page_title: Holy Cross Church (Neuenwalde Convent)
section_title: Church building
hierarchical_section_title: Holy Cross Church (Neuenwalde Convent) / Church building
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Neuenwalde 2012
context_page_description: The Holy Cross Church is the church of the Neuenwalde Convent. Convent and Holy Cross Church are owned by the Bremian Knighthood, based in Stade. However, church and parsonage, are used per usufruct by the Lutheran Neuenwalde Congregation in Neuenwalde, a locality of Geestland, Lower Saxony, Germany. Besides the Holy Cross Church, only used, the congregation uses and owns the chapel in Hymendorf.
context_section_description: The Holy Cross Church was started in 1334 and its erection and embellishment lasted quite some time as shown by the indulgences granted to further its construction and decoration. The tower, like the church proper, based on erratic boulders, stands west of the church, but separately, and its western façade forms a building sightline with the southerly adjacent but structurally unconnected convent building called the Altes Kloster.
  Today's church building, covering 241.187 square metres (2,596.12 sq ft), is divided from west to east into eight bays. The six older, westerly bays are built from brick in Klosterformat (height: 90 to 100 mm [3.5 to 3.9 in], length: 280 to 300 mm [11 to 12 in], and width: 130 to 140 mm [5.1 to 5.5 in]) which is why the western part of the church is dated to the 1330s. Also the structure of the individual bricks and the alternating but irregular bonding of headers and stretchers there speaks for this dating. Since the 15th century bricklaying usually followed regular bondings.
   After the fires of 1500 and 1629 the church had been reconstructed either times using the surviving outside brickwork structures. Stefan Amt's constructional examinations in 2005 – during the renovation – revealed that the present building is no completely new construction but only the present roof and interior date to the repair after 1630. However, today's ceiling is flat, the original vaults have not been reconstructed. As of 1634 the convent's new Provost Otto Asche(n) Frese looked after the reconstruction. By 1636 the major structure was restored. The completion and decoration of the interior extended until the end of the 17th century. 
  Since the mid-19th century congregation (user) and knighthood (owner) negotiated about an extension of the church building since not all churchgoers could be seated. In the second half of the 19th century the windows of the sixth bay were replaced by higher and wider ones. In 1888 on the instigation of Prioress von Düring these large windows were adorned with coloured glass.
   The position of quire and altar in Catholic times is indicated by bricked-up tabernacle niches (Sakramentsnischen) in the northern and southern walls of the sixth, originally last bay before the quire. In 1910 the old quire was demolished to give way for an eastward extension of the church by 5.5 metres (18 ft) or two bays ending in an obtuse three-sided new quire. The new northeastern façade was partially built with brick in Klosterformat gained from the rubble of the demolished old quire. Maybe also on this occasion the former bridged passage between the Altes Kloster convent building and the western loft in the church, with the bricked-up door in the first southern bay on first-floor level, was removed, at least the filling bricks laid are the same as those used for the eastern extension.
  Between 2003 and 2005 the Bremian Knighthood – supported by the congregation, the deanery, the Church of Hanover, the European Union and the Marion-Köser-Stiftung foundation – thoroughly renovated the church. In 2009 a board displaying the escutcheons of the 20 member families of today's Bremian Knighthood was hung east of the loft on the northern wall in the church.
caption: Tower with Holy Cross Church (left) and Altes Kloster convent building (right)
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