March 4 is a very important date in the nearly 200 years old history of this hill station. It has a connection with Christ Church, one of the most beautiful churches in the country. Not many of the people who visit this church, however, know that this is the oldest Himalayan church and has an interesting history the beginnings of which go back to April 1836. The idea of setting up a Himalayan Church in this hill town was conceived then and began to take shape.
The large and beautiful deodar tree one sees in the churchyard is very special. The plaque on the railing reminds the visitor : This tree was planted by H.R.H. the Princess of Wales on Sunday March 4th 1906 after attending morning service at Christ Church.
This was Her Royal Highness Mary of Teck, who visited Mussoorie as part of a grand tour of India with the Prince of Wales. In 1920, he became George V. This tree, planted on March 4, 108 years ago, adds to the beauty of the church.
This house of worship stands as a wondrous tribute to the religious concerns of those early founders of the town. By 1835 the European population in Mussoorie was large enough to warrant the building of a church. Soon, the residents settled for a site on a hump above Kulri. Mussoorie-based author and academician Ganesh Saili has given a detailed account of this in his book, 'Mussoorie Medley'.
"Objections came from John. Mackinnon, the brewer, already a leading man in the hill station owing to his energy and public spirit who felt that the Kulri Hill near Zephyr Hall would be too far a walk for his charges. He proposed that the new Church of England should be out to the west of the station. A compromise was effected between all the parties and the present site just above the Mall was chosen," writes Saili.
"It will be the first church raised amidst the eternal snows of Upper India," gushed the lord Bishop of Calcutta and First Metropolitan of India, in 1836. In a book entitled 'The life of the Right. Rev. Daniel Wilson, D.D., late lord Bishop of Calcutta and Metropolitan of India' by Rev. Josiah Bateman, london, published by John Murray in 1860, we are told that there was neither chaplain nor church when the Bishop entered Mussoorie, but he was a man of firm belief who seldom left a place as he found it! His diary entries tell us that:
Tuesday, April 26th, 1836, 6.30 a.m.: "Very chilly morning, driven in from my walk by the wintry cold. Yesterday also was cold, with a cloudy sky and rain! I was sitting, about eleven o'clock, with two or three gentlemen who had called, amongst whom was Captain Blair, just returned along the hills from Simla, when the two leading persons at Meerut, Hamilton and Hutchinson, came to talk with me about the church of which I gave notice on Sunday. We soon warmed. Plans, sites, architects, means of supply, were arranged in about two hours"
Capt Rennie Taylor of the Bengal Engineers, Roorkee, built its tower and nave in 1836, the flat-roofed structure was consecrated by Rev. Wilson in April 1839. If you walk down the aisles, the grace of the eight tapering windows will take your breath away.
Bathed in the mysterious light filtering through bits of coloured glass, one suddenly comes face to face with the magic of rare charm and beauty - light that has finally come alive with the colours of the rainbow. At first glaziers made windows, and then relied on pieces of coloured glass to make a pattern. Painters came in to fill the need for art that the glazier lacked. From mere patterns treated with colour, they became pictures of saints and Biblical figures.
Special glass required more skill: the turquoise-blue or green was produced by the addition of copper; iron stained green; cobalt blue, iron and antimony together, browns and yellows; manganese stained amethyst and purple.
Capt Rennie Taylor of the Bengal Engineers, Roorkee, built its tower and nave in 1836, the flat-roofed structure was consecrated by Rev. Wilson in April 1839. The chancel and transepts were added seventeen years later in 1853.
