Norwegian Church Arts Centre | |
---|---|
Location | Cardiff Bay |
Coordinates | 51°27′41″N3°09′43″W / 51.46143°N 3.16192°W |
Built | 1868 |
Original use | Lutheran Church |
Current use | Museum; Arts Centre; Cafe |
Visitors | 180,000 (in 2018/19) [1] |
Owner | Norwegian Church Preservation Trust |
Website | http://www.norwegianchurchcardiff.com |
The Norwegian Church Arts Centre (Welsh : Canolfan Gelfyddydau'r Eglwys Norwyaidd) is a point of cultural and historical interest located in Cardiff Bay (Tiger Bay), Wales. It was a Lutheran Church, consecrated in 1868. Under the patronage of The Norwegian Seamen's Mission it provided home comforts, communication with family and a place of worship for Scandinavian sailors and the Norwegian community in Cardiff for over a hundred years.
In the 19th century, Cardiff was one of Britain's three major ports, along with London and Liverpool. The Norwegian merchant fleet at the time was the third largest in the world, and Cardiff became one of the major centres of its operations.
Sjømannskirken – the Norwegian Church Abroad organisation, which is part of the Church of Norway – followed in its footsteps. Under Carl Herman Lund from Oslo, a Church was built in 1868 in Cardiff Bay between the East and West Docks on land donated by the John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, to serve the religious needs of Norwegian sailors and expatriates. [2]
Consecrated in December 1868, the church was clad in iron sheets on the instruction of the harbourmaster, to allow it to be moved if necessary. However, the construction form allowed it to be extended many times: [2]
Known until this point as the Norwegian Iron Church, it now became known as the Little White Church, and became a welcome home point for sailors. Resultantly, and open to all sailors as a mission offering food and shelter, between 1867 and 1915 the number of visiting sailors to the church rose from 7,572 to 73,580 seamen per annum. [2]
When the church was in its prime it had a lot of public activity; from the Nordic community settling in Cardiff and making roots there, to the Norwegian sailors using the place as a rest stop on their travels. The church had become a home away from home for the sailors during World War II as they weren't able to go back to Norway due to Nazi occupation. The church hosted many important family occasions, such as weddings and christenings, for the community as well as more educational projects like cookery classes. [3]
Even pre-World War I, coal exports from Cardiff were in decline. Post World War II, shipping trade had moved from Cardiff, and in 1959 the mission's work was discontinued. In the early 1960s, the Norwegian Seamen's Mission withdrew its patronage, and the last seaman's priest Per Konrad Hansen was withdrawn. The residual congregation and other Lutheran organisations funded its continued use by the resident expatriate Norwegian community. It was closed and de-consecrated in 1974. [2]
In light of developments in Cardiff Bay in the late 1980s, and the proposed building of new roads around Atlantic Wharf, the now derelict and vandalised church was threatened with total destruction.
The community formed the Norwegian Church Preservation Trust, to save the building in the redeveloped docks. In partnership with the Norwegian Support Committee in Bergen, the trust raised £250,000, enabling the church to be dismantled in 1987, preserved and stored pending reassembly. The remaining original features were rescued, including the pulpit, one side-window, the chandelier and the model-ship; all of which were returned to the church.
With the Wales Millennium Centre built on its original site, with land donated by Associated British Ports, in 1992 reconstruction on the current site was started. In April 1992, the church was re-opened by Princess Märtha Louise of Norway. [4]
The writer Roald Dahl, who was born in Cardiff to Norwegian parents, was baptised in the church, as were his sisters. The family worshipped in the church. Throughout his life Dahl had ties with the church and in the 1970s when the church first fell into a state of disrepair, Dahl was at the forefront of a campaign to raise money to save it. [5] This led to Dahl being appointed the first president of The Norwegian Church Preservation Trust after it was set up in 1987 by the church. [6]
A room in the church is named 'The Dahl Gallery', in memory of Dahl and to commemorate what he did for the church. In this room is;
As well as this honour, Dahl is also celebrated yearly in September, the month of his 1916 birth. In 2016 Cardiff Bay celebrated the centenary of Dahl's birth, with a project launched by The Norwegian Church. [7]
The building is now used as an arts centre, and is known as the Norwegian Church Arts Centre. The centre includes a café and an art gallery. In May 2011 the church underwent refurbishment costing £500,000(equivalent to £769,673 in 2023), [8] including a new outdoor terrace and a DDA compliant lift. The Grieg room hosts a diversity of local arts and culture. [9]
A 2008 episode of the BBC Television drama series Torchwood , "To The Last Man", had some scenes shot outside the church.
Tiger Bay was the local name for an area of Cardiff which covered Butetown and Cardiff Docks. Following the building of the Cardiff Barrage, which dams the tidal rivers, Ely and Taff, to create a body of water, it is referred to as Cardiff Bay. Tiger Bay is Wales’ oldest multi-ethnic community, with sailors and workers from over 50 countries settling there from the mid-19th century onwards.
