From the Daily Telegraph
Masonic ‘Da Vinci Code’ church in danger, warns charity
A CRUMBLING and abandoned Victorian church built as a “temple to Freemasonry” needs urgent restoration work to save it for the nation, a charity has warned.
St Edmund’s Church in, Falinge, Rochdale, is regarded as one of the finest but least known gems of ecclesiastical architecture in the country.
Although resembling a typical parish church on the outside, its elaborate exterior is packed with Masonic symbolism prompting comparisons with the medieval Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, the setting for much of Dan Brown’s bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code.
Built in 1870 by the industrialist and banker Albert Hudson Royds, its cavings, windows, furniture and vaulted gothic ceiling are covered in masonic imagery.
And sited on the highest point in the surrounding area, it was constructed based on the dimensions of King Solomon’s Temple in the Bible.
Hudson Royds himself appears in a stained glass window as one of the masons rebuilding the Temple after the exile in Babylon.
Although Rosslyn Chapel’s possible links to the Freemasons or resemblance to the former Temple in Jersualem have been hotly disputed, enthusiasts have nicknamed St Edmund’s “Britain’s greatest Masonic secret”.
Hudson Royds, a pasionate Freemason who saw Rochdale as the "New Jerusalem", poured £20,000 into the project, the equivalent of £1.6 million today. It is regarded as as a major example of the great municipal beneficence of Victorian industrialists.
Although a grade one listed building, it has been sealed off for three years since it closed as a parish church.
Since then a colony of pigeons has taken over the tower and its grand ceilings have begun to leak.
Although still consecrated for worship, the building was recently handed over by the Church of England to the Churches Conservation Trust which hopes to restore it for use by the local community.
The charity is currently carrying out surveying work but expectes to have to spend several hundred thousand pounds to make it safe and usuable. It is preparing to launch a fundraising campaign next year.
Crispin Truman, chief executive of the Trust, said: “The suggestion that there are more important things than saving heritage in areas where homelessness, poverty and unemployment are a daily concern, carries an implicit assumption that people in disadvantaged areas don’t care about – or maybe don’t even appreciate or understand – the history in their midst.
“That’s something you’ll never hear said in the Cotswolds, and it’s wrong.”
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