Ridley Hall, Cambridge

Mostly hidden behind a street wall Ridley Hall chapel was closed to visitors when I visited, so a re-run is called for in October.

RIDLEY HALL (Church of England Theological College; Evangelical). 1879-81 by C. S. Luck; Chapel and new block 1891-2 by W Wallace. W block 1912. Red brick and stone-dressings; the style Tudor. Of no special architectural interest. The Chapel has recently (1949  received a new reredos by Professor A. E. Richardson.

RIDLEY HALL. Standing on the west bank of the river, Ridley Hall was founded in 1879 as an Anglican hostel for University graduates to study theology. Its buildings are of brick and stone, with battlements and gables and a gateway-tower. The simple chapel has a bell turret with a lantern, and among the figures in its windows are Ridley, Cranmer, Tyndale, Wycliffe, Luther, Hooker, and George Herbert.

Flickr.

Selwyn College, Cambridge

Another example of my decreasing hostility towards Victorian builds - I really liked Selwyn chapel. It's got some great, and some indifferent, benchends, a good lectern, some good glass and an excellent reredos sculpture. I think Pevsner is harsh.

SELWYN COLLEGE (Church of England), Grange Road. 1882-9 by Sir Arthur Blomfield. Red brick in the Tudor style. Entrance block with asymmetrically designed gatehouse. Separate large N block of chambers. Chapel axially opposite the gatehouse with front a la King’s College Chapel, tall and not bad, but inside badly lacking in that gravity which distinguishes Bodley’s contemporary chapel of Queens’ College. Stained Glass by Kempe 1900-3. The Master’s Lodge of 1884 has a nice busy Gothic porch. The Hall on the S side of the large turfed court is by Grayson & Ould (see Trinity Hall) and was added in 1908-9. The bold outer staircase leading up to the Jacobean building successfully adds a lighter touch to Blomfield’s somewhat arid architecture. Inside the Hall the high table end has PANELLING of 1708 from the former English Church at Rotterdam. The Library NW of the N block by T. H. Lyon.

SELWYN COLLEGE. Founded by public subscription in memory of George Augustus Selwyn, the famous Bishop of New Zealand (and later of Lichfield), its fine buildings of brick and stone are about a big sunken court, most of them built before the close of the century from designs by Sir Arthur Blomfield. The chapel of 1895 has a handsome west front, enriched with niches in the gable and flanked by turrets with traceried lanterns. There is beautiful stone carving in the canopied sedilia and in the screen to the vestry, the cornice above the screen’s window tracery supporting another screen to the room above. Other rich wood-carving is in the rows of benches, the lovely canopied stalls, and the splendid screen at the west end. In the southern range (chiefly 20th century) are the Combination Room and the fine hall, which has a two-winged flight of steps to its gabled entrance, and buttresses climbing to the slender pinnacles rising above the stone parapet of pierced carving. The 18th century woodwork behind the dais of the hall was once in the church of St Mary at Rotterdam.

Flickr.

Robinson College, Cambridge

This was not at all what I was expecting, the nearest I can come to describe it is as a redbrick Barbican but less brutalist. I had no idea that it was founded in 1977 nor that it opened its doors in 1981. From the college website:

Robinson, Sir David (1904-1987), entrepreneur, College founder, and philanthropist, was born 13 April 1904 in Cambridge, the third of six sons and third of nine children of Herbert ​Robinson, cycle shop and later garage owner, and his wife, Rosie Emily Tricker. He was educated at the Cambridge High School for Boys, which he left at the age of fifteen in order to work in his father's bicycle shop in Cambridge. In 1930 he moved to Bedford, where he took over a garage and developed it into a large and prosperous firm.

His fortune, however, was made in radio and television rental business. In the late 1930's he opened a radio and electrical shop in the High Street, Bedford, and in the late 1940's opened similar shops in Northampton, Kettering, Luton, Peterborough, Stamford and Hitchin. Having observed the impact of the Queen's coronation as a television spectacle in 1953, he set up his own television and rental business based, at first, on his chain of shops. By 1962, the Bedford firm of Robinson Rentals was making a profit of 1,500,000 a year and in 1968 he sold it to Granada for 8 million and turned his attention elsewhere.

