Bath Abbey
The Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Bath, commonly known as Bath Abbey, is an Anglican parish church and a former Benedictine monastery in Bath, Somerset, England. Founded in the 7th century, Bath Abbey was reorganised in the 10th century and rebuilt in the 12th and 16th centuries; major restoration work was carried out by Sir George Gilbert Scott in the 1860s. It is one of the largest examples of Perpendicular Gothic architecture in the West Country.
The church is cruciform in plan, and is able to seat 1200. An active place of worship, with hundreds of congregation members and hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, it is used for religious services, secular civic ceremonies, concerts and lectures. The choir performs in the abbey and elsewhere. There is a heritage museum in the vaults.
The abbey is a Grade I listed building, particularly noted for its fan vaulting. It contains war memorials for the local population and monuments to several notable people, in the form of wall and floor plaques and commemorative stained glass. The church has two organs and a peal of ten bells. The west front seen here includes sculptures of angels climbing to heaven on two stone ladders.
The west front, which was originally constructed in 1520, has a large arched window and detailed carvings. Above the window are carvings of angels and to either side long stone ladders with angels climbing up them. Apart from the story mentioned above connecting it with Oliver King, Bishop of Bath and Wells 1495–1503 this is a direct reference to the dream of the prophet Jacob mentioned in the Bible and commonly called Jacobs Ladder.
Jacob's Ladder is the colloquial name for a connection between the earth and heaven that the biblical Patriarch Jacob dreams about during his flight from his brother Esau, as described in the Book of Genesis. The significance of the dream has been somewhat debated, but most interpretations agree that it identified Jacob with the obligations and inheritance of the ethnic people chosen by God, as understood in the Judeo-Christian-Islam panoply. It has since been used as a symbolic reference in various other contexts.
Below the window a battlemented parapet supports a statue and beneath this, on either side of the door, are statues of St Peter and St Paul. Restoration work in the late 20th century involved cleaning with electronically controlled intermittent water sprays and ammonium carbonate poultices. One of the figures which had lost its head and shoulders was replaced. The sculptures on the West front have been interpreted as representing "spiritual ascent through the virtue of humility and descent through the vice of pride" and Christ as the Man of Sorrow and the Antichrist. During the 1990s a major restoration and cleaning work were carried out on the exterior stonework, returning it to the yellow colour hidden under centuries of dirt.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_Abbey
Bath Abbey
The Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Bath, commonly known as Bath Abbey, is an Anglican parish church and a former Benedictine monastery in Bath, Somerset, England. Founded in the 7th century, Bath Abbey was reorganised in the 10th century and rebuilt in the 12th and 16th centuries; major restoration work was carried out by Sir George Gilbert Scott in the 1860s. It is one of the largest examples of Perpendicular Gothic architecture in the West Country.
The church is cruciform in plan, and is able to seat 1200. An active place of worship, with hundreds of congregation members and hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, it is used for religious services, secular civic ceremonies, concerts and lectures. The choir performs in the abbey and elsewhere. There is a heritage museum in the vaults.
The abbey is a Grade I listed building, particularly noted for its fan vaulting. It contains war memorials for the local population and monuments to several notable people, in the form of wall and floor plaques and commemorative stained glass. The church has two organs and a peal of ten bells. The west front seen here includes sculptures of angels climbing to heaven on two stone ladders.
The west front, which was originally constructed in 1520, has a large arched window and detailed carvings. Above the window are carvings of angels and to either side long stone ladders with angels climbing up them. Apart from the story mentioned above connecting it with Oliver King, Bishop of Bath and Wells 1495–1503 this is a direct reference to the dream of the prophet Jacob mentioned in the Bible and commonly called Jacobs Ladder.
Jacob's Ladder is the colloquial name for a connection between the earth and heaven that the biblical Patriarch Jacob dreams about during his flight from his brother Esau, as described in the Book of Genesis. The significance of the dream has been somewhat debated, but most interpretations agree that it identified Jacob with the obligations and inheritance of the ethnic people chosen by God, as understood in the Judeo-Christian-Islam panoply. It has since been used as a symbolic reference in various other contexts.
Below the window a battlemented parapet supports a statue and beneath this, on either side of the door, are statues of St Peter and St Paul. Restoration work in the late 20th century involved cleaning with electronically controlled intermittent water sprays and ammonium carbonate poultices. One of the figures which had lost its head and shoulders was replaced. The sculptures on the West front have been interpreted as representing "spiritual ascent through the virtue of humility and descent through the vice of pride" and Christ as the Man of Sorrow and the Antichrist. During the 1990s a major restoration and cleaning work were carried out on the exterior stonework, returning it to the yellow colour hidden under centuries of dirt.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_Abbey