Somewhere in nowhere in a remote area far out of the village there is this church. Christened by a bishop in 1971, and by the looks of it, not much has happened since then.
It’s a pity that buildings like this are seemingly forgotten. There are those local heritage committees ‘nitpicking’ about not much by all or not allowing somebody to build a house in ‘local style’ ….
Well… heritage people I’ve got a challenge here. This church is situated in the Houtkoof area 20 km out of Napier. See for yourself…..
Many known European churches have gargoyles. In South Africa I still have to discover a church with gargoyles.
“Legend has it that a dragon-like creature named La Gargouille terrorized the people of Rouen, France. In the seventh century A.D., a local cleric named Romanus used Christian symbolism to neutralize La Gargouille’s threat to the townspeople—it’s said that Romanus destroyed the beast with the sign of the cross. Many early Christians were led to their religion by the fear of the gargoyle, a symbol of Satan. The Christian church became a protective haven for the mostly illiterate people.
Romanus knew the legends that the townspeople of Rouen did not know. The oldest gargoyles have been found in present-day Egypt from the Fifth Dynasty, c. 2400 B.C. The functional and practical waterspout has also been found in ancient Greece and ancient Rome. Gargoyles in the shape of dragons are found in China’s Forbidden City and imperial tombs from the Ming Dynasty”. – Source: “Gargoyle” entry by Lisa A. Reilly, The Dictionary of Art, Vol 12, Jane Turner, ed., Grove, 1996, pp. 149-150
Herman van Bon Photography 