Holy Trinity Church (Pontresina)

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Holy Trinity Church shortly after it was built in 1882

The Holy Trinity Church or English Church was an Anglican church in Pontresina in the Upper Engadine . The neo-Gothic church, built in 1882 according to plans by the English architect Richard Popplewell Pullan and demolished in 1975, is considered to be his main work and the most important work of English church building in Switzerland.

prehistory

Location of the English Church (yellow), the course of the village street Via Maistra highlighted in green
The construction site of the Holy Trinity Church on the left side of the picture, next to it the construction site of the Hotel Pontresina, which was being built at the same time, at the beginning of the 1880s

Church services in their own language and in their own ritual were a requirement of the English tourists who visited Swiss foreign places from the second half of the 19th century with the advent of tourism. Initially, rooms in hotels or churches of other denominations were used for this purpose. From 1870 onwards, the first English church in Switzerland was built in Zermatt , mostly designed by English architects.

Before the construction of the Church of England, the Anglican church services during the summer season were each in the Evangelical - Reformed village church San Niculò instead. The English architect and archaeologist Richard Popplewell Pullan visited Pontresina in 1872 and made a proposal for a small church for English visitors. The established committee was not very successful, only a few donations were received and the plans came to nothing.

The project was given new impetus in the late 1870s by the English clergyman JW Ayre from St. Mark's Church on North Audley Street in London . The number of English guests had tripled during this time, which increased the need, but also required a larger building.

The local hotel industry supported the project. The President of the Upper Engadin District , Gian Saratz from the Saratz hotelier family, donated a piece of land for the church in the new Bellavita district , which was built between the Lower Village Laret and the Upper Village St. Spiert from 1870. Florian Zambail , owner of the Hotel Roseg, which accommodated many English guests, donated the land for the access road. Lorenz Gredig from the Hotel Krone gave 20 pounds to the church building fund, plus further donations of around 700 pounds. The English composer Arthur Sullivan organized in Pontresina in 1880 a charity performance of his comic opera Cox and Box, composed in 1866, and took over the role of Cox in it.

The Anglican mission organization Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts organized the construction of the church, the cost of which was estimated at a total of 1,300 pounds. At its annual meeting on February 20, 1880, the Continental Chaplaincies Committee was able to report on the laying of the foundation stone and the construction of the foundations in 1879. The church building fund had grown by 400 pounds this year thanks to donations from the guests. The plans in the architectural archive of the Ragaz brothers and a letter from Pullan speak in favor of the construction being carried out by the local construction company from Samedan , which in the 1880s carried out largely all the hotel buildings in Pontresina. Construction work was completed in 1882 and the church was consecrated on August 19, 1882. The completion of the interior work took until 1884.

architecture

Altarpiece and Antependium, Plate 48 in Studies in Architectural Style

The floor plan of the church was formed by a south-west oriented longitudinal rectangle with straight front sides, broken through on the south-east side by the slightly protruding side portal. The outside walls, made of irregularly layered quarry stone masonry made from local stone, were based on local building traditions. The low outer walls of the aisles were divided into buttresses , also made of quarry stone, and paired pointed arch windows , inside under a Tudor arch . The wooden walls of the tall nave only slightly towered over the aisles. Like the roofs of the two aisles, the steep gable roof of the central nave was covered with Eternit . A roof turret with a pointed helmet crowned the stepped silhouette of the church.

In contrast to the strict, rough and rather rustic design of the exterior was the interior design, which was almost entirely made of wood. Pullan emphasized this design element in his Studies in Architectural Style , published in 1883 , in which he described his church in Pontresina: The walls are of local stone, but the piers, nave, arches and clerestory are of pitch pine, which gives a novel character to the interior. - The walls are made of local stone, but the pillars, nave, arch and cliffs are made of pitch pine, which gives the interior a new character.

Wooden bundle pillars with carved capitals supported the pointed arched arcades crowned with eyelashes . The wooden upper aisles with two three-pass windows each in the rear yokes and two four-pass windows each in the yokes near the choir rested on it. The open roof construction with a wooden ceiling over the central and side aisles also rested on these pillars with belt arches and supports. Pullan highlighted these load-bearing structural elements by painting the wood darker. The altarpiece also received painted ornaments on the natural, unstained wooden surface.

The high-quality, colored glass windows contributed to the special room atmosphere. Some of them were gifts, such as the large choir window in splendid stained glass, which cost several thousand francs , donated by actors and theater managers Squire and Effie Bancroft from London's Theater Royal Haymarket , long-time guests in Pontresina. A gift from Helena of Great Britain and Ireland was the antependium , embroidered by the ladies of the Royal School of Needlework .

Use, sale and demolition

After its completion, the church was in operation in the summer season from mid-June to mid-September. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts sent a pastor for this time, who usually lived in the Hotel Kronenhof. With the introduction of the winter season in Pontresina after the turn of the century, the church was also used in winter and a special heating fund was set up to finance the heating.

Due to the dwindling number of churchgoers with social change in the course of the 20th century, the Holy Trinity Church lost its importance. Finally, the political municipality of Pontresina bought the property in 1967 and the church was profaned . Some liturgical cult objects and clothes from the former church were donated to the Upper Engadin cultural archive . The municipality of Pontresina donated the three choir windows to the Rhaetian Museum in Chur in 1974 . After a few years of vacancy, the community had the church demolished in 1975 and built the Chesa Solena residential building with community-owned apartments in its place . This had to be demolished in autumn 2010 due to poor construction quality. The replacement building should be completed in 2012.

literature

  • André Meyer: English churches in Switzerland. In: Journal for Swiss Archeology and Art History . 29, pp. 70-81 (1972).
  • André Meyer: The Holy Trinity Church in Pontresina. In: The work . 59: 4-5 (1972).
  • Richard Popplewell Pullan: Studies in Architectural Style. Speaight and Sons, London 1883, p. 9, p. 15, plate 9 and plate 48.

See also

Web links

Commons : Holy Trinity Church (Pontresina)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ George Aitchison: Pullan, Richard Popplewell . In: Dictionary of National Biography. Volume 47, Smith, Elder, & Co., London 1885-1900, p. 18.
  2. ^ André Meyer: English Churches in Switzerland. In: Journal for Swiss Archeology and Art History . 29 (1972), p. 78.
  3. ↑ a b c d J. M. Ludwig: Pontresina and its neighborhood. Translated by FS Reilly. Edward Stanford, London 1879, p. 128.
  4. ^ A b c d Richard Popplewell Pullan: Studies in Architectural Style. Speaight and Sons, London 1883, p. 9.
  5. ↑ Meinhard Saremba: Arthur Sullivan: a composer's life in Victorian England. Noetzel, Wilhelmshaven 1993, ISBN 3-7959-0640-7 .
  6. ^ The Mission Field, 25 (1880), p. 101.
  7. ↑ State Archive Chur: Architecture Archive Gebr. Ragaz / W. Vonesch, Samedan; Folder 2: English Church Pontresina (PDF; 618 kB).
  8. ↑ M [ichael] Caviezel: The Engadine in words and pictures. Tanner, Samedan 1893, p. 181.
  9. ^ André Meyer: The Holy Trinity Church in Pontresina. In: The work . 59 (1972), p. 4.
  10. ↑ M [ichael] Caviezel: The Engadine in words and pictures. Tanner, Samedan 1893, p. 313.
  11. ↑ a b F [rederick] de Beauchamp Strickland: The Engadine: A Guide to the district. Sampson Low and Co., London 1891, p. 199.
  12. ↑ Culture archive inventory ID-100497
  13. ↑ Dora Lardelli: The magic carpet: Art trip to the Upper Engadine hotels 1850-1914. , Skira, Geneva 2010 ISBN 978-88-572-0674-5 p. 243.
  14. ↑ 16 new first homes for Pontresina. In: Engadiner Post . Thursday, March 25, 2010 (PDF file; 3.82 MB).

Coordinates: 46 ° 29 '33.7 "  N , 9 ° 54' 14.5"  E ; CH1903:  seven hundred and eighty-nine thousand two hundred fifty-one  /  one hundred and fifty-two thousand and fifteen