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Christ Church, Byculla

18°58′09″N 72°49′54″E / 18.96917°N 72.83167°E / 18.96917; 72.83167

The church's western entrance in the late 1850s

Christ Church in Byculla, Mumbai, is affiliated to the Church of North India and was built in 1833 as an Anglican church. The church's establishment has been the subject of a myth that it was built to suit the convenience of the Governor of Bombay, Mountstuart Elphinstone, who reportedly had to earlier travel from his central Bombay residence in Parel to St Thomas Cathedral in South Bombay.[1] Elphinstone had already left India in 1829.[2] The church was, in fact, built during the governorship of John FitzGibbon, 2nd Earl of Clare, who laid the foundation stone in July, 1832.[3][4]

Along with the Church of St Andrew and St Columba in South Bombay, Christ Church was one of the last 19th-century churches in the city to be built in the Neoclassical style, as Gothic Revival emerged as the preferred style thereafter.[5] It was built by a Portuguese architect called Augusto.[6] The first service was held on 10 August 1833, but the church was only consecrated in December 1835 by Revd. Daniel Wilson, the then Bishop of Calcutta.[7][5] In 2017, the church's restoration project led by conservation architect Vikas Dilawari won the Award of Merit under the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation.[1][8]

  1. ^ a b "Painstaking work restores Mumbai's structures to former glory". The Indian Exress. 3 November 2017. Archived from the original on 22 November 2022. Retrieved 11 June 2022.
  2. ^ One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Elphinstone, Mountstuart". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 9 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 298–299.
  3. ^ "The Calcutta Christian Observer". 29 June 1832 – via Google Books.
  4. ^ Maclean 1889, p. 279
  5. ^ a b "182-year old restored Byculla Christ Church to open for parishoners [sic]". mid-day. 24 December 2015. Archived from the original on 2 July 2020. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  6. ^ Maclean, James Mackenzie (29 June 1889). "A guide to Bombay, historical, statistical and descriptive". "Bombay gazette" steam Press – via Google Books.
  7. ^ Maclean 1889, p. 280
  8. ^ "Unesco: Unesco applauds facelift of Mumbai's charmed past | Mumbai News - Times of India". The Times of India. Archived from the original on 14 July 2020. Retrieved 29 June 2020.

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