The turf had interested him for a long time. Although his racing colours of green, red sleeves, and light blue cap were registered as early as 1946, and although in 1955 his 'Our Babu' won the Two Thousand Guineas, it was not until 1968 that he seriously turned his mind to horse-racing as a business. He set out to prove his theory that, given efficient and business-like management, organisation, and accounting, racehorse ownership could be made to pay. The results spoke for themselves. For eight seasons between 1968 and 1975 Robinson consistently headed the owners list of individual winners and races. Although leading owner in terms of prize money only once (in 1969), he eventually won a total of 997 races. In the ten years from 1968 Robinson made a great contribution to British racing, at his peak having 120 horses in training.

He continued to apply and expect the same high standards of business efficiency even when it came to giving his money away. If potential recipients of his munificence did not come up to his own ideas of management efficiency, they went away disappointed and empty-handed. He set up the Robinson Charitable Trust. Its beneficiaries included Bedford - a swimming pool; his old school - an Arts' Centre; Addenbrooke's Hospital - the Rosie Maternity Unit named after his mother; the Evelyn Nursing Home - a new wing; and Papworth Hospital - a large sum for heart transplants. When the Penlee lifeboat foundered with the loss of the entire crew in 1981, he provided 400,000 to purchase a new lifeboat named after his wife, Mabel Alice, and he went on to provide three more, including the David Robinson at the Lizard.

In the late 1960's it became known that he was considering a large academic benefaction, and eventually Cambridge University accepted his offer of 18 million to endow a large new College. Planning began in 1973. The design was prepared by the Glasgow firm of architects, Gillespie, Kidd and Coia; the building was started in 1977 and was virtually completed by October 1980, when the first sizeable number of undergraduates entered the College. By 1983, the College had grown to 35 Fellows and 370 junior members and by 1993, had reached a steady state of 56 Fellows and 485 junior members - one of the larger and friendlier Cambridge Colleges.

Robinson College was formally opened by the Queen on 29 May, 1981. Typically, Robinson avoided the opening ceremony, tendering his apologies to Her Majesty on the grounds that he had become increasingly immobile and his wife had for some time been incapacitated. He was knighted in 1985.

Robinson's life was centred on his enterprises and his benefactions. He worked hard, with little relaxation and few social contacts; and he expected others to work hard. He kept up appearances, being tall, bald-headed and bespectacled, and always smartly dressed, but he was very reticent and shunned publicity to the end. He was not only a great entrepreneur, but also a self-effacing philanthropist who gave all his money away and, in spite of his disenchantment with academics, whom he regarded as vacillating and insufficiently business-like, founded a College in his home town with a record benefaction, in record time.

In 1922 he married Mabel Alice, daughter of Fred Baccus, stonemason, when they were both eighteen years old. A devoted couple, they had a daughter and a son, who died in 1981. Robinson died in Newmarket on 10 January 1987 and was buried at sea off Great Yarmouth by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

The chapel is very difficult to photograph, as is the college, and has stunning John Piper and Patrick Reyntiens windows.

 

Flickr.

Downing College, Cambridge

I suspect that this might be out of step with the general view but to my mind Downing College chapel is by far and away the least appealing of the Cambridge college chapels. I found it, and the campus, cold, spartan and lacking in soul - I did like the Leonard Evetts 1963 Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse apse windows though.

Sir George Downing had died in 1749. He had arranged in his will that, should his cousin die without issue, a college should be established out of the money left by him. It was to consist of a master, a professor of law, a professor of medicine, and sixteen fellows. The cousin died childless in 1764. Thirty years of litigation followed, and in 1800 the charter was granted. Plans for the buildings had been obtained as early as 1784 from James Wyatt - not in the Gothic style, as the King had remarked against this style - and again in 1804. These were turned down, after Thomas Hope, the much respected amateur, had criticized them fiercely. He denied them any ‘instance of fancy’ or ‘spark of genius’, because they were not Greek enough. It was the declaration of war of the Grecians against the moderate Palladians. Designs were then asked for from George Byfield, Lewis Wyatt, and William Wilkins (who was a fellow of Caius). Wilkins won, and building according to his designs started in 1807. Wilkins’s was a fine plan in the Neo-Grecian style with a Greek Doric Propylaea in the N, then two detached ranges of chambers turning N and S, then the main ranges running N-S and consisting of three isolated blocks on each side connected only by low screen walls. The southernmost of the three was followed by the Hall block on the W and the Master’s Lodge on the E, identical externally and with two Ionic porticoes each, one to the S and the other towards the Court. Finally between these latter another block was to be erected with Ionic porticoes to Court and S. This was to house the Chapel and Library. To the S it was to show three detached Ionic porticoes and besides attached Ionic columns along the whole of the central building and detached porticoes nodding at each other across both passages between central building and Hall and central building and Lodge.

