March 20, 1839: Dowager Queen Adelaide (1792-1849) of Great Britain laid the foundation stone of St Paul’s Anglican Pro-Cathedral, a project mired in controversy, since the decision to erect this building had not gone down well with the local Catholic ecclesiastical authorities, nor with the Vatican, for obvious reasons when considering the religious mentality existing in those times.

Portrait by William Beechey of Queen Adelaide (1792-1849) in c. 1831, founder of the Anglican St Paul’s Pro-Cathedral in Valletta. Photo: Wikipedia.com

Queen Adelaide’s coat-of-arms. Photo: Wikipedia.com

The chosen site was the former auberge of the German Langue of the Order of St John, in what was then known as Piazza Celsi. No depiction of this building seems to have survived, though it is said that it was anything but noteworthy. Governor Henry Bouverie placed this site at the disposal of the organising committee and also cleared the site at the government’s expense.

The laying the foundation stone of St Paul’s Pro-Cathedral on March 20, 1839.

Queen Adelaide, the widow of King William IV, who reigned from 1830-37, had arrived at Malta in late 1838 to convalesce. She was soon petitioned by the local Protestant residents to help in constructing an Anglican place of worship, which was a desideratum for all Protestants living in Malta.

A plea for funds from her niece, Queen Victoria, who reigned from 1837 to 1901, proved futile, so Queen Adelaide decided to fund the desired construction herself. The project was estimated to cost about £8,000, but the expenditure ultimately increased to double this original estimate.

The façade of the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London. The first design by Richard Lankesheer for the façade for St Paul’s Pro-Cathedral resembled this façade.

In 1825, Colonel George Whitmore (1775-1862) of the Royal Engineers had prepared a design for an Anglican church, but nothing ensued. After Queen Adelaide’s intervention, the head superintendent of civil works in Malta, Richard Lankesheer, was appointed to carry out the design of the church.

The main façade comprised an Ionic portico surmounted by an entablature that included a stylised acanthus leaf frieze together with a bell-tower rising high along the central axis of the portico, reminiscent of the church of St Martin-in-the Fields in London.

However, the appointment of Lankesheer proved to be a mistake: he was a good professional who, however, was not conversant with the construction methods used for local buildings. The result was that, by January 1841, cracks, fissures and splits appeared in the structure, which resulted from the instructions given to the masons: they had been instructed not to fill the interstices in between the stone courses with lime mortar.

The local press hounded Lankesheer as an incompetent and he passed away suddenly in March 1841 at the young age of 38. It is held that Lankesheer could not stomach his failure and committed suicide.

All work on the building had to be suspended because the whole structure was in danger of collapsing and was condemned

Eventually, all work on the building had to be suspended because the whole structure was in danger of collapsing and was condemned as being precarious. However, the completion of the church had by now become an issue of prestige since the local press was campaigning against the English monopoly of government posts.

William Scamp (1801-72), the architect who concluded the building of St Paul’s Pro-Cathedral in 1845. Photo: Heritage Malta

A report on the state of the building was commissioned to William Scamp (1801-72), a civil engineer and naval architect, and Captain Henry R. Brandreth (1794-1848) of the Royal Engineers.

Without going into details, it is sufficient to quote the following couple of lines from the ensuing report: “a problem with the earlier fabric of the works… the north and south walls at the altar were not supported from below… the western wall was insufficient for the support of the pediment”, and opines that “more substantial construction to this part of the church was absolutely necessary”.

In September 1842, three workmen were killed when a cornice collapsed. Scamp, who had now taken over responsibility for the continuation of the project, took the opportunity to implement a number of changes to the original plans which led to the church as we know it nowadays.

A drawing by William Scamp of the six-columned portico and the detached bell-tower of St Paul’s Pro-Cathedral, which was finalised by Scamp himself.

Detail from a watercolour by William Scamp depicting the north front elevation of St Paul’s Pro-Cathedral. Photo: Wignaourt Museum, Rabat

A major change was the complete shifting of the position of the bell tower. Whereas the original plan had placed it along the central axis of the portico, Scamp detached it completely from the main fabric of the church and built it on the rock at a depth of 10.57 metres from below the floor of the church. The height of the tower is 64.5 metres from the lower terrace’s level, while the spire is 25 metres high. This elegant and finely-proportioned bell tower henceforth formed an integral and salient feature of Valletta’s skyline.

An aerial view of St Paul’s Pro-Cathedral.

An old photograph showing the position of St Paul’s Pro-Cathedral overlooking Marsamxett Harbour. Photo: Wikipedia.com

The bell-tower of St Paul’s Pro-Cathedral shown completely detached from the main building, as conceived by Scamp. It was completed in 1845.

Although the tower, with its tall pointed spire, is quintessentially British in concept and style, as rightly pointed out by architect Leonard Mahoney, “before the dome of the [nearby] Carmelite church was built, its tall pointed shape provided the right contrast to the horizontality of the flat-roofed buildings [of Valletta]”.

Internally, the position of the altar was also shifted: it was accommodated within a semi-circular exedra that was erected within the portico end of the church. The nave has a baptistery at one end and a choir at the other end, in front of the altar. In between, there are six pairs of columns with Corinthian capitals to support a flat panelled ceiling. In the pews, the church could accommodate 658 persons.

The interior of St Paul’s Pro-Cathedral. Photo: Wikipedia.com

One has to take into account the constraints under which Scamp had to work in order to complete the project safely. First of all, he was hampered by the constraints of Lankesheer’s original designs which, as already mentioned, did not take into account the Maltese traditional building methods. Scamp (rightly or wrongly) also lamented at the indolence of the local workforce, which resulted in increased expenses.

The number of workers varied in accordance with the stages of the building, rising to a maximum of 173 when the roof was being constructed. They included 63 stone cutters, 39 labourers, 47 boys, three sculptors and 14 carpenters, whose daily salaries ranged from five to seven pence for the boys, and going up to three shillings for the sculptors.

On All Saints Day, November 1, 1844, this collegiate church of St Paul was consecrated by the bishop of Gibraltar, even though work on the bell tower was only completed the next year. In 1845, Queen Adelaide presented Scamp with a silver candelabrum in grateful thanks for his efforts to bring the building of the church to a successful conclusion.

In 1986, the late Welsh historian and travel writer Jan Morris (1926-2020) neatly summed up her comments about the church as “a neat Georgian job, steepled and porticoed”.

Acknowledgement

The author acknowledges information gleaned from publications by Conrad Thake for the writing of this article.