The City Temple - Holborn Viaduct, London, UK
N 51° 31.045 W 000° 06.368
30U E 700775 N 5711336
The City Temple, built in 1873 and opened in 1874, was badly damaged by bombing during the Second World War and is located on the south side of Holborn Viaduct. The frieze is above the columns of the entrance.
Waymark Code: WMGFDX
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 02/26/2013
Views: 2
The frieze has Faith, Hope and Charity
at its centre. The Victorian Web website [visit
link] tells us:
"Faith, Hope, and Charity (1873-74)
by an unknown sculptor on on the pediment of the City Temple, Holborn, London.
Bath stone. Architects: Lockwood & Mawson. Faith sits enthroned in the
center, holding a cross, while Hope has an anchor, her standard symbol or
attribute, and Charity embraces two children, again a standard representation,
though sometimes Charity is shown nursing a child. All three theological virtues
rest one of their foet on a differently shaped footstool, the meaning of which,
if any, is not clear. As an evangelical church whose roots go back at least to
seventeenth-century Puritans, the City Temple congregation and ministers would
not use much standard Christian iconography associated with the High Church and
Roman Catholicism, but Faith, Hope, and Charity (or more properly, caritas, the
love of things of this world for the divine in them) did not have these
associations."