commissioned Mr John Smith, a contractor from Pietermaritzburg, to build his little church. Mathew was also clearly a devout Christian, for the stone plaque on the left wall proclaims ‘To the Glory of God’ first, and then follows ‘And in loving memory of Llandaff Mathew, who gave his life to save those of others at Burnside Colliery on March 19th 1925 Aged 28 RIP. The oratory seats just eight people, apparently the same number of people Llandaff saved in the mine accident The quirky little church has passed through many hands since it was built in 1925. When Mathew died, the chapel was sold to a George Tierny, and later to a Mr Osborne. In 1960 Mr Charles West-Thomas bought it and put up a tribute on one wall dedicated to his first wife, Terry. After her death, he remarried, and gave the chapel to his second wife, Mims, as a wedding present in 1974. On October 28, 1983, the Little Church was declared a National Heritage Site by the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA). Mr Maynard is remembered as a very colourful, family figure. His wife, Sadie, apparently had to endure bigoted good humour. Till next time Love from South Africa Sandra
An aqueduct without mortar, a tilting library, a house sandwiched between two boulders … Stone, a new book by William Hall, celebrates some of the world’s finest buildings, built with one of its oldest and most durable materials
The practice was commissioned to design a new chapel for Ripon Theological College in Cuddesdon, after winning an RIBA competition in 2009. The clients for the project were the College and the Sisters of St John the Baptist, a small community of nu…
This small, wood-clad chapel on a grassy hill in western Austria was designed by Bernardo Bader Architects to feature a worship space with a steeply pitched ceiling.
Completed in 2014 in Saint-Maurice-sous-les-Côtes, France. Images by Nicolas Waltefaugle . At the heart of the Natural Park of Lorraine, the Sainte-Genevieve chapel can be found through the hiking trails near riverside of Meuse, a natural...
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The often forgotten side of the United Kingdom, Wales is frequently missed by travelers to the region, but as the home of some of Europe’s most beautiful beaches, incredibly scenic walks, stunning castles, lush green hills and distinct Celtic culture – not to mention great beer, Wales is a place that should be on your […]
I photograph buildings, and teach other photographers how to do the same. I also photograph nice places, and buildings in nice places.
Why travel to Ethiopia and what might surprise you, from its rich history and rock-hewn churches of Lalibela to its mountains, coffee ceremonies and food.
You don't have to be a horror movie fan to find Europe's many bone churches fascinating, like BootsnAll writer Jessica Spiegel does.
Set against a dramatic backdrop of distant mountains and boundless sky, a tiny chapel in Austria’s southernmost state of Carinthia magnifies the intensity and natural beauty of its location.
A glass chapel in the woods? Can you believe how beautiful it is? Breathtaking. That’s what it is. Imagine getting married here? Where is it, you ask? This gorgeous glass chapel is at Garvan Woodland Gardens near Hot Springs, Arkansas. The wedding was shot by Becker.
Photo of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Lake Tekapo, New Zealand. This tiny church on the shores of Lake Tekapo is a popular site and has to be the most famous church in New Zealand thanks to its idyllic location.
Die tragenden »Rippen« der Konstruktion – Leimholzbinder aus Kiefernholz – sind durch Strahler an ihren Fußpunkten zusätzlich elektrisch beleuchtet.
May 15, 2017Iwan Baan, the renowned architectural photographer, hit pay dirt when he traveled to Kumamoto, on the Japanese island of Kyushu. Baan was accompanied by Sou Fujimoto, a young Japanese architect who had just completed a tiny house there made of wooden beams as thick as railroad ties. Baan knew the house was photogenic, […]
With so much to see and do in Munich it can be hard to know where to start. Weve narrowed it down to the best places that should be top of your list.
What a place to get married! This gorgeous glass chapel is at Garvan Woodland Gardens near Hot Springs, Arkansas. The wedding was shot by Becker.
