Ta’ Braxia Cemetery – a treasure trove of Malta’s diverse ethnicity and architecture

Where can you find Russian emigrées fleeing the Russian revolution, Greek Orthodox, Jews, Anglicans, Methodists and Baptists all in one place?

Did you know there were Calvanists in Malta?

Why should the building of a cemetery cause a politico-religious furore?

What is the only building that the eminent 19C British architect John Loughborough Pearson, built in Malta?

All these questions and more will be addressed in FAA’s lecture on the 200th anniversary of the birth of the renowned architect John Loughborough Pearson, when architect Conrad Thake and Janica Buhagiar will be giving an historic, artistic and architectural appreciation of Ta’ Braxia Cemetery, to which he contributed.

Planned to meet the needs of the increasingly diverse number of non-Catholics needing internment in Malta, the unprecedented furore caused by the building of Ta’ Braxia Cemetery required all the diplomacy that the British administration could muster to avoid a head-on clash with Malta’s conservative religious establishment.

In their recently-published book Ta’ Braxia Cemetery, Conrad Thake and Janica Buhagiar trace the foundation of the cemetery from its establishment in 1855– 1857, to its physical expansion around 1880. This talk will present the distinctive qualities and characteristics of a garden-ceme- tery and the diverse typology and rich iconographic symbolism of the various funerary monuments at Ta’ Braxia, as well as the Lady Rachel Hamilton Gordon chapel (1893–94) which is the main architectural icon of the cemetery.

Its architect was John Loughborough Pearson RA (5 July 1817 – 11 December 1897), a British Gothic Revival architect renowned best known for Truro Cathedral, but other cathedrals and other historic buildings he worked on include Lincoln, Chichester, Peterborough, Bristol and Exeter Cathedrals, St George's Chapel, Windsor, Westminster Hall, and Westminster Abbey and his finest work, St John's Cathedral in Brisbane, Australia.

Prof Conrad Thake and Janica Buhagiar’s talk organised by Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar, based on their research for their publication on the Ta' Braxia Cemetery will take place this evening at 7pm, when copies of the book may also be purchased. Venue: the Italian Cultural Institute, Pjazza San Gorg, Val- letta Places may be reserved via donation at: https://ticketengine.faa.org.mt/ Signed copies of the book will be available for purchase or can be pre-purchased through the following form, which should be printed: https://imgur.com/a/MfQr1