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St Barnabas Church Erdington

hi david..so very sorry to hear of your uncles passing..sending you a private message...

lyn
 
David, sorry to hear of the loss of your uncle, hope the Stoke visit isn't too upsetting, also hope that he can rejoin his parents, I know that my Great Aunts ashes were interred in the family grave at Oscott a few yearys ago, there was a charge, but not tooo expensive momsays.
Sue
 
David I am so sorry to hear about your uncle, it must have been a shock. I hope you cope alright with your visit to Stoke on Trent a bit of a jaunt in itself. Michael worked there for over 25 years. I also hope everything works out well with his ashes. Will be thinking of you.
 
David - I'd just like to add my sympathy for your loss, and I hope you're OK. I doubt if you will have a problem with the interment, it is a farly routine request nowadays.

All the best

Graham.
 
David Sad loss,

I visited St Barnabas today, checked around the rear, to see if a couple of Commonwealth memorials are still there, the large one is there but one is missing, no access to the church to inquiry, will check at a later date .
 
As promised, here are some hi-res pictures of the Church, taken during today's open day. I will post up a few more (once I sort them out!) later on, and send the rest to Photobucket leaving the link here. The pictures I have selected are interior ones to start with. I hope they whet the appetite.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Rev. Frida Evans and her staff for granting their kind permission to take the pictures, and for making my wife and I so welcome during our visit.

Best wishes

Graham. :smug:

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Thanks for posting the interior photos of St. Barnabas, Graham. I hope that the "Open House" was well attended.
The new stained glass window over the Altar area appeals to me very much. I also hope that the
Pulpit has been rebuilt or new design made and also the famous brass lectern.

The one stained glass window remaining is great to see. I have copies of the ones that were
destroyed in the fire.
 
Hi jennyann

The open day did very well as far as I could see. It also won a few converts, not necessarily to Christ but to the new design. :smug:

The original pulpit is gone I'm afraid, although as you see from the pictures the reredos has been restored. I saw no sign whatsoever of any brass pulpit, so I assume that is gone; although Rev. Evans will have more details I suspect. The church certainly is not out the woods yet. I took some pictures of the stone dressing on the unprotected areas of the church, which has become extremely friable due to the extreme temperature it was subjected to coupled with our wet weather. In some places the skin is being shed like a giant gecko, and in others the old mortar is turning into cream-cheese. I don't know how anyone is going to be able to stop this, other than to encase the entire building in glass.

Best wishes

Graham

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David - hope you're ok. Not an easy thing that you're going through. I hope everything is soon resolved for you.

I also hope the church can find ways to stem the deterioration in other parts of the church. This Forum seems like a good place to keep developments in the public eye. Viv.
 
Thanks for your reply geehigh and also for the photographs. Thanks also to Graham for his photos. The Brass Eagle lectern stood very close to the Chancel steps on the right hand side. I have a feeling that it was donated to St. Barnabas by the Mother's Union. There was a small round plague on the side of the lectern which mentioned the Mother's Union and the script : "Train up a child in the way he should go"...which is part of scripture from the book of Proverbs. The lectern itself was a large brass eagle with spread out wings on which the book board, which held the large bible, rested. The short walkway up to the book board had brass railings in a fancy design either side of it. I imagine the font, which was always at the rear of the church on the left hand side was destroyed also. Sorry to hear that the pulpit was destroyed. I didn't notice one in the new photos.

Apart from the cost to restore the exterior of the church, the stone that the church is built with is very soft and over the years has absorbed a lot of grime
from the atmosphere. I am sure the diocese are aware of the state of the exterior but it will require a lot of money to bring it up to scratch.
 
Hi Jennyan
Hello Jennyan, the pulpit was beautiful wasn't it, donated by Thomas Ryland. The reredos is thankfully saved and if my memory is correct also donated by Thomas Ryland. They will probably never have another pulpit and I think the alter has been moved to the front in the shape of a table.
I did read a couple of lessons from the Eagle lectern. The Eagle was brass, so I am surprised it was not found as my husband says it needs a very high temperature to melt.
At lease we remember it as it was.
 
