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Towers were not a part of Christian churches until about AD 600, when they were adapted from military watchtowers. At first they were fairly modest and entirely separate structures from churches. Over time, they were incorporated into the church building and capped with ever-more-elaborate roofs until the steeple resulted.
Towers are a common element of religious architecture worldwide and are generally viewed as attempts to reach skyward toward heavens and the divine.
Some wooden steeples are built with large wooden structural members arranged like tent poles and braced diagonally inside both with wood and steel. The steeple is then clad with wooden boards and finished with slate tiles nailed to the boards using copper over gaps on corners where the slate would not cover.
In architecture
Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...
, a steeple is a tall tower on a building, topped by a spire
A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires are ...
and often incorporating a belfry and other components. Steeples are very common on Christian
Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...
church
Church may refer to:
Religion
* Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities
* Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination
* Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship
* C ...
es and cathedral
A cathedral is a church that contains the '' cathedra'' () of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference, or episcopate. Churches with the function of "cathedral" are usually specific to those Christian denomination ...
s and the use of the term generally connotes a religious structure. They might be stand-alone structures, or incorporated into the entrance or center of the building.
Architecture
Towers were not a part of Christian churches until about AD 600, when they were adapted from military watchtowers. At first they were fairly modest and entirely separate structures from churches. Over time, they were incorporated into the church building and capped with ever-more-elaborate roofs until the steeple resulted.
Towers are a common element of religious architecture worldwide and are generally viewed as attempts to reach skyward toward heavens and the divine.
Some wooden steeples are built with large wooden structural members arranged like tent poles and braced diagonally inside both with wood and steel. The steeple is then clad with wooden boards and finished with slate tiles nailed to the boards using copper over gaps on corners where the slate would not cover.
Threats to steeples
Steeples can be vulnerable to earthquakes. A number of Romanian churches feature unusually slender steeples, and over half of these have been lost to earthquakes. Because of their height, steeples can also be vulnerable tolightning
Lightning is a naturally occurring electrostatic discharge during which two electric charge, electrically charged regions, both in the atmosphere or with one on the land, ground, temporarily neutralize themselves, causing the instantaneous ...
, which can start fires within steeples. An example of this is Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Luxemburg, Iowa
Luxemburg is a city in Dubuque County, Iowa, United States. It is part of the Dubuque, Iowa Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 245 at the time of the 2020 census, down from 246 in 2000. The White Pine Hollow State Forest is located ...
, which lost its steeple in a fire believed to have been started by a lightning strike.
See also
*Bell-gable
The bell gable ( es, espadaña, french: clocher-mur, it, campanile a vela) is an architectural element crowning the upper end of the wall of church buildings, usually in lieu of a church tower. It consists of a gable end in stone, with small ho ...
*Bell tower
A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a Christian church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell tower ...
*Flèche
Flèche or Fleche may refer to:
*Flèche (architecture), a type of church spire
*Flèche (cycling), a team cycling competition
*Flèche (fencing)
The flèche is an aggressive offensive fencing technique used with foil and épée.
Background
...
*Minaret
A minaret (; ar, منارة, translit=manāra, or ar, مِئْذَنة, translit=miʾḏana, links=no; tr, minare; fa, گلدسته, translit=goldaste) is a type of tower typically built into or adjacent to mosques. Minarets are generall ...
References
External links
* {{Authority control Church architecture Timber framing eo:Spajro