Cathedral Church of Saint Michael and All Angels
The Cathedral Church of Saint Michael and All Angels (formerly St. Michael's Parish Church ) is an Anglican church on St. Michael's Row, two blocks east of National Heroes Square, in central Bridgetown , Barbados . The church is the tallest of the Anglican churches in Barbados.
history
Consecrated in 1665 and rebuilt in 1789, it was consecrated as a cathedral in 1825 - with the appointment of Bishop William Coleridge as head of the newly established diocese of Barbados and the Leeward Islands .
The first parish church to be built was the Parish Church of St. Michael, which was located where the Anglican Church of St. Maria is standing. The original parish church of St. Michael was a small wooden church that was built between 1660 and 1665. It was destroyed by a hurricane in 1780 and rebuilt nine years later. The church was later damaged but not destroyed in the great hurricane of 1831.
The St. Michael Cathedral is made of coral stone. Inside the church there is a marble baptismal font from the 17th century. The Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament was added in 1938 and features a wallaba clapboard roof and a Canterbury cross on the north wall.
In May 1980, to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the baptismal font, the cathedral organist and choirmaster, Dr. John George Fletcher, the hymn Nipson Anom.mata (Wash my sins) . The text is a Greek palindromic inscription (Νίψον ἀνομήματα, μὴνόν ὄψιν) that surrounds the outer edge of the script.
The St. Michael Cathedral is still used as a place for regular church services. A restoration of the building has been planned since the beginning of the 21st century.
graveyard
Two eminent Barbados figures found their final resting place in the Church's cemetery: Sir Grantley Herbert Adams , the first Prime Minister of Barbados and the first and only Prime Minister of the West Indian Federation, and his son Tom Adams , the second Prime Minister of the island. There is also the grave of William Brandford Griffith , the former governor of the Gold Coast .
Web links
- Official website (English)
Coordinates: 13 ° 5 '52.1 " N , 59 ° 36" 44.6 " W.