Thanks for the instructive comments folks. No there was no lecturn, there couldn't have been because I make a point of taking close-ups of the lecturn eagle when I visit churches / cathedrals. It didn't occur to me that I hadn't done that until jennyann mentioned it. Looking back now, I didn't see much of any period metalwork surviving apart from the odd bit of victorian arch (see photo).

Fire being a strange beast, it was purely artibrary was was saved, and what wasn't.

I think the temperature of the fire that destroyed a lot of the Church is underestimated. With a through breeze going on it would have been a furnace in there. It certainly got hot enough to melt the glass, destroy supporting stonework utterly, and to require 15 fire engines to put it out. These are impresive facts in a perverse way.

The extreme temperatures also changed some of the stones chemically, so that any water hitting them would cause rapid degeneration (far quicker than stone exposed to normal weathering). I'm afraid to say that the Stone selected by Victorians could also be pretty low-grade, as they were bunging up a church every five minutes in the early 1800s, so economy was a factor.

This is one of reasons that the new glass section of the church had to be built; the surviving stained glass window is under serious threat of being undermined by the friable stonework should it not be protected in this way. In the protected glass section there is also evidence of very recent shedding of the stone dressing, and in-roads being made into the stone blocks themselves.

I hope the nay-sayers give the place a chance. I'm sure they'll never win everybody over (nobody can be forced to like something), but these folks will come and they will go. I think that everyone involved in the rebuild has done a very impressive job considering what they had to work with.

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Finally folks, here's a photo of the entire east end taken from the second floor. I've kept it reasonably hi-res so you can zoom in and see what's what. I'll put the other pictures on Photobucket in the next few days, and I'll post the link to them on this thread. I've taken up enough server space here with my junk!

Cheers & Best wishes

Graham :smug:

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Hello everyone..

I'll admit I have not had the time to read all the comments on the previous 20 pages, so please forgive me if this topic has been covered.

Does anybody know if there are plans to replace the memorial plaque to our war dead in the Memorial Chapel??

Ian
 
I believe that Jenny has answered this on the BHF Facebook page Ian.
 
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Can anyone tell me when the organ pipes were relocated from the choir area (see page 16) and where exactly were they relocated too?
 
Alan

I note that you have a photograph of the war memorial that was destroyed in the fire. I am currently researching my great uncle harold Edward Pitt who was killed in the Great War in 1915. His name appeared on this memorial. Is there a possibility of seeing your photograph please?
 
aschuck said:
Alan

I note that you have a photograph of the war memorial that was destroyed in the fire. I am currently researching my great uncle harold Edward Pitt who was killed in the Great War in 1915. His name appeared on this memorial. Is there a possibility of seeing your photograph please?
Click to expand...
If it is of any help the photo below is on the forum's Image Host, I think I can see your great uncle's name at the bottom of the middle column.
St_Barnabas_Erdington_011.jpg


The above image digitally enhanced to make names clearer
StBarnabasErdington_FullX.jpg

The Memorial Roll digitally enhanced to make all names readable.
StBarnabasErdingtonMemorialXWW1.jpg
 
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Many thanks for your prompt help in this matter.This photograph rounds off many years of research into my great uncle. I always thought his name would have appeared on a memorial in the area in which he lived before he was called up. I was wrong !!
 
Hi oldMohawk,
I have been researching the men that are commemorated on this memorial. I have a community on 'lives of the First World War' :-https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/community/1059 At the moment I only have a photo of the top part of the memorial. Please may I have permission to use your photograph of the memorial on the men's life stories?

Many thanks,

Sharon
 
Hi Sharon - The photo is not actually mine, it is on the forum server and I just made it appear in my post with an image link. The forum name of the member who posted the original is 'subotone'. You can find him in the members list and probably send a forum private message to him. I would think using the photo for the purposes you describe would not be a problem.
oldmohawk
 
a bit late phil but thanks for the photo of the war memorial that was inside st barnabas...i have never seen it before

lyn
 
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