The College, it will have been noticed, was to have one court only, but that turfed throughout, more spacious than any other, and as loosely surrounded by buildings as, say, the Campus of Jefferson’s University of Virginia. It is in fact rather of this that one feels reminded than of earlier Oxford or Cambridge Colleges, and it is, therefore, well worth recording that Wilkins preceded Jefferson by ten years, and that Downing must be recognized as the earliest college on the campus plan.

Building proceeded very slowly and in the end, i.e. in 1821, only the E and W ranges of four blocks each were erected, and of these the one in the E remained incomplete on its N side. Then nothing happened until in 1873 Edward Barry was called in, who finished the fragment on the E in Ketton stone, a pinker stone than that of Wi1kins’s buildings, and increased accommodation by putting chambers where Wilkins’s screen walls had been - a great pity. He also beautified the Hall which until then had only been decorated by a marble doorcase and flat pilasters against the walls. Barry put in the giant columns and coat of arms, which are now its chief decoration. Then in 1929 Sir Herbert Baker was engaged to continue building. With that astonishing self-assurance which this architect possessed and which appears so naively in his Memoirs he abandoned Wilkins’s design just enough to irritate. The L-shaped ranges which he added to the N and intended later to close against the former Downing site (which had by then been crowded with University buildings) are inferior in every way to Wilkins’s, not fanciful but fussy. There is no excuse e.g. for the Ionic capitals without pilasters which he has inside the porticoes. The oval windows, the doorcases and the balustrades also seem hardly justifiable. The central range with a large portico in the middle has recently been completed to a design of Sir Herbert Baker’s successor Mr A. T. Scott. It has a six-column Ionic portico in the centre, behind which is the apsed chapel. The apse has plain arched windows cutting into the curve of the vault in the Byzantine way. Only in the nave windows and the discordant way in which the mouldings of their reveals run into the arches does something of Baker’s mannerisms survive. Light woodwork in a semi-early-C18 style.

Whatever may have to be criticized in the N range, the chief attraction of the College remains: the  wide lawn of the campus and the openness of outlook to the S. The College still keeps something of that feeling of being out of the town which was its characteristic when it was begun 150 years ago.

The dignified buildings of its irregular quadrangle look on to one of the most spacious of green courts, shaded by trees. It is the college of the Sir George Downing of the family after whom Downing Street is named; he died in 1749, leaving estates for the founding of the college after the death of his heirs. The charter was obtained in 1800, and the three ranges of buildings are 19th century. One pillared portico leads to the Master’s Lodge and another to the hall, where are portraits of the founder and Masters. Behind the hall are the Combination Room and the kitchen; the north side, designed by Sir Herbert Baker, is being completed with a new chapel and library.

Flickr.

Peterhouse College, Cambridge

The chapel is currently closed for maintenance until 30th Sept so I'll visit it, and Trinity, sometime in October and finish off the remaining five chapels.

