Coventry - New Cathedral.

[David995031]

I posted some photos of the old, bombed cathedral a couple of weeks ago, intending to follow it up with some shots of its replacement. I sort of lost sight of it at the time but here's a few shots now. Hardly new, it's about half a century old but it still looks new.

[Mitch]

It isn't much of a statement for a building you would expect to be magnificent, it is almost like they ran out of ideas and just slapped it together....  Cracking photos though.

[Stravinsky]

Ive never been that impressed with the building, but there are great photo opportunities there though with the stained glass windows

[FUJI]

 

A wonderful set of pics David.....of a place very close to my heart.

As a local, and my mam and her ancestors haled from Spon End, the famous Watch-Making quarter of Coventry.... they were watch-face painters, and toiled away in other allied crafts.

My great, great grandparents were married in Holy Trinity Church just yards away from both Cathedrals.

We housed evacuees, immediately after the devastating Blitz obliterated much of the City Centre including the beautiful old Cathedral....but just like a Phoenix, it rise from the ashes..... should you think about it very carefully, to attempt to replicate a 14th Century? Building style would be just wrong....so this bold new Cathedral emerged out of the ashes, after an international design competition. Architect ( later Sir) Basil Spence was the winner.

The New Cathedral is a beautiful joining of old and new, all of the other designs had the old building swept away..... read his book and all is revealed.... so many well thought out features, all taken with the re-emerging city-scape and the then, contemporary outlook.

i particularly love the way that you enter through a huge clear glass screen of Guardian Angels ....to be faced at the Alter end by the biggest Tapestry in the World, featuring Christ in Majesty. .... but not a window in sight except for the huge Babtistry Window that floods the holy-Land boulder font with colored light.

it is only when you get to the altar then turn around, that guy see all of the other abstract stained glass windows in niches....increasing in brightness from rich indigo blues and purples through to sun-bright primary colours .....a wonder of design.

If you aren’t sure about the design, please can I point you toward YouTube videos featuring how the New Cathedral came about...or...read the book by Sir Basil Spence himself.

FUJI

 

[Ryewolf]

Another set I seemed to have missed.... A great set and there are some interesting parts that would make great abstract images... One to visit in the future...