The Breaking of the Day: An Interpretation of the War Memorial at Old Saint Paul’s

“The kingdom come,’ we are bid to ask then! But how shall it come? With power and great glory, it is written; and yet not with observation, it is also written. Strange kingdom! Yet its strangeness is renewed to us with every dawn.”

John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Vol, 5

In these words, John Ruskin inadvertently expressed the message of the War Memorial at Old Saint Paul’s decades before it was built.

The War Memorial is remarkable for several reasons – most obviously for its sheer scale. Most parish war memorials consist of a monument in the churchyard or a plaque in the church. That at Old Saint Paul’s comprises a new entrance to the church via a long and broad stone stair that rises to an almost life-size sculpted Calvary of grave beauty, and – over the stair – a lofty chapel with a fine waggon roof.

Completed in 1926 and consecrated on 11 November that year, the Chapel, with the Calvary Stair, has been described as one of the most beautiful war memorials in Scotland. If this is so, its beauty lies in its austerity. The architecture of the Stair is severe; and the Chapel – despite the handsome tracery that divides it from the Chancel – is dark, colourless and bleak.

The edifice is numinous with the spirit of the man who conceived it: Canon Albert Ernest Laurie. Canon Laurie had been a Military Chaplain in France during the Great War, receiving the Military Cross in 1916 and being awarded a Bar to the Cross in 1917, each time for tending the wounded within an active battlefield, at risk of his own life. It was the ordeal of the battlefield that informed the conception of the War Memorial.

It is a solemn thing to enter God’s house – a message very plainly conveyed by the design of the Calvary Stair. The Stair is symbolic both of the Way of the Cross and of Christ’s journey from birth to death – from the plaque depicting the Madonna and Child at the bottom of the Stair to the crucifixion at the top. Discounting the top and bottom landings, the Stair has thirty-three steps, one for each year of Christ’s life.

The journey is ours too as we follow in Christ’s footsteps. Mounting the Stair that leads us to Golgotha, it is easy to miss the two windows at the top. They depict St Christopher and St Francis. The Madonna at the foot of the Stair carries the Christ Child easily. To St Christopher at the top, the infant Jesus is an almost intolerable burden – heavy as the sorrow of all the world. Beside St Christopher, and next to the Calvary, St Francis is shown with the stigmata – the wounds of the crucifixion – in his own hands, feet and side. We do not know who chose which saints to depict, but if it was Canon Laurie, it is possible that this was because, after the hideous experience of the First World War, he felt a special affinity with these two saints who both experienced Christ as an affliction.

On reaching the image of Christ crucified, we turn through a portal into the church, just as death leads us into the presence of God. The portal takes us into the Nave, and most of us will go on to find our place there. But a few will take a different turn, to climb the steps that lead to the Chapel – where are the names in bronze of men whose ill fate led them to an early, bloody death.

If the Stairway embodies a message to the deciphered, the Chapel provides an experience to be endured – an experience of huge emotional power. Though the Chapel is dark its windows are important – both for where they are and for where they are not. The main windows are high up and of opaque glass so that you cannot see the sky. This creates a sense of enclosure, even entombment. The only windows you can see out of are low down: small internal windows that look back to the Calvary, the image of a man being tortured to death while those who love him look on – or look away – in helpless agony.

In working out the design of the Chapel, it is inconceivable that Canon Laurie and his architect did not consider filling the liturgical east (actually north) wall with a window., For one thing, the constraints of the site made this the only wall where a big window was possible, and without it, the Chapel is left in perpetual gloom. For another, such a window would have offered an opportunity for a triumphant stained-glass depiction of resurrection and salvation. Instead of which, what rises above the altar is a blank stone wall. ANd what Canon Laurie chose to hang there was a pall of purple velvet, the liturgical colour of penitence, the colour of the robe put on Jesus when he was mocked. Deliberately, the Chapel makes us confront the reality of desolation, remorse, grief, sin and death. There is nothing here to comfort us, nothing to give us hope.

Today, what hangs above the altar is the specially-commissioned

painting Still. Installed in 2004, Still is a monumental work by the Scottish artist Alison Watt, made up of four big square panels that do not quite meet, the gaps that divide them forming a cross. “The scale and design of the piece was a carefully considered response to the physical structure of the space,” explained the artist in an interview. “Yet ultimately, I wanted to convey how I felt when I was in the Chapel. It was an overwhelming feeling of sadness.”

This is where we know that Canon Laurie, sleepless with anguish, came in the watches of the night to remember the dead, and – surely – to rage against the God who had permitted the slaughter. The side wall of the Chapel is covered with the names of butchered soldiers, most of them lads from the slums of the Old Town – lads who had worshiped in this church, and whom Canon Laurie had loved. On this same wall, there is an aumbry. Its door is carved with the image of a chalice and grapes, signifying that it was designed to hold the consecrated host with its promise that Christ incarnate is ever with all those who suffer, with the dying on the field of battle, with the forsaken, and with the dead. But this is the Christ of the passion, the Christ crucified on Calvary, the Christ who died. There is no sign, here, of resurrection.

Or so it seems, unless we notice that the aumbry is aligned on a window. The window opposite the aumbry is about the least interesting feature of the Chapel’s design but also its key, for it faces east. Every sunrise the Chapel’s silent message is transmitted by this window, albeit unobserved, since no one is there to read its meaning.

Except, that is, on two mornings of the year – the mornings of the passion and of the resurrection. In the dawn of Good Friday, there are always people keeping watch with Christ as, like the soldiers of the Great War, he faces fear and agony and death. And, two days later, in the dawn of Easter Morning, the servers at the Vigil are seated in the Chapel. On these two mornings, those who are present will see the light of the rising sun pouring through this east window, striking the aumbry with the power and great glory, and affirming that – in spite of sorrow and torment, terror and death – the Christ who suffers and dies with us is risen.

And thus, the message of the War Memorial, so deliberately planned by Canon Laurie, is fulfilled. Though weeping may endure through the night, we can know that – even if we fail to notice it happening – the day will break and the kingdom will come. And Ruskin was right all along.

Mark Gibson