The CHAPEL was built under the mastership of  Wren’s uncle, Matthew Wren. Until then the college had possessed no chapel and worshipped in St Mary the Less. We do not know who designed the Chapel, although it is the most remarkable building of its date in Cambridge. It was consecrated in 1632. It is a simple rectangle, originally showing its brick construction. Later in the C17 (when Cosin was master) it was ashlared. The front had a porch which was pulled down in 1755. Its main motifs are the depressed blank arcades on the ground floor, the W window on the upper floor which is of three lights and has tracery of a familiar if slightly schematized Perp type, the two niches to the r. and l. of the window with their surprising ogee tops and their gristly bracket ornament below, and the fantastic top gable consisting of freely curved side parts and a raised centre in which there was originally a third niche instead of the present clock. The E end towards the street was faced in 1665 (by Cosin) and is characteristically different in one detail - the crowning motif is a pediment, i.e. a classical motif, instead of the playful curved bits in the W. The E window is of five lights and as Perp as that in the W (and those N and S). The E end is flanked by polygonal turrets - another Perp relic. The colonnades had originally depressed arches and a pretty Elizabethan strapwork balustrade. They were rebuilt in 1709 and then made round-headed, i.e. classical. They also lost their posthumously Gothic windows on the upper floor at that time. The interior of the Chapel is distinguished by a fine dark brown and gold cambered timber ceiling, its panels decorated with oval suns with rays. The STALLS are contemporary and unusual in that they have open fronts and balusters. The ORGAN GALLERY on its W as well as E side is said to incorporate C15 panels from an unknown source. The classical REREDOS is modern and contains wood-carved German SCULPTURE: Mourning of the dead Christ (early C16). The ALTAR RAILS are C18. The STAINED GLASS in the E window, a Crucifixion with large heavy figures is Flemish of 1639 (T K). In the other windows scenes acted by big, coarse, insensitive figures in rich colours. By Max E. Ainmiller of Munich, 1855-8. In the antechapel two MONUMENTS, one a tablet of 1634 with the same typical ornamental motifs as the woodwork in the Perse Library. The chapel door is dated 1632.

For more than 650 years it has stood at the Trumpington Street entrance to the University, the first college founded in Cambridge, its founder being Hugh de Balsham, who in 1280 obtained a charter for introducing scholars into the Hospital of St John, and four years later separated his scholars and their Master from the brethren of the hospital by housing them in two hostels on this spot.

So was founded the House of Peter, which served as the college chapel till the time of Charles Stuart. The bishop died in 1286, leaving money with which the scholars built the hall. As the college developed the early buildings became the south range of the principal quadrangle we see today. Between 1424 and 1460 came the building of the north side (where much of the old work is still seen), the west side (keeping some of the old windows and its winding stairway), and the kitchen. The entrance court began to take shape when Dr Perne (the 16th century Old Andrew Turncoat) left books and money for a library. In 1590 the south range was carried eastward. The lodge has stood across Trumpington Street for over two centuries.

The two original hostels were destroyed to make way for the chapel of 1632, which projects into the entrance court like the middle arm of the letter E, and its classical west front, facing the main court, is a charming feature, linked with the north and south ranges by galleries on open arcading.

Panelled with old wood and still lighted by candles, the chapel has a gilded figure of St Peter in front of the organ gallery, and an east window with Flemish glass, said to be a design by Rubens for the Crucifixion, though the action is violent and the expression of the actors unpleasing. More attractive is the 19th century Munich glass in the other windows, looking like oil painting with Bible scenes in rich and vivid colours.

The hall has 17th century tables and seats, and a fine gallery of portraits, some painted on wood. Among them are Bishop Law, painted by Romney, and Lord Kelvin, who even as an undergraduate was recognised as a great mathematician by the examiners, one of whom said to another that they were just worthy to mend his quill pens. The windows dimming the hall have the rich colour and interesting design to be expected from their authors William Morris, Burne-Jones, and Ford Madox Brown; we see in them the founder (Hugh de Balsham), Sir Isaac Newton with his apple, Henry Cavendish with books and instrument in hand, Thomas Gray in a churchyard, Richard Crashaw with palette and book, Bishop Cosin who followed Wren as Master, Archbishop Whitgift reading as he walks along, John Holbrook (a 15th century Master), Henry Beaufort holding a crown and staff, John Warksworth whose manuscript enriched the library, and six saints. By the handsome doorway near the high table are carved a lion and a lamb; we see them again on a wall of the pretty Gisborne Court, to which we come through an 18th century gateway in the main court.

