An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

In ear­ly 2013, His Grace Arch­bish­op Joseph Har­ris took the mo­men­tous de­ci­sion to close the Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion in or­der that long­stand­ing restora­tion works might be ac­cel­er­at­ed.In a re­port car­ried in the Trinidad Guardian short­ly there­after, Justin Charles, project man­ag­er for Con­struc­tion Restora­tion and Main­te­nance Ser­vices Lim­it­ed, point­ed out that a part of the ceil­ing had been com­pro­mised due to the depre­da­tions of ter­mites, while Chad Field from Prime Project Man­agers in­di­cat­ed: "It was the most crit­i­cal part, since the ter­mite in­fes­ta­tion threat­ened the main sup­port and it could have col­lapsed."

This is in­deed re­gret­ful irony since it was such a sit­u­a­tion that led to the erec­tion of this sa­cred ed­i­fice in the first place. In 1784, the cap­i­tal of Span­ish Trinidad of­fi­cial­ly was trans­ferred from San Jose de Oruna (St Joseph) to Puer­ta de los His­panoles (Port-of-Spain).In those days, a small wood­en chapel served the town and was lo­cat­ed east of the present Cathe­dral on the plot of land now oc­cu­pied by Colum­bus Square. The grounds al­so con­tained a small ceme­tery, ev­i­dence of which has been found from time to time when crews dig­ging in the area have un­cov­ered hu­man re­mains. This build­ing stood ap­prox­i­mate­ly 80 feet long by 40 feet wide with a steeply pitched roof.It was not un­like many of the plain wood­en church­es once so com­mon through­out the coun­try­side in Trinidad. The fur­nish­ings were sim­ple enough with wood­en bench­es as pews, a plain al­tar and a mar­ble im­age of the Vir­gin Mary and child.

Vic­tim of rot and ter­mites

Like all build­ings in the trop­ics, the wood­en chapel was soon the vic­tim of rot and ter­mites and be­came un­sta­ble.The is­land be­came a British pos­ses­sion in 1797 but the Catholic Church re­mained the pri­ma­ry church, al­though the Church of Eng­land was soon to be­come the church of the colo­nial au­thor­i­ties. Mil­i­tary gov­er­nors like Pic­ton and His­lop had lit­tle time for ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal af­fairs and the old chapel lan­guished in dis­re­pair. It was not un­til the com­ing of Sir Ralph Wood­ford that some­thing was done.Plans for a stone church were draft­ed by his sec­re­tary, Phillip Rein­gale. The foun­da­tion stone was laid by Wood­ford him­self on March 25, 1816. Walls of lime­stone quar­ried in Laven­tille were ac­cent­ed with doors and win­dows cased in Eng­lish free­stone and the cor­ners of Scot­tish fire­bricks, im­port­ed as bal­last in the holds of sug­ar ships. The base of the walls was very thick in­deed, but the up­per parts woe­ful­ly thin.

Up to 1824, on­ly the walls had been com­plet­ed and the build­ing stopped for three years since the price of sug­ar had fall­en and mon­ey was scarce among the Ro­man Catholic elite who had fund­ed 40 per cent of the con­struc­tion. More­over, mon­ey had to be di­vert­ed to the com­ple­tion of the Cathe­dral of the Holy Trin­i­ty, which, of course, was the main ed­i­fice of the Church of Eng­land in Trinidad. Ser­vices were held in the old wood­en chapel which con­tin­ued in its di­lap­i­dat­ed state. In 1825, the Rev Abbe Le Goffe, Vic­ar Gen­er­al of Trinidad, pressed for funds to com­plete the church, but was turned down. In that same year, the fol­low­ing no­tice was paid to the Cathe­dral in writ­ing:

"In an­oth­er part of the town is an un­fin­ished church for the Ro­man­ists; there is no roof as yet, but what is per­fect­ed is of even a still more cost­ly and ex­quis­ite char­ac­ter than our own. The lat­er­al walls cer­tain­ly ap­pear too thin to be able to sup­port any weight laid up­on them, but Abbe Legoffe has no fears on that head, and the face­tious Abbe is a com­pe­tent judge. At present the Romish ser­vice is en­act­ed in a very rude chapel of wood, from which they are oblig­ed dur­ing Lent to ex­tend awnings in­to the street to af­ford a tem­po­rary re­cep­ta­cle for the wor­ship­pers who crowd in from the coun­try."

Up­on di­rec­tion from Wood­ford, two fine brick tow­ers be­gan to rise from the ground–but this soon stopped the tow­ers hav­ing to be com­plet­ed in lo­cal wood be­cause of a short­age of funds. When the econ­o­my im­proved in 1827, work be­gan on the roof. In 1831 a storm tore through the city. Lat­er that year, dur­ing the 4 am Christ­mas morn­ing mass in the old wood­en church, a beam cracked with the re­port of a gun­shot . . . fear­ing that the roof was falling, the con­gre­ga­tion fled in a rushed pan­ic, strip­ping a mod­est and well known la­dy to the nude in the process!

Next week we will look at the strug­gles and foibles sur­round­ing the con­struc­tion of the Cathe­dral.