Flower Festival 2019. St Anthony's.
This is the week running up to Tynwald Day and so is also Flower Festival Week. Our church is not taking part this year which means I have time to visit some of the places that are.
The over-arching theme this year is 'Community'.
My first visit was to St Anthony's Roman Catholic Church, here in the village.
I was interested to see what they had done as, like our church, theirs is a modern building. Like our building it does not have traditional church windows. It does have, however, one of the most spectacular windows I have seen.
You can see it, and the flowers, under the cut;
St Anthony's church began, in 1923, as a chapel of ease for the main church in Douglas, to take the overflow during the summer season when thousands came to the island on holiday. The original building was one of the large wooden huts used as a recreation hut at the WW1 Internment camp on the island. It was positioned overlooking the sea. This building lasted for about 70 years!
The current building was paid for entirely by a local rich businessman, Albert Gubay, in memory of his mother. It is designed for a congregation of about 80 -100 so is not enormous, but Mr Gubay also came up with the idea for the one, focal, window in the worship area, looking out over the bay.
Christ walking on the water;
Isn't that wonderful in its simplicity?
Beside the window were a couple of displays looking to the fishing community;
I like some of the details -
In other areas of the church there were tall stands of arrangements. To be honest I couldn't really work out what they had to do with community.
Mr Gubay left more money, when he died a few years ago, to provide a new church hall, linked to the church with a corridor, as the old one was a separate building. This is the new doorway through;
I rather liked that driftwood arch.
And my favourite display inside the building was actually just in that link corridor and it was not possible to get a good picture -
And, to me, the very best flowers at St Anthony's could be seen through that corridor window. This is the rose bed in the church garden;
Next will be a more traditional church as I head south to The Abbey Church in Ballasalla.
The over-arching theme this year is 'Community'.
My first visit was to St Anthony's Roman Catholic Church, here in the village.
I was interested to see what they had done as, like our church, theirs is a modern building. Like our building it does not have traditional church windows. It does have, however, one of the most spectacular windows I have seen.
You can see it, and the flowers, under the cut;
St Anthony's church began, in 1923, as a chapel of ease for the main church in Douglas, to take the overflow during the summer season when thousands came to the island on holiday. The original building was one of the large wooden huts used as a recreation hut at the WW1 Internment camp on the island. It was positioned overlooking the sea. This building lasted for about 70 years!
The current building was paid for entirely by a local rich businessman, Albert Gubay, in memory of his mother. It is designed for a congregation of about 80 -100 so is not enormous, but Mr Gubay also came up with the idea for the one, focal, window in the worship area, looking out over the bay.
Christ walking on the water;
Isn't that wonderful in its simplicity?
Beside the window were a couple of displays looking to the fishing community;
I like some of the details -
In other areas of the church there were tall stands of arrangements. To be honest I couldn't really work out what they had to do with community.
Mr Gubay left more money, when he died a few years ago, to provide a new church hall, linked to the church with a corridor, as the old one was a separate building. This is the new doorway through;
I rather liked that driftwood arch.
And my favourite display inside the building was actually just in that link corridor and it was not possible to get a good picture -
And, to me, the very best flowers at St Anthony's could be seen through that corridor window. This is the rose bed in the church garden;
Next will be a more traditional church as I head south to The Abbey Church in Ballasalla.