The little light that is hanging from the chancel is an Epiphany star lamp, but we really don’t know much about it! Every year, it is brought down from its home above and behind the front of the chancel on or about January 6, the start of the Epiphany season, and goes back before Ash Wednesday.
Because it has been there for a very long time and is an electric device, it had to have been installed after 1926 when the church got electricity for the first time. It might have been done at the same time as the gas lamps that hang along the front of the gallery were converted to electricity. And this would have most likely been the time that the two reading desk lights were installed with their brass shades saying “Sacrifice” and “Obedience,” as well as the one in the pulpit.
And how was the church lit in the 18th century before gas lamps were invented and installed? Originally there would have been candlelight and presumably there was a
large chandelier hanging from the ceiling above the center aisle, much like the one that still can be seen at Christ Church (and which is still used on special occasions). If you look there now, you can see a large circular vent, which was probably designed by architect Thomas Ustick Walter, whose mentor William Strickland designed St. Peter’s tower in 1842. Walter made some other improvements to the church in about 1837 and “modernized” Christ Church in the same period. The St. Peter’s Vestry was looking at new ways to heat and light the church; the vent was surely installed to get rid of noxious fumes. Without the chandelier, a new form of lighting was needed, so gas lamps were installed.
In the 1996 rehabilitation and restoration of various parts of the church, exact replicas of the electrified gas lamps were installed. Another part of that project was the installation of dimmers for all the lights in the church, engineered by then-Accounting Warden C.J. Moore. And if you attended the recent Christmas Eve service, you may have noticed how the lights were dimmed during the candlelit singing of ‘Silent Night.’ Beautiful!
And the Epiphany lamp? We have to thank church sexton Ben Leaphart for climbing up the ladder to bring it down for Epiphany and putting it back again before Lent, but more work is needed to find out how we got it to begin with.
A monthly feature brought to you by the St. Peter’s History Committee. This article was written by parishioner Libby Browne.