Cambridge Chapels Study Day

This summer we will visit four outstanding examples of college chapels in Cambridge. Except at King’s College, we will be guided by Mark Kirby, Chairman of Council of the Ecclesiological Society. We are very grateful to each of the colleges for making this day possible.

10:15am: Meet outside the main entrance to Sidney Sussex College, Sidney Street.

10:30am: Sidney Sussex College

Sidney Sussex was founded in 1596 under the terms of the will of Frances Sidney, Countess of Sussex. The chapel has evolved from its original simplicity and deserves to be better known. Initially adapted from domestic buildings on the former Franciscan site, it was rebuilt in 1776-82 by the Cambridge collegiate architect James Essex, and extended in 1910-12 by Thomas Henry Lyon, to whom it owes its present character. It escaped Jeffry Wyatville’s alterations elsewhere in the college in the 1830s. Lyon’s extension and re-ordering were made at a time when the college was briefly High Church – Anglo-Catholic even – in its churchmanship and is loosely neo-Baroque in style. The chapel has very fine woodwork.

11:45am: King’s College

Begun in 1446 by Henry VI, King’s College chapel has a grandeur and architectural importance like no other. We owe its fabric and glorious fan-vaulting to its founder but its completion, the furnishings, and most of the stained glass to Henry VIII. Remarkably, the windows were still being made while those in monasteries around the country were being destroyed. In scale and quality, it is the finest collection of Renaissance glass in the country.

We are especially lucky to have Oliver Caroe, the surveyor to the fabric at King’s College, as our guide.

1pm: Lunch will be at attendees’ own choice and cost, and there is a variety of affordable places nearby, including in the market behind Great St Mary’s church, opposite King’s College.

2pm: Peterhouse

Founded in 1284, Peterhouse is Cambridge’s oldest college, but it did not acquire its own chapel until the present one was built by the Master, Matthew Wren, in 1628-32. Matthew was Sir Christopher Wren’s uncle and went on to become bishop of Hereford, Norwich, and Ely. He was, to coin a phrase, more Laudian than Laud, and under his direction and that of his successor John Cosin, the chapel was a showpiece of Laudian worship. Much of Wren’s and Cosin’s decorative scheme was destroyed by William Dowsing, the parliamentary iconoclast, but the college successfully hid the spectacular east window and re-installed it after the Restoration. The north and south windows are enamelled Munich glass of 1855-59.

3:30pm: Pembroke College

Pembroke College chapel was also commissioned by Matthew Wren in his capacity as Visitor of the college, and was built by his nephew Christopher in 1663-65. Jointly with the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford it is Wren’s first building. A single cell space with polite Corinthian temple front to the street, it was an elegant if simple start to Wren’s illustrious career. Its interior furnishings are by Edward Pearce, who went on to be one of Wren’s principal masons and carvers in London. The chapel was extended one bay eastward in 1879-81 by G. G. Scott Jnr, creating a chancel with an entrance flanked by a Corinthian arch.

Tickets are priced at £40 for members of the Society and £45 for non-members. The ticket includes all admissions to the colleges. Places are limited to 25. There will be a waiting list once the event has reached capacity. 

Questions should be directed to visits@ecclsoc.org.uk. 

Image: Lawrence Lew, Flickr