From a small garden we come to the grove, with a lovely lime avenue. The grove is bounded on one side by the 400-year-old wall separating the college domain from Coe Fen and the river beyond. A blocked gateway still older than the wall has the arms of Bishop Hotham of 1316 on the outside, and those of Bishop Alcock of 1486 within. Beyond the grove is an enchanting garden with fine trees, a lime sweeping the ground, a superb walnut, and weeping elms. The last window of the buildings overlooking the churchyard of St Mary the Less belongs to a room used by the poet Gray, who was a Fellow Commoner in 1742, and had these bars fixed so that he might fasten a rope ladder to it in case of fire. Some undergraduates amused themselves by raising a cry of Fire, and Gray descended by the ladder in his night-shirt, only to find he had been hoaxed, being so incensed that he migrated to Pembroke.

Flickr.

Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

I found Corpus Christi surprisingly sterile after its rather grand exterior but liked the, difficult to photograph on a bright day, C16th German windows. I think I would have been more impressed if I did not have 14 other chapels as terms of reference.

Inside the Court the Chapel is placed opposite and in line with the gatehouse. It has a facade in the tradition of the Royal Chapels of the Perp style and the so-called Commissioners’ churches of c. 1820-30. The CHAPEL interior has the stall-backs of the demolished chapel which was consecrated in 1613 and one group of canopied seats separated by over-slim columns. The E end was added in 1870 by Arthur Blomfield who found it necessary even here to demonstrate his faith in E.E. rather than Perp. The altar PAINTING is by Elisabetta Sirani. The STAINED GLASS in the N and S windows is French c 16, the Death of the Virgin earlier than the others. The E window is by Heaton, Butler & Bayne, 1881 (TK).

It does not seem venerable as we come to it from Trumpington Street, but when we pass from its front court into the smaller one on its north side we are in the first closed quadrangle built all at one time in Cambridge, erected when the college was founded in 1352 by two guilds of wealthy townsfolk. For a long time the oldest church in Cambridge, St Benedict’s, was the college chapel. The old court has been much changed but has still an atmosphere of early days. Stepped buttresses support the plastered walls, and in the quaint array of windows are dormers in the roofs of mottled tiles, plain and trefoiled lancets, and a new window with a memorial to Kit Marlowe and John Fletcher, the Elizabethan dramatists, who were undergraduates here. In the room above have been found remains of early painted decoration, and curious ledges above the staircase, made perhaps for beds. A new sundial on this north range, made to tell summer and winter time, has the Latin motto The World and its Desires pass away. Near the door by which Archbishop Parker entered his rooms is an old pelican in her piety.

Imposing with its battlements and turrets, oriels and bay windows, the modern court has a fine gateway at the head of a flight of steps; over its vaulted archway is a niche, and heads of kings and queens adorn the windows. At the entrance to the new chapel, on the east side of the court, are pinnacled turrets with niches sheltering figures of Sir Nicholas Bacon and Matthew Parker. The chapel walls are enriched with fine stone tracery, a beautiful altarpiece showing Mary and Elizabeth with Jesus and John, an altar cross with lilies and grapes and a pelican, and lovely candlesticks. Among the pictures in the old foreign glass filling four windows we see the Nativity with the shepherds peeping into the stable, the death of the Madonna, and Christ before Pilate. In the top of the windows are figures and shields, at the foot are saints and apostles. Two handsome seats with panelled backs and fluted pillars supporting arched canopies are from the old church.

The hall, lofty and airy, has windows blazoned with heraldry and a splendid gallery of portraits on walls panelled with linenfold. Among them are Matthew Parker, William Colman (by Romney), Dean Lamb, Dr Richard Love (by Mytens), Sir Nicholas Bacon, Archbishop Tenison, Edward Tenison, Dean Spencer (by Van Der Myn), and Sir John Cust (Speaker of the House of Commons) by Reynolds. In the windows lighting the stairway to the hall are tiny scenes in panels of old glass.

