CHENNAI : The St Thomas English Church is very much like the Santhome Fort, which stood on the same place, a few centuries before the church was built in 1842. This Protestant church, which is a few metres away from the renowned Santhome Basilica, lacks excessive interior work, expensive, intricate altars decked with biblical symbols, which characterise other colonial churches built during that time. However, it is functional, strongly built, and serves the purpose intended.
As the Portuguese influence reduced towards the end of the 17th century, the Santhome Fort became an industrial compound. It housed a British tannery and belt-making company before it was finally sold to the Wesleyan mission in 1830. The industrial influence in the church’s architecture is also unmistakable. Lamps hang from black metal chains from an asbestos ceiling with wooden reinforcements. The pews, which date back to the 1860s are plain and the memory stones which deck the walls are of soldiers, and not politicians or bureaucrats.“This church was financed by the missionaries and not the government. So there was no money for extravagance,” said Fabiola Jacob, a church member, who took a group around the church on Thursday, as part of heritage walk in the lead-up to Madras Week.
According to S Muthiah, historian, the St Thomas English Church predominantly served families from the Adyar and present-day RA Puram. “The governors (of Madras Presidency) have also known to attend this church,” Muthiah said, in a documentary made by the church. Presently, the church has around 200 members and is dwarfed by the apartment complexes which border it. The church hardly lives up to the name it was fondly called by the British — Saint Thomas by the sea.
Rows of metal shacks behind the church block the beachfront and the rising sun, which older members of the congregation fondly remember associating with Christ himself on Easter mornings. “Until the 1980s, we didn’t have a compound wall and we could directly access the beach,” said Fabiola, pointing to the open air altar beside the church building to the visitors.Even as the cityscape around the church changes, eating into the compound’s colonial dignity, members believe the 175-year-old church will brave all odds like it’s founder Robert Carver, who lies under the altar, and it will exist in one form or the other for years to come.