Cardiff Bay is an area and freshwater lake in Cardiff, Wales. The site of a former tidal bay and estuary, it is the river mouth of the River Taff and Ely. The body of water was converted into a 500-acre (2.0 km2) lake as part of a pre-devolution UK Government regeneration project, involving the damming of the rivers by the Cardiff Bay Barrage in 1999. The barrage impounds the rivers from the Severn Estuary, providing flood defence and the creation of a permanent non-tidal high water lake with limited access to the sea, serving as a core feature of the redevelopment of the area in the 1990s.
Butetown is a district and community in the south of the city of Cardiff, the capital of Wales. It was originally a model housing estate built in the early 19th century by the 2nd Marquess of Bute, for whose title the area was named.
The Norwegian Church Abroad or The Norwegian Seamen’s Church is a religious organisation serving Norwegians and other Scandinavians travelling abroad. Founded in 1864, The Norwegian Seamen's Mission – Sjømannsmisjonen – was established to secure the moral and religious education of Scandinavian seafarers, but also to give them a "breathing room" where a fellow countryman was available to lend an ear and give some attention. The churches and their staff together with travelling pastors around the globe represent a "resource center" for all Norwegians travelling internationally.
The Cardiff Bay Development Corporation was set up by the United Kingdom Government on 3 April 1987 to redevelop one sixth of the area of Cardiff to create Cardiff Bay.
Maud, named for Queen Maud of Norway, was a ship built for Roald Amundsen for his second expedition to the Arctic. Designed for his intended voyage through the Northeast Passage, the vessel was built in Asker, a suburb of the capital, Oslo.
Roald Dahl Plass is a public space in Cardiff Bay, Cardiff, Wales. It is named after Cardiff-born author Roald Dahl, and is located on the coast along the south of the city centre. The square is home to the Senedd building housing the Senedd, the Welsh parliament, and the Wales Millennium Centre, a performing arts centre. The bowl-like shape of the space has made it a popular amphitheatre for hosting open-air concerts.
Cardiff Harbour Authority (CHA) is the managing authority for Cardiff Bay under the Cardiff Bay Barrage Act 1993, and was established on 1 April 2000. It took over responsibility from Cardiff Bay Development Corporation and is responsible for the inland bay, Cardiff Bay Barrage, the outer harbour and the rivers Taff and Ely. The harbour authority is part of the City of Cardiff Council and is the statutory navigation authority for Cardiff Bay.
The timeline of Cardiff history shows the significant events in the history of Cardiff which transformed it from a small Roman fort into the modern capital city of Wales.
The Norwegian Church was a church for Norwegian sailors originally located in Newport, but later relocated to the docklands area of Swansea, Wales. It was a Grade II listed building.
Yemenis in the United Kingdom or Yemeni Britons include citizens and non-citizen immigrants in the United Kingdom of Yemeni ancestry, as well as their descendants. Yemenis have been present in the UK since at least the 1860s, with the first Yemenis arriving as sailors and dock workers in the port cities of Northern England and Wales, and despite a smaller population than other British Muslim groups, are likely the longest-established Muslim group in the United Kingdom, with many of these cities retaining a Yemeni population going back several generations.
Cardiff Docks is a port in southern Cardiff, Wales. At its peak, the port was one of the largest dock systems in the world with a total quayage of almost 7 mi (11 km). Once the main port for the export of South Wales coal, the Port of Cardiff remains active in the import and export of containers, steel, forest products and dry and liquid bulks.
Architecture in Cardiff, the capital city of Wales, dates from Norman times to the present day. Its urban fabric is largely Victorian and later, reflecting Cardiff's rise to prosperity as a major coal port in the 19th century. No single building style is associated with Cardiff, but the city centre retains several 19th and early 20th century shopping arcades.
William Frame was an English architect.
The Royal Hamadryad Hospital was a seamen's hospital and later a psychiatric hospital in the docklands area of Cardiff, Wales. It had replaced a hospital ship, the former HMS Hamadryad, in 1905. After it closed in 2002 the site was redeveloped for residential use.
All Souls Chapel also known as the Seamen's Institute and later as Merton House was a large chapel which stood at Cardiff Docks, near the present Roald Dahl Plass.
A Sailortown is a district in seaports that catered to transient seafarers. These districts frequently contained boarding houses, public houses, brothels, tattoo parlours, print shops, shops selling nautical equipment, and religious institutions offering aid to seamen; usually there was also a police station, a magistrate's court and a shipping office. Because it took several days, in the past, to unload ships, crews would spend this time in sailortown. These were "generic locations—international everyplaces existing in nearly every port." Cicely Fox Smith wrote that 'dockland, strictly speaking, is of no country—or rather it is of all countries'". Sailortowns were places where local people, immigrants, social and religious reformers, and transitory sailors met.
Eglwys Dewi Sant is a Grade II listed church building in the centre of Cardiff, Wales. It is the only church in the Diocese of Llandaff to conduct its services exclusively in the Welsh language.