Patrick Comerford
During our stopover in Singapore last month, I visited a number of cathedrals, churches, chapels, synagogues, mosques and temples in the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Taoist and Buddhist traditions.
The Christian places of worship I visited include Anglican, Roman Catholic and Armenian Orthodox cathedrals and churches. The Armenian Apostolic Church of Saint Gregory the Illuminator on Hill Street is the oldest surviving church in Singapore. It was designed by the Irish-born architect, George Drumgoole Coleman (1795-1844) from Drogheda.
Coleman was Singapore’s pioneer colonial architect, and he played a key role in designing and building much of early Singapore after it was founded by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819. They include the original Saint Andrew’s Anglican Cathedral, Maxwell’s House, later the Old Parliament House, Caldwell House and, perhaps, the Jamae Mosque that gives its name to Mosque Street. But the Armenian Church is considered one of his masterpieces.
Coleman gives his name to Coleman Street and Coleman Bridge in Singapore. He had a long-term relationship with Takouhi (Thagoohi) Manuk, a sister of Gvork Manuk, a wealthy Persian-born Armenian merchant in India and Java, and he built a mansion for her beside his own. Their daughter, Meda Elizabeth Coleman, was born on 10 March 1829, and the girl was baptised in Saint Andrew’s Cathedral on 30 July 1837.
Takouhi Manuk and her sister Mary Arathoon later inherited their brother’s entire wealth and in 1854 they funded the rebuilding of Saint John’s Armenian Church in Calcutta. It is possibly because of his relationship with Takouhi Manuk that Coleman came to design the Armenian Church of Saint Gregory the Illuminator on Hill Street in 1835, and she donated much of the silverware and furnishings in the church.
The church, known locally as the Armenian Church, is dedicated to Saint Gregory the Illuminator, the first Patriarch of the Armenian Church.
The Armenians were among the earliest merchants and traders to arrive in Singapore after Raffles established it as a trading port in 1819. The community was holding services in Singapore by 1821, and the first priest, Father Krikor Hovhannes (Gregory John), arrived in July 1827.
A temporary chapel was set up at the back of John Little and Company at Commercial Square, now Raffles Place. The community started to raise funds to build a new church in 1827. Over half the building cost was donated by the Armenian community in Singapore, with the rest coming from Armenians in Java and India, and a small portion from European and Chinese merchants in Singapore.
The Armenian community was very small – the 1824 census counted only 16 members, and 34 in 1836 when the church opened – its contribution to the Armenian Church indicates the prosperity and religious devotion of the Armenian community in Singapore.
They included lawyers, merchants, and entrepreneurs, such as the Sarkies Brothers, who built and managed the Raffles Hotel, Agnes Joaquim who hybridised the orchid Vanda ‘Miss Joaquim’, named as Singapore’s national flower, and Catchick Moses who founded the Straits Times.
The Armenian community requested a site for a church in 1833, and the government granted land at the foot of Fort Canning in 1834. The foundation stone was laid on 1 January 1835 by Father Thomas Gregorian, who opened and consecrated the new church on Easter Sunday 1836, assisted by Father Khachig Hovhannes.
The east front of the church has a bowed apse with a pediment supporting a spire. The date ‘1835’ commemorates the year the foundation stone was laid.
The Armenian Church is primarily in the English neoclassical style with a few eclectic influences, and it is centrally-designed in the manner of the Etchmiadzin Cathedral, the mother church of Armenia.
The interior is circular and is said to resemble the round Holy Sepulchre in Cambridge. However, the circle is imposed within a square-cross plan, with projecting square porticos in Roman Doric orders. The Palladian-style design may have been inspired by the circular plan for Saint Andrews’s Church in Chennai (Madras), which in turn is derived from one of James Gibbs’s designs for Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, London.
Coleman’s original symmetrical design included neither tower nor spire, but featured an octagonal cone supporting a small bell turret with Ionic columns.
Each of the Tuscan Doric porticos on the north, south and west fronts of the church is topped with a triangular pediment. Originally the east front simply had a bowed apse with Tuscan Doric pilasters, however the bowed apse has since been boxed in by the portico on which the spire was built.
The north, south and west porticos were designed to allow horse carriages to pull into the porches, where women might then alight and step directly into the church without soiling their dresses.
Coleman’s design is adapted to suit Singapore’s tropical climate. The wide verandahs give shade and protect the timber-louvred windows on the ground floor from heavy downpours. The windows, in turn, diffuse the sunlight and induce cross ventilation. The pews are backed with woven rattan, a lighter, cooler and more comfortable material.
The painting above the altar is of the Last Supper.
The church has undergone a number of modifications since it was first built. A bell turret designed by Coleman was deemed structurally unsound, and it was replaced first by a square tower in 1846-1847, then again replaced in 1853 with a square tower with Doric pilasters, designed by the Welsh-born architect George Vaughan Maddox (1802-1864). Maddox replaced the pitched roof with the present roof.
To support the tower and spire, he added the east portico around the apse where the chancel is. The semi-circular chancel with the raised grand altar is located opposite the main entrance. Probably at the same time the main entrance on the west portico was also widened.
The parsonage, a two-storey bungalow in the church grounds, was built in 1905 by Nanajan Sarkies in memory of her late husband, John Shanazar Sarkies. Today, it serves as the administrative offices of the Armenian Church and houses the Armenian Heritage Gallery.
In 1909, the church became the first building in Singapore with electricity.
The Armenian population in Singapore dwindled in the early 20th century, and the last Armenian parish priest left in the late 1930s.
The square tower designed by Maddox was replaced in 1953 by the present spire that sits on an octagonal tower, and it is topped with a ball and cross.
When the Christian cemetery at Fort Canning was cleared for a park in the late 1960s, early Armenian tombstones there were moved into the Memorial Garden at the church ground. Tombstones from Bukit Timah-Cavenagh Road cemetery were also moved there.
The tombstones, moved by an American-Armenian Levon Palian, include tombstones of members of the Sarkies family of Raffles Hotel fame, Agnes Joaquim, who bred Singapore’s national flower, and Catchick Moses, who founded the Straits Times. However, the Memorial Garden was never used as a burial ground.
The Armenian Church was gazetted as a national monument in 1973.
The church had been abandoned religiously for decades when Father Daron Djerejian, an Armenian priest from Nice in France, visited the church in 1979 and conducted the Divine Liturgy.
The Armenian Church celebrated its 150th anniversary in 1985. Archbishop Aghan Baliozian of Australia led a group of Armenian pilgrims from Australia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan and the US to Singapore in June 1985.
A celebration of the Divine Liturgy at the church in 2001 marked the 1700th anniversary of the official adoption of Christianity in Armenia. On 27 March 2011, 160 Armenians from 20 countries gathered at the church to commemorate the 175th anniversary of the church.
The Armenian Patriarch, Patriarch Karekin II, appointed Father Zaven Yazichyan, a monk from Etchmiadzin, as the pastor of the Armenian communities in Singapore, Myanmar and Bangladesh in 2016. He is based in Yangon, Myanmar, and visits Singapore five or six times a year.
The Armenian Apostolic Church celebrates Divine Liturgy several times a year, presided over by visiting Armenian priests from around the region. The Armenian Christmas celebrations take place from 10 am to 12 noon on Sunday 12 January 2025, to be presided over by Archbishop Haigazoun Najarian.
The Armenian Church also hosts a number of religious groups that occasionally conduct Divine Liturgy and prayer sessions at the Church, including Saint Mark Coptic Orthodox Church on the first Saturday evening and Sunday morning of each month; Saint Flannan Mission; and the Taizé Prayer Group.
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