Dowding, Sarah A;
(2024)
From Mission Hall to Church: Theology, Culture and Architecture on a South London Estate.
Architecture and Culture
10.1080/20507828.2023.2214762.
(In press).
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Abstract
In the UK, small faith buildings of “ordinary” appearance, occupied by Christian congregations who reject ideas of sacred space, have tended to be passed over by the historical record and continue to be overlooked by some heritage professionals. The primary significance of these humble buildings is not located in the acquisition and possession of symbolic artefacts and adornments, nor in architectural gestures designed to indicate the holiness of a space, but rather in the lack of such things, and in the deliberate maintenance of the ordinary and the functional. This article takes as its case study a former mission hall situated on a South London Estate, occupied by a church called The Bridge from 2010 to 2022. Considering the building in the wider social and historical context of urban mission halls, the article explores how The Bridge Church embodied Reformed Protestant theological beliefs about spaces of worship to suit the setting of a London estate in the twenty-first century, with modesty and utility demonstrated in their building inside and out.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | From Mission Hall to Church: Theology, Culture and Architecture on a South London Estate |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/20507828.2023.2214762 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/20507828.2023.2214762 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Keywords: | Urban mission halls, sacred space, nonconformist, council estates, theology |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > The Bartlett School of Architecture |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10189581 |
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