St. Stephanus is a church and a former

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...

in Bork, now part of

Selm Selm () is a town in the district of Unna, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is situated approximately 20 kilometers north of Dortmund and 25 kilometers west of Hamm. Geography The town belongs to the southern part of the Münsterland ...

North Rhine-Westphalia North Rhine-Westphalia or North-Rhine/Westphalia, commonly shortened to NRW, is a States of Germany, state () in Old states of Germany, Western Germany. With more than 18 million inhabitants, it is the List of German states by population, most ...

, Germany. It was completed in 1724 in

Baroque style The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from the early 17th century until the 1750s. It followed Renaissance art and Mannerism and preceded the Rococo (i ...

and expanded in the 1880s based on a design by Wilhelm Rincklake. The church is a listed monument. The parish was merged with St. Ludger, Selm, in 1976.

History and architecture

The parish of St. Stephanus was founded between 1022 and 1032, when it was split from a parish in

Werne Werne an der Lippe (; Westphalian language, Westphalian: ''Wäen'') is a town in the Federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia in the Unna (district), Unna district in Germany. It is located on the southern edge of the Münster (region), Münsterla ...

. Dedicated to St. Stephen the Martyr, it belonged to Cappenberg Abbey from 1175 to 1803, with convent brothers serving as ministers in Bork. In the 17th century, the parish church suffered damage during several wars. The tower, along with the bells, collapsed in 1716, falling onto the church and severely damaging it, rendering the building unsafe and beyond repair. Selm Monument 22 Stephanus Bork Chorraum 8211

Selm Monument 22 Stephanus Bork Chorraum 8211

The present church was built between 1718 and 1724 in the

, designed as a

vaulted In architecture, a vault (French ''voûte'', from Italian ''volta'') is a self-supporting arched form, usually of stone or brick, serving to cover a space with a ceiling or roof. As in building an arch, a temporary support is needed while ring ...

aisleless church An aisleless church () is a single-nave church building that consists of a single hall-like room. While similar to the hall church, the aisleless church lacks aisles or passageways on either side of the nave and separated from the nave by col ...

from

plaster Plaster is a building material used for the protective or decorative coating of walls and ceilings and for moulding and casting decorative elements. In English, "plaster" usually means a material used for the interiors of buildings, while "re ...

rubble masonry Rubble masonry or rubble stone is rough, uneven building stone not laid in regular courses. It may fill the core of a wall which is faced with unit masonry such as brick or ashlar. Some medieval cathedral walls have outer shells of ashlar wi ...

. The helm of the west tower was added in 1776. From 1884 to 1886, the building was expanded by adding further aisles, on a design in Romanesque-Revival style by ''Kirchenbaumeister'' (master church builder) . Some pieces of the 1886 furnishings still survive. Around 1900, the windows were decorated with stained glass. The windows along the

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

were purely ornamental, while the five windows behind the altar show scenes from the life of St. Stephen, the

patron saint A patron saint, patroness saint, patron hallow or heavenly protector is a saint who in Catholicism, Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy or Oriental Orthodoxy is regarded as the heavenly advocate of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, fa ...

. The walls were painted in 1928, but re-plastered in 1957. The interior was remodelled in 1969, in accordance with the recommendations of the

Second Vatican Council The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly known as the or , was the 21st and most recent ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. The council met each autumn from 1962 to 1965 in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City for session ...

. A large wooden 18th-century

crucifix A crucifix (from the Latin meaning '(one) fixed to a cross') is a cross with an image of Jesus on it, as distinct from a bare cross. The representation of Jesus himself on the cross is referred to in English as the (Latin for 'body'). The cru ...

, which had served as a

wayside cross A wayside cross is a cross by a footpath, track or road, at an intersection, along the edge of a field or in a forest. It can be made of wood, stone or metal. Stone crosses may also be conciliation crosses. Often they serve as waymarks for wal ...

, was positioned behind the new altar. Bork became part of

in 1975, and the parish was subsequently merged with St. Ludger, Selm, in 2008. It is located within the Diocese of Münster. The church has been a listed monument since 13 October 1986.

References

Source

Georg Dehio Georg Gottfried Julius Dehio (22 November 1850 – 21 March 1932), was a Baltic German art historian. In 1900, Dehio started the "''Handbuch der deutschen Kunstgeschichte''" (Handbook of German Art History), published by Ernst Wasmuth Verlag, ...

: ''Handbuch der deutschen Kunstdenkmäler. Nordrhein-Westfalen II Westfalen''.

Deutscher Kunstverlag The Deutscher Kunstverlag (DKV) is an educational publishing house with offices in Berlin and Munich. The publisher specializes in books about art, cultural history, architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and bu ...

, Berlin/München 2011

External links

St. Stephanus
St. Ludger, Selm {{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Stephanus, Bork Roman Catholic churches completed in 1724 Baroque architecture in North Rhine-Westphalia Baroque church buildings in Germany 18th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in Germany