World War II
During the Second World War there were a number of raids on Belfast by the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force. On one occasion, during the infamous Belfast Blitz of Easter Tuesday, 15 April 1941, a bomb landed in front of the Church and, while it did not cause any structural damage to the Church, many of the windows were blown in. A second bomb landed at the nearby Gasworks. The explosion caused a huge vacuum in the local area which literally sucked out the remainder of the windows and the original Irish Oak frames were destroyed. Being a time of war, it was impossible to replace the oak window frames and so they were replaced in concrete, something that was to prove more damaging than the German bomb. The strength of the concrete has, over the last 60 years, destroyed the bricks surrounding these frames (the Church was built with handmade bricks) and by the time the Restoration work was complete upwards of 80,000 bricks needed to be replaced.
Read more about this topic: Saint Malachy's Church, Belfast
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:
“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)
“We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives, that it is inside ourselves.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)