Mark Keatley found himself in India this summer, and attended a church which looks like a close cousin of our own.
He shares this account…
In 1813, one year before our church was completed, a strikingly similar Church of St John the Baptist was completed in Secunderabad, on the outskirts of Hyderabad. At that time Secunderabad was a garrison town, newly established to house the British troops stationed in the city under a treaty with the Nizam of Hyderabad. Like St Johns Wood Church, it is built in a Regency Classical style. It has a very fine 108-year-old pipe organ with 758 pipes, which stands 16 feet tall and is used every Sunday during service. As the city grew, and the British garrison departed after 1947, Secunderabad became a suburb of Hyderabad.
I attended the Eucharist service at the Church of St John the Baptist in August. The service followed the Anglican liturgy and was very well attended by a largely local congregation, with a few other foreign visitors. On that occasion, the organ was played by Dr Simon Fleming, a visitor from the Music Faculty of Durham University.
My visit to Hyderabad was for some professional meetings. The city was very festive due to the Independence Day festivities. Hyderabad is full of historic palaces and tombs, and well worth visiting. Another fine Regency building is the Residency, which was the home of the British Resident, responsible for diplomatic relations with the Nizam of Hyderabad which was the richest of the Indian Princely States. One of the first Residents, James Kirkpatrick, a few years before the church was built, had a celebrated and controversial marriage with Khair un-Nissa, a Muslim princess and granddaughter of one of the Nizam’s courtiers, which is the subject of William Dalrymple’s book The White Mughals.
