"BACARRA
CHURCH & BELL
TOWER
RUINS"
The
Bacarra
Church
together with its bell tower were constructed by the Spanish Augustinian Friars
in 1593 and subsequently inaugurated in 1782. It was destroyed by the intensity
7.8 earthquake on August 1983 and reconstructed and once again inaugurated in
August 1984. The image of the patron saint, San Andres, stands in front of his
x-shaped cross in the central niche.
The
Bacarra
Bell
Tower
is located at the right side of the Roman Catholic Church. It was built in
1830’s and made up of coral blocks and stocco with an original height of fifty
(50) meters and a three (3) storey with a wall of five (5) meters thickness. The
earthquake wrecked it in 1931, which had caused the top most portions to tilt a
little sideward on the right. The bell tower with its unusual elongated cupola,
was built during the term of Fray Pedro Berger (1828-1848). It was made to stand
a good distance from the church to reduce damage to the later in case the tower
buckled during a tremor. Chunks of brick debris, hurtled down during earlier
earthquakes practically at the foot of the church.
The
bell tower, which is now in its advanced stage of dilapidation due to the effect
of strong earthquakes, serves not only as a tourist attraction but also as a
historical landmark of the painfull sacrifices of the ancestors of the Bacarenos
who rendered forced labor under the Spanish conquerors.