The library is famous for the rare gift of Matthew Parker. When he was Archbishop of Canterbury in the early years of Elizabeth’s reign he had an unrivalled opportunity of collecting manuscripts scattered about the country after the dissolution of the monasteries, and he gave to his college one of the richest collections now in England. Among its greatest possessions is the earliest manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. He found this manuscript, a thousand years old, open at the page recording the death of Alfred in 892. The holes in the page have a curious origin. This sheet of vellum was made from sheep whose skins were not too clean, and it was the ravages wrought by ticks that made these holes in the parchment, so that we behold here, not only the writing of Saxon scribes but the work of Saxon pests. Another treasure here is the Chronicle of Matthew Paris, delightfully illustrated by his own artistic hand; this was open at a page where he drew on the bottom margin an attack on a Genoese galley by Pisan warriors, whose shafts are hurtling past the Genoese bowman’s head. There are many Saxon manuscripts showing their writing and their drawing, a magnificent Roman one of the 5th century with a picture of St Luke in a toga, and a Celtic one with an illustration in enamelled colours. Here are the Canterbury Gospels of the 6th century, sent by Pope Gregory to Augustine, his gift to the men of Kent; a 12th century Bible, finely illuminated, from the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds; and the original of the Forty-two Articles of Religion of the time of Edward the Sixth, before they were reduced to Thirty-nine by Matthew Parker. There are early printed books (two by Caxton), and the Lewis Collection of gems, coins, and Greek and Roman antiquities.

Flickr.

Trinity Hall, Cambridge

I've visited Trinity Hall twice now, both visits on a Wednesday, and found it closed to visitors both times. The second time I asked the porter when it is normally open and was informed it was open on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sunday morning so I'll try again in October when I return for Trinity and Peterhouse chapels.

The CHAPEL was licensed as early as 1352 and is thus the earliest chapel projected specially for a College. But it was consecrated only in 1513. However, a Piscina remains which may well be of the late C14. The Chapel is reached by the usual small antechapel. Here are a C14 doorway towards the former Master’s Lodge, some carved STONE FRAGMENTS of the demolished church of St John Zachary and several BRASSES: to T. Preston d. 1510 with effigy; to a priest (small; no name). The chapel itself was modernized in 1729-30. It has a shallow curved white ceiling and simple organ gallery and reredos. (Tactful E enlargement by Salvin 1864). ALTAR PAINTING by Stella (Presentation in the Temple), bought in Flanders. - RELIEF on the N wall: Ascension by James Forsyth, London. - MONUMENT to Robert King d. 1676, a large black marble slab in the floor with incised coat of arms and fine lettering, very typical of its date. - J. Andrew d. 1747, with relief portrait in medallion and rocaille cartouche; excellent.

By the side of Clare’s magnificence, Trinity Hall seems a humble neighbour, content with a coat-of-arms over an entrance plain to insignificance, opening to one of two small courts by Trinity Hall Lane. On many a milestone on the highways about Cambridge is set the crescent of the shield of its founder, William Bateman. He founded Trinity Hall in 1350 for the study of law, and the buildings rose about a hostel for student-monks from Ely, which eventually became a pigeon-house. The old buildings have been much transformed, but on the south side of the second court medieval windows are still to be seen, one a tiny quatrefoil.

The hall has 18th century woodwork, and portraits of Lord Justice Romer, John Oxenden, Sir Alexander Cockburn (Lord Chief Justice, painted by Watts), Sir John Eardley Wilmot, Sir Nathaniel Lloyd, and Edward Anthony Beck. Among other members of Trinity Hall were Bulwer Lytton, Lord Howard of Effingham, the famous Earl of Chesterfield, and the infamous Bishop Gardiner.

The bright little chapel has traces of medieval work, an 18th century plaster ceiling enriched with shields and huge flowers, a Jacobean altar table, and a huge altarpiece of Simeon with Jesus. The rows of wrought-steel candlesticks on the seats have William Bateman’s crescent. There is a brass portrait of Thomas Preston of 1598, dramatist and Master of the college; his hands are at prayer, but part of his head is gone.

Beyond the hall range is a third court, with the lawns and fine trees of the Fellows’ Garden. Facing each other on two sides are the Master’s Lodge and the library, and curving towards the river are the fine new buildings put up by the growing college. Built into the new is the medieval gateway, taking us now to one of the lovely bridges crossing to the Backs.

