I made this one after looking at a wonderful, but very sad, album on Flickr by someone who had photographed dozens of derelict or abandoned buildings of all kinds: municipal buildings; railway stations; schools, concert halls, and many many churches and other places of worship, often places with amazing historical architecture or interior design. It’s hard to imagine what could have led to them becoming abandoned.
Coincidentally, soon after that, I saw on the news that there had been a disastrous fire in Paris ,which destroyed part of Notre Dame Cathedral.
Although I am not a churchgoer, I find old churches very interesting and moving. During my childhood in England I lived in a fairly rural county which abounded in churches, many of them medieval and some dating right back to the Saxon period. Those old stone churches were the centre of village life in those small towns. My uncle, who was an artist, used to take me along on some of his sketching trips as we visited village squares, castles, seashores and meadows and lots of churches and their graveyards where various poets and people of historical importance were buried. At the churches, I loved to look at the gargoyles on the pillars and the stained glass windows from inside. Those windows taught me that something which looks dark and boring from the outside, can be light and colourful from the inside. I particularly liked the mandalic-shaped rose windows!
During my last visit back to England i a few years ago, I was saddened to see that a lot of church buildings, some with beautiful architecture, had been turned into restaurants, bars, bingo halls and flats and so on. I don’t know what I’d want for them, some kind of community gathering place, perhaps, but not businesses!
