The 199-year-old St Mark’s Cathedral — a spiritual landmark of Bangalore — stands as an island of peace at the Mahatma Gandhi Road-Lavelle Road-Kasturba Road — Queen’s Road junction. A dignified edifice in classical form sited in a serene, well-planned garden with flowering trees.

It’d soon be 200 years since the foundation of the St Mark’s Cathedral was laid, very near the grave of Major Dickson who died in 1808. A tablet in memory of the Major is set into the wall of the church; its eulogy touchingly brief: “Beloved.”

History on tablets
Enter the church and one is enveloped by a myriad images of the past, the present and the future converging on a single theme.

The church bears many tablets in poignant memory of those who have passed into eternity. Some of them were lost at sea, including Lt Col Sir Walter Scott, descendant of the great writer, in 1847, aged 48.

Brass tablets commemorate the mustering out of the 77th Moplah Rifles with colours being received on July 12, 1907 and those who killed in the Moplah revolt. There’s one in memory of Capt N B E Gawes. One reads that the captain “upset from a boat in the flooded Cauvery and, after himself reaching to safety, swam back to help an Indian workman”. He was drowned (1909) in his gallant attempt at rescue.

Comments galore
One hundred and ninety nine years after its foundation was laid, the structure has been described since its completion in 1812 as the ugliest building ever built, a huge Bryant and May matchbox and a commissariat godown.

Built to accommodate about 400 persons at worship, the first building was a plain rectangular low-roofed structure with the font placed in the west verandah to maximise space inside.

In 1902 when Bishop Whitehead preached “O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness”, it was not merely thankfulness for the transformation of St Mark’s from ugliness to beauty. He was crossing the thin line between aesthetic grandeur and spiritual beauty. The line has disappeared 107 years since.

A series of misfortunes befell the church. A few days before Christmas in 1902 the new tower collapsed.

The collapse was attributed to an error in the structural plans for the combined dome and tower. In 1923 the interior of  the church was destroyed by fire. In 1924 the roof of the almost restored nave fell. The church was reopened for service on 7 August 1927. Twenty years later St Mark’s became the cathedral of the new diocese of Mysore of the Church of South India. In 1953 the roof of the nave again caved in.

The marks of time and erroneous hands are hardly to be seen on today’s church.

St Mark’s has a unique distinction of being labelled the most, from subjects as distinct as looks to the people that frequent it.

To be called the elitest of churches and a church of visitors would not be disparaging as being called a matchbox.