Where have all the churches gone?

The Old Bear

READERS OF THIS website who are of an earlier vintage, and I am in this category, will recall the folk singer Pete Seeger. One of his greatest songs from the 1960s was Where Have All The Flowers Gone? Many folk stars of the era recorded it – the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez. Remember them? And Marlene Dietrich sang it in German.

Let me reprise the opening stanza for reasons I will explain:

Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago.
Where have all the flowers gone?
The girls have picked them everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

And then to references of marriage, young men as soldiers, and graveyards. A lament for what has been lost.

I suggest it be adapted for what is happening now – with the title to become Where Have All The Old Churches Gone? And, yes, when will the supposedly responsible people – the authorities of church and the political – ever learn that Tasmania just cannot continue to lose its beautiful heritage-built church architecture?

Last week we have had another case, not this time from the close-them-down Anglican administration but the Uniting Church. A letter to the Mercury told of the shock that Cambridge and surrounding communities had on seeing their church and its cemetery advertised for sale.

“This has been done without consultation with the community whose ancestors and loved ones are buried there, many of whom were first settlers and convicts. This property is sacred to the community and is listed on the heritage registers of Tasmania and Australia,” the letter added.

The situation with Holy Trinity Anglican Church is different in that there isn’t a cemetery attached. But there are parallels in the loss of an historic church. It is also worth contemplating that although Holy Trinity has been closed and deconsecrated as an Anglican place of worship it still stands on what many people regard as hallowed ground.

I was reminded of just how hallowed, how reverential, how spiritually inspirational a beautiful old church can be last Sunday, Remembrance Day, when I watched the BBC’s Songs of Praise on the ABC, with the memorial service from magnificent Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire, England.

It was a particularly moving remembrance of the World War One dead in such a striking setting. How could anyone not be moved by the scene at the end of red paper poppies floating down from on high, and the sounding of the Last Post?

Ely Cathedral is an enduring symbol of worship through the ages.

There’s been a church there since the seventh century, when Saxon queen St Etheldreda founded a cathedral on “island rising out of the Fenland”. It was a premier Saxon church in England, and the equal of Canterbury and Glastonbury.

With the Norman invasion, a kinsman of William the Conqueror called Simeon was named Abbot of Ely and began rebuilding the cathedral in 1083, creating one of the best examples of Romanesque architecture in England.

Further reading on its rich history tells us that early in the 14th century the Norman tower collapsed, and one Alan of Walsingham became the cathedral’s saviour, designing a central tower “that seems to float unsupported above the crossing of Ely Cathedral like a cloud”. The form of its unique octagon tower was an amazing engineering feat in the Middle Ages. Ely Cathedral is a magnet for visitors, be they of the architecturally-interested kind or people who just appreciate just how old churches inspire.

It’s full title is “The Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Ely”. Not all that far removed in name from the Holy Trinity Anglican Church of North Hobart.