2-982-578 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Lord Stratford de Redcliffe laying the Foundation Stone of the Memorial Church at Constantinople, 1858. 'A large tent was erected at the top of the inclosure for the personnel of the [British] Embassy and their friends... The ceremony began with the reading of a suitable prayer by Mr. Cribble, the Embassy Chaplain... Lord Stratford...delivered an address of ten or fifteen minutes' length, which elicited warm applause...after depositing the usual bottle of coins and roll of parchment in the prepared cavities in the lower stone, [His Lordship] spread the mortar over the surface of this last, upon which the upper one was then lowered, and struck with the mallet by the Viscount in the usual way...Outside the circle of those directly assisting at the ceremony was gathered a goodly throng of the Turkish inhabitants of the quarter...[There] was a solitary muezzin, perched aloft in the minaret gallery of the little mosque that abuts directly on the sight of the new Christian temple. From his elevated roost this priest of the rival faith looked down upon the scene below...The spot on which this advanced post of reformed Christianity is to be reared is...the most strikingly suitable spot that could have been chosen anywhere on...the hill of Pera'. From "Illustrated London News", 1858.