Pugin Bi-Centenary

Thursday 1 March 2012 was the bi-centenary of Pugin's birth. The Pugin Foundation marked this highly significant milestone with a Pugin Bi-centenary Festival from 1 to 9 March. It was centred on Tasmania where the largest, most coherent and most complete heritage of his buildings and objects in Australia is to be found.

The celebrations and activities included:

A public lecture entitled 'Pugin's Australian Heritage'.
A display of Pugin metalwork, textiles, books and stone carving.
An organ recital.
A concert by the Hobart Chamber Orchestra.
A concert by the Choir of Newman College.
An unaccompanied violin recital.

The centrepiece of our celebrations was a Missa Cantata in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite on Sunday 4 March in Pugin's St Patrick's Church, Colebrook, with the Choir of Newman College within the University of Melbourne. The setting was William Byrd's Mass for 5 voices, with the Propers for the Second Sunday in Lent in Sarum and Gregorian chant. The celebrant was one of the Foundation's Directors, the Most Rev. Geoffrey Jarrett DD, Bishop of Lismore, NSW. For Bishop Jarrett's homily click here.

We thought it most appropriate that the Mass should be in the form which Pugin knew and attended with such devotion in the oratory attached to his home in Ramsgate and in the church, St Augustine's, which he built next door. It was also the form celebrated during his lifetime in all the cathedrals, churches and chapels he designed.

Mass Incensing

After the Church [St Augustine's, Ramsgate, next to his house] was built he enjoyed going into the choir as Cantor and singing the Mass from his big Gregorian books at the lectern, giving his most sonorous notes at the Credo and his daughted Annie accompanying on the organ over the cloister. (Alexandra Wedgwood (ed.), 'Pugin in his home': A memoir of J.H. Powell, reprinted from Architectural History, Vol. 31: 1988, p. 11.)

Missa Cantata elevation