The Master’s Lodge, with a big gable, is almost new; but the library, a charming little place with creepered brick walls and stepped gables, is almost all Elizabethan. The stone-framed windows have been refaced, and flowering plants and shrubs climb up to reach them. In the long narrow room on the first floor the bookcases stand at right-angles to the walls, with shelves at the top for the readers who stand and book-rests for those who sit.

Flickr.

Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge

The chapel is dominated by its double-cambered ceiling with its gilded suns and two overblown, if not pretentious, monuments to John Caius 1573 and Thomas Legge 1607. I found the chapel somewhat ostentatious.

The CHAPEL, as has been said before, was built in the C14. It is of clunch, brick-faced. But of that nothing can be seen except for the remains of the Piscina W of Dr Legge’s monument. It marks the sanctuary, before the chapel was modernized and lengthened in 1637 (by John Westley). Later still, in 1716, it was ashlared (by John James of London). At that time also the big buttresses were built which were originally crowned by vases with stone-flames. The stair-turret between Master’s Lodge and Chapel (cf. similar surviving turrets at Peterhouse, Christ’s, and St John’s) was pulled down. It was re-erected in 1870, when the E apse was also added (by Waterhouse). The interior is prevalently of 1637. The ceiling dominates the effect. It is double-cambered and decorated with gilt suns just as had been done at Peterhouse a few years before. The organ gallery is made up of the original reredos of 1718. The apse was decorated in 1870 with Salviati mosaics. Stained glass by Heaton, Butler, & Bayne (Steel Memorial) and Burlison & Grjylls (Romanes and Paget Memorials, 1896 and 1900). - MONUMENTS several Brasses in the antechapel, one to a Knight, early C16, indent only; another to the Rev. Martin Davy d. 1839, with classical surround, designed by Will. Shoubridge of Caius College. - The most important monument is that to Dr Caius himself which stood originally on the ground. It was raised on its heavy brackets in 1637. It has two proud inscriptions, chosen no doubt by Caius who was always more interested in honour than in humility: Fui Caius and Vivit post funera Virtus. The monument was carved by Theodore Haveus of Cleves, whom Caius in the Annals calls a ‘skilful artifice: and eminent architect’. He was paid £33 16s. 5d. for it, and the alabaster and transport amounted to £ 10 10s. The monument is a six-poster (or rather five-poster as it stands against the wall). It is very elaborately decorated in the style of the Gate of Honour. There is no effigy. - Other Masters: Dr Legge d. 1607, large monument, the usual kneeling figure flanked by columns. - The same composition but more finely wrought: Dr Perse d. 1615 (Mrs Esdaile attributes this to Maximilian Colt, the sculptor of the Monument to Queen Elizabeth I in Westminster Abbey). - Dr Gostlin d. 1704, a smaller very odd design, consciously original. No portrait, but a broken pediment on brackets bulging forward, and at the foot an equally bulgy frieze. - Sir James Burrough d. 1764, the Cambridge C18 amateur architect, black marble plate in the floor of the antechapel.

It has really three founders; Edmund Gonville, a Norfolk rector who died two years after its foundation in 1349; his executor William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich, who changed the site first chosen to the present one near his Trinity Hall; and John Caius, a Norwich physician who refounded the college he had entered in 1529. It was then that the 14th century Gonville Hall became known as Gonville and Caius College. Today it is usually called Caius and pronounced Keys. It was William Harvey’s college where he studied medicine before he discovered the fact of the circulation of the blood.

From Trinity Street we enter Tree Court, which occupies roughly the eastern half of the college site. The old buildings have been replaced by a fine modern range designed by Alfred Waterhouse, the walls enriched with gargoyles, oriel windows, and roundel portraits of some of the college’s famous sons. On the tower, facing the Senate House, are statues of Edmund Gonville holding a church, William Bateman as a bishop, and John Caius holding his Gate of Honour. A statue of Stephen Perse stands in the court: he was a tutor here before he founded his famous grammar school.

Dr Caius added to his architectural ability a leaning towards symbolism, and the new gateway from Trinity Street has taken the place of one of three he designed to represent the course of a student in the University. The first, now in the Master’s Garden, was the Gate of Humility; the second, at the entrance to Caius Court, still stands as he built it in 1567, with two figures, one having a palm branch and a wreath and the other a purse and corn of plenