The genesis and evolution of Anglican ecclesiastical architecture in British Yorubaland: postcolonial reflections

Abstract

The analysis of Anglican religious spaces created in British West Africa has been neglected in architectural historiography. This article advances knowledge by investigating ecclesiastical architecture in British colonial Yorubaland (South-West Nigeria). A case study method, combining physical documentation of the existing church sites and a review of church compendiums and other documentation, has been employed to explore and explain in detail the history and formation of Anglican religious spaces. Our research produced new knowledge about the genesis and evolution of the typology, morphology, and visual representations of Anglican religious buildings, as well as the motivations and ideals of the people who commissioned, designed, and constructed them. This architectural journey approximately begins in the 1840s with the arrival of missionaries who initiated the construction of churches using the region’s traditional ephemeral mud-and-thatch structures. However, the British clergy on the ground assumed the role of ‘civilising’ the African communities, using the architecture of ecclesiastical space to shape the communal perceptions of architectural propriety. By the 1880s, they introduced brick-walled and iron-roofed hall-type churches. By the first half of the twentieth century, Anglican ecclesiastical architecture in Yorubaland was dominated by the Gothic Revival style in basilica typology, inspired mainly by Early English Gothic architecture. The article reveals how the architectural and technological transfers from the West continued synchronously with evangelism to create the prescribed image of the Anglican church in Yorubaland. This played a significant role in consolidating British imperial power, as happened elsewhere in the British Empire.