AN ECCLESIASTICAL OUTRAGE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXXII, Issue 10465, 1 October 1894, Page 3

AN ECCLESIASTICAL OUTRAGE.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Does it not occur to you as an extraordinary trait in human nature that architects when called to effect renovations, restorations, or additions, never dream it is part—ia the chief part—of their duty to endeavour to catch some portion—however small—of the inspiration which governed the design of the original structure? They never do. Almost invariably they give full play to their own ideas, careless of the fact that they may be quite incongruous. Ido not suppose it has over suggested itself to the fiends (inartistic fiends, of course) who are now playing the very what’s-his-name with the Cathedral to ask themselves what are the striking characteristics of its design. Well, note the buttresses, how few and small they are. On the tower—with plenty of daylight between it and tbe nave —the angles of the buttresses have been chamfered, and there, where the walls are most massive, the windows are comparatively shallow. Throughout, the doors and windows are not externally deeply recessed. All this ia strikingly obvious, and the result is that lightness and grace characterise the whole edifice. Now, the authorities who are responsible for this abortion of a porch have studied to go to the very opposite extreme. The windows could scarcely have been more deep set, showing in a subsidiary erection a thickness of wall infinitely greater than in the tower itself, whilst the balustrading, imperforated, looks like a great, deep base course that bad unaccountably lost its way. The original fatjado was perfect in taste and beauty, but if a porch was indispensably necessary, then something elegant in its lightness and grace might have been designed in harmony with the main edifice. As it is, it would task any genius to conceive anything more heavy, more atrociously ugly, more superbly out of character than the awful abortion that is now approaching completion. Something in the Queen Anne style would have been quite as harmonious. Yet Christchurch is supposed to be a city of culture and good taste !—I am, &c., JASON.