Church of St Cyril of Turau and All the Patron Saints of the Belarusian People Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids Belarusian Memorial Chapel
Church of Saint Cyril of Turaŭ and All the Patron Saints of the Belarusian People
Царква Сьвятога Кірылы Тураўскага і ўсіх сьвятых заступнікаў беларускага народу
The Belarusian Church in 2016
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Location	Barnet, London
Country	United Kingdom
Denomination	Belarusian Greek Catholic Church
Website	belaruschurch.org.uk
History
Dedication	Staint Cyril of Turaŭ
Consecrated	December 17, 2016
Architecture
Architect(s)	Tszwai So
Completed	2017

The Belarusian Memorial Chapel is a special wooden church in London. It's also known as the Church of St Cyril of Turau and All the Patron Saints of the Belarusian People. This church is quite unique! It's the first wooden church built in London since the famous Great Fire of London.

It's also the first Catholic church of its kind (Byzantine Rite) built specifically for this purpose in London. Plus, it's the first memorial in Western Europe dedicated to the Chernobyl disaster of 1986. This church is also the first Belarusian Uniate church built outside Belarus. It's located in Woodside Park, London. You can find it right next to the Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum and the Marian House, which is a community center for Belarusians in North London.

Building the Church
Church Design
- Awards for the Design
Inside the Church
- Special Burials
Images for kids
See also

Building the Church

The Belarusian Catholic community has been active in London since 1947. Early leaders included priests like Ceslaus Sipovich and Alexander Nadson. For many years, they only had a small chapel inside a building. They didn't have their own separate church.

Work on building this new church began in November 2015. The foundation was finished by January 2016. A special stone, called a cornerstone, was brought from the Holy Trinity Church in Druya. This stone was placed during a ceremony on February 7, 2016. Important church leaders, like Archbishop Antonio Mennini, were there. The church was officially opened and blessed on December 17, 2016.

The church after its walls and roof were put up in June 2016.
Blessing the cornerstone of the new church in London on February 7, 2016.

Church Design

The way the church looks was inspired by old wooden churches in Belarus. The builders mostly used wood and glass for the construction. The outside of the church is covered in timber. It has some tall, narrow windows and frosted glass. This design makes the inside feel calm and focused, which fits the traditional Byzantine church services. The outside walls also look like the vertical wooden designs found on old Baroque churches in Belarus.

Awards for the Design

Tszwai So, the architect of the Belarusian Memorial Chapel, won an award for Young Church Architect of the Year.

The Belarusian Memorial Chapel has won several awards! It was shown at the 2017 London Festival of Architecture. It also received a special award from the Royal Institute of British Architects in London in 2017. People also voted it as their favorite at the New London Awards in 2017.

The Royal Academy of Arts chose the chapel as one of the top 10 buildings to see during Open House London 2017. A website called Architizer named it one of the "10 Catholic Churches Designed to Uplift and Inspire." In October 2018, ArchDaily included it in their list of the 32 best chapels. The chapel was even nominated for the EU Prize in Contemporary Architecture in 2019. This is a very high honor in European architecture.

Inside the Church

The front part of the church, called the iconostasis, and the altar area have beautiful icons. These icons are special paintings of holy figures. Some of them were painted in 1926 by Duchess Olga Bennigsen and Mr Eric Ward. Other icons came from another Belarusian Catholic church in Chicago that is now closed.