St John the Baptist, Badingham, Suffolk I always enjoy revisiting Badingham church, not least because of the setting in this quiet, tiny village to the north of Framlingham. The church is approached between two old houses under a wrought-iron arch. These give the churchyard an almost urban feeling of enclosure, and it is a steep climb up to the church, a suggestion that this church stands on the site of an earlier structure whose purpose may have been defensive and pre-Christian. St John the Baptist is generally an early completion of the late 13th century, with Norman details surviving to show that it was not a total rebuild. It was tinkered with on the eve of the Reformation, with Perpendicular windows and a kind of pseudo-clerestory added to light the rood. The most striking survival of this period is the lovely porch, which has some unusual details. A dragon and a woodwose face off in the spandrels, but more curious and interesting are the buttresses either side. That to the east appears to show a dog eating out of a bowl, but it is intended as a tiger with a mirror, a symbol in the medieval bestiary of vanity. That on the other buttress is very badly damaged, but appears to show the lower half of a figure with a tail, thus almost certainly a mermaid. Her upper half would also have held a mirror, making her another symbol of vanity often paired with a tiger as on the bench ends at Wiggenhall St Germans in Norfolk. Inside the porch are two corbels, perhaps late Norman, possibly from an earlier entrance, more likely reset here from elsewhere. One appears to be a cat, the other looking like nothing so much as an Aztec god, but perhaps a man opening a door, or even an acrobat. Stepping inside can be a bit unnerving. The church slopes steeply up towards the altar, almost a metre between the west and east end of the nave. Coupled with the absence of aisles, this accentuates a feeling of narrowness. The dedication makes this even more interesting, because churches on previously pagan sites may have been dedicated to St John the Baptist deliberately because his feast day falls so close to midsummer. It must have seemed entirely natural to local people that, on this day of all days, their building should have faced the rising sun. Because the church is so small, the fact that it contains one of Suffolk's thirteen seven sacrament fonts might even make it feel as if the building were specifically constructed to contain it. This is not so of course, but of all East Anglia's other seven sacrament font churches, only Weston is smaller. Although Westhall's font is my favourite of this series, Badingham's runs it a close second, mainly because it has suffered less damage than many of the others, but also because the reliefs are so characterful. In the Last Rites panel, under the bed, we see the dying man's shoes and chamber pot, and his wife weeps into a hankie. In the Mass panel one figure holds the sacring bell, and we see two observers peering over the screen behind. In an instant it is as if we have been transported back to 15th century rural Catholic England, and it is not hard to imagine this scene happening in this very church. On the Baptism panel a woman holds a chrysom cloth, and this is also one of several seven sacrament fonts in Suffolk that depict the devil fleeing on the Penance panel. The man's hat on the Matrimony panel helps to accurately date the whole piece. The shaft and base contain many other images, including St Edmund. If this font was in the Victoria and Albert Museum it would be considered a national treasure, and we would all travel to London to see it. But of course there is more to this building than its font. Cautley thought the hammerbeam roof the most perfect example of a single hammerbeam in England. The early 20th Century angels replace those ordered down by William Dowsing in September 1644. That Dowsing did not remark on the font may be because it had been plastered over a century earlier by the Anglican reformers. As you walk east, a large expanse in the north wall is surmounted by a crocketted arch. Mortlock describes it as an image niche, but I do wonder if it could be the entrance to the roodloft stairs. Opposite is an unusually good window by Hugh Easton of 1928 depicting the young Christ meeting the young St John the Baptist. The chancel was the 1880 work of E L Blackburne, an avowed medievalist. The success of his work here means it is hard to tell unless you know. The east window depicts scenes from the life and death of St John the Baptist. William Cotton and his wife lie up in the sanctuary on a vast 1620s bed in the north wall. They seem a world away from the earlier figures on the rich 1440s Bardolph memorial across the fields in the grand church at Dennington. Curiously domestic, their hands are big, their piety outweighs their grace. Their flawed humanity, at once rustic and familiar, perhaps symbolises better than anything the difference between the reverence afforded to the very wealthy either side of the Reformation divide, and our artistic endeavours to remember them.
