When Ripon and York St John sold the Ripon site and became York St John the Bell Tower from outside the St Margaret's Chapel at Ripon was retrieved. It has sat, forlornly, beside some garages at the rear of the York Campus for three years. Finally, today, the bell tower was put in place on the Chapel lawn. The 9 metre structure represents, according to colleagues and students, a radio mast, a crown of thorns, a rib cage, a space rocket and an oil rig -- all useful metaphors for prayer.
Once the bell is put in place, this will be a sign of hope -- a transplanting of an instrument for prayer to a place which has waited 39 years for a bell. Now I'm not especially into bells, they're ok, just I'm not into them. All the same, I can see, after listening to the calls to prayer and bell tolling of churches in Al Quds / Jerusalem that a place's identity is dramatically changed through having structures which transform both the physical and aural architecture of the built environment. It will also be a sign of healing to those who lost so much when Ripon closed. The other thing is that I think the brutalism of the piece fits in superbly with the Chapel building, and yet it blends exquisitely with the four trees that surround it.
No comments:
Post a Comment