St. Brélade Church
The parish church of St. Brélade (Parish church of St. Brélade) and the Fischer Chapel (Fisherman's Chapel) located at the southwest end of the Bay of Saint Brélade on the island of Jersey . It is believed that it was built on one of the oldest Christian sites on St. Brélade and the oldest parts are 1000 years old. The Anglican Church has a parish of about 12,500 people and an additional tens of thousands of visitors per year.
Construction site
According to tradition, the founding of the church and the fishermen's chapel should go back to the Celtic or Welsh itinerant preacher Branwalator (also known as Branwallder, Broladre, Brelodre, Brélade) himself, who had determined this place. It is close to an earlier prehistoric site ( dolmen ), the use of which was transferred to the chapel during Christianization.
Surname
The church is dedicated to St. Brélade (also known as St. Branwalader).
church
Today's church is mentioned in patronage documents. In 1035, Robert of Normandy confirmed the patronage of the Church to Montivilliers Abbey . The choir is the oldest part of the building. The original building extended about six feet into the nave. Back then it was just a small monastery chapel.
At the beginning of the 12th century the church was expanded into a parish church. The church got a cruciform floor plan. It consisted of a choir, a nave (built in two sections) and two transepts. Perhaps a century later, the chancel was built and then the nave passage. The tower, which is still visible today, was also added. The chapel was built similarly. First a double wall was built, it was covered on all sides and then liquid lime mortar was poured into the space in between. For the mortar, mussels were crushed and dissolved with boiling sea water.
In the 14th to 15th centuries the roof was raised about two and a half feet and the church was Gothicized .
The church also contained a rood screen . This is no longer available today. The consoles on which he rested can still be seen. Until 1550 the church had five bells. According to an ordinance issued at the time, four of them had to be melted down. The proceeds were used to build fortresses on the island's two castles. Today there is a 840 kilogram bell from 1883 in the church.
The medieval baptismal font disappeared during the Reformation and was found on the slopes near the church in 1840, hidden in fern and gorse . It has been restored and is now back in the church. The long-time head of the church, HG Shepard, provided a richly decorated wooden lid.
The painted glass windows are the work of Henry Thomas Bosdet and replaced simple glass windows after the iconoclasm of the Reformation.
The carved text on the pulpit is a reproduction of Proverbs 25:11: “Tells que sont les pommes d'or emaillées d'argent, telle est la parole dit comme il faut” (A word spoken at the right time is like gold Apples on silver bowls.).
Before a renovation in the 1890s, the stones inside the church were covered with plaster and painted white. During the renovation, the plaster was removed from the granite stones and defective areas were repaired with cement. Art Nouveau woodwork was also installed in the choir and on the pulpit. To do this, the choir has been paved with five different types of Jersey granite in the form of waves breaking on the seashore.
Fisherman's Chapel
The fisherman's chapel (French: Chapelle-ès-Pêcheurs, Jèrriais: Chapelle ès Pêtcheurs) is right next to the church of St. Brélade. It is one of the few of the formerly over 50 monastery chapels on Jersey that were not destroyed during the Reformation. The name of the chapel Chapelle-ès-Pêcheurs was originally associated with fishing guilds that existed on the island. The historian Warwick Rodwell suggested, however, that not "pêcheurs" (fishermen), but "pécheurs" (sinners) are meant. This fits in with archaeological research showing that the chapel was a funeral chapel , that is, a chapel funded by a local family to hold masses for the souls of the dead. There is no evidence of “fishing guilds”. It is believed that the foundation walls of the chapel date back to the sixth century. Other sources give more recent data. According to Warwick Rodwell, the chapel was built after the main parish church was built. However, a simple wooden chapel could have existed here before.
With the Gothic reconstruction of the church in the 14th to 15th centuries, the fisherman's chapel was also rebuilt and the roof was raised.
The floor of the chapel was returned to the medieval level in the 1980s. This changed the interior of the chapel, which was perceived as low and squat, and which can be seen in early photographs, to its original proportions.
Frescoes
The fisherman's chapel is characterized by preserved medieval frescoes , which also survived the iconoclasm of the Reformation.
On the south wall of the chapel you can see part of the painting “Annunciation”. A little further to the west is the hand of the Virgin Mary , resting on a book lying on a lectern. Nearby you can see the head of one of the Magi with the name Melchior above it and a sage with the inscription les Mages . Between the wise men the body and legs of a soldier with chain armor can be clearly seen.
There are graffiti on the west wall of the chapel with the themes of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and the Last Judgment . Above the north door is a picture of King Herod , next to it The Flagellation of Christ . On the north ceiling above the door you can see an image of Christ riding a donkey, next to it the image of a Roman soldier. Parts of Adam and Eve and their children can be seen on the south ceiling in the small chancel .
Due to the confusion of Saint Brélade and Brendan in the past, there are now stained glass windows with scenes from the life of Saint Brendan in the chapel.
In the churchyard
To the south of the church is a “gate of refuge”. Criminals who reached the main altar of the church in the Middle Ages were able to avoid arrest. They could go to the beach via the gate and the stairs and were taken into lifelong banishment by boat.
On the wall of the north-east passage there is a memorial plaque for a former German military cemetery. During the First World War, German prisoners of war were buried in the cemetery. German occupiers during the Second World War. The bodies were exhumed in 1961 and taken to France.
The coffin could be placed under the covered cemetery gate while the pastor was waited for. The gate was a donation from Jesse Boots, later Lord Trent and founder of the Boots pharmacy chain.
literature
- Warwick Rodwell: The Fishermen's Chapel . Ed .: Societe Jersaise. Sutton Publishing Ltd, 1993, ISBN 978-0-901897-19-0 (English).
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Bessacarr Publications Ltd. (Ed.): Look at the Church of St. Brelade . 1994, ISBN 1-904953-08-5 (English: Look at the church of St. Brelade .).
Web links
Coordinates: 49 ° 11 '2.2 " N , 2 ° 12' 9.9" W.