Not actually part of Doors Open this year, I happened to see some photos on Flickr from a few years back of the interior of an old church now called the Mansfield Traquair Centre, just off the foot of Broughton Street. I've passed the place any number of times, but never imagined it was anything remarkable. Well, it turns out it is. It also turns out it's open to visitors on the second Sunday of each month (usually).
Built for the short-lived, slightly odd and now extinct Catholic Apostolic Church, the structure itself is a bonny enough thing, being a monumental sandstone affair by Robert Rowand Anderson (also responsible for the Central Station Hotel as it happens), but the murals by Phoebe Anna Traquair are quite something, colourful in the extreme and covering almost every square foot of the interior. It's fairly obvious that the congregation included some very wealthy individuals. The results are possibly the closest we'll see to the way cathedrals used to look before the Refomation stripped them of their decoration. The building was saved from accelerating deterioration in the nick of time in the late 1990s, and subject to some intensive restoration work, lasting years and costing a fortune but with marvellous results.
The chancel arch is the principal feature, I suppose, and it certainly grabs your attention as you enter:
Though looking back to the western wall, there's an even larger and almost bizarrely jubilant affair:
Subtle it ain't. The overall effect is beautiful though, as the decoration is carried on through the whole place:
In parts where the painting is seen at closer range, there's some far more delicate work:
This being my favourite, I think. Very Arts & Crafts:
It only housed the Catholic Apostolic Church till 1958, as the organisation gradually disappeared (partly owing to the fact that they stopped ordinating priests in 1901, for reasons best known to themselves). Here be links:
>RCAHMS<http://www.mansfieldtraquair.org.ukAs a footnote, there used to be one of their churches in Glasgow, in McAslin Street, possibly build by Pugin but demolished c.1970.
>RCAHMS>Map<
All the world seems in tune on a Spring afternoon, when we're poisoning pigeons in the park.