ABSTRACT
Writing from Yarmouth one cold and blustery autumn day in 1883, retired Admiral and erstwhile Arctic explorer Sir Erasmus Ommanney anxiously pressed the secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), the Rev. E. P. Sketchley, on a matter he considered of national importance. This chapter considers two churches by way of example. Both of these were erected in the Diocese of Gibraltar and reveal something of the importance attached to architecture in supporting not only the local chaplaincies in each case, but also the wider causes of the bishopric and the SPG. The architect, too, obviously understood gothic architecture as harbouring notions of reform, renewal, and religious “truth.” For Street, like many Gothic revivalists at the time, good and therefore true architecture must necessarily be “real.” On the diocese of Gibraltar’s eastern borders, something altogether different had been taking place.
