HOLY SEPULCHRE CHURCH

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 January 1934, Page 3

HOLY SEPULCHRE CHURCH

WALLS SHORED WITH TIMBER. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Jerusalem), the most venerated shrine in Christendom, is in peril of collapse (states the London “Daily Telegraph”). The north and south walls have been shored up with baulks of timber, under the direction of an English architect, but they are badly out of perpendicular and quite unfit to support the domes. The trouble is due to the penetration of water from the flat roof into the interior of the walls. These, like the piers of St. Paul’s Cathedral, are laced with stone, but filled' with rubble. Under the influence of the water the rubble-filling has disintegrated and become a soft mass.

The cost of repair is estimated at £30,000, but the raising of the money will not be the chief difficulty. Though the Greek Orthodox Church is the guardian of the Holy Sepulchre, adherents of other churches, such as the Latin, Armenian, Jacobite and Copt, have traditional and prescriptive rights in the church, to which they cling with almost fanatical jealousy. If it were left to them to decide whose privilege and responsibility it was to carry out the work it probably would never be done. The only possible course will be for an independent authority, such as the Government of Palestine, to undertake it. Fortunately the foundations of the church are secure. When the Emperor Constantine cleared the site of its pagan terraces he excavated down to the solid rock. There is, however, very little of the Constantinian work left in the fabric.

During the earthquake of 1927, when over 1000 people lost their lives near Jerusalem, the eastern dome of the church, a rare survival of Crusader work, was destroyed'. In 1808 a large part of the church was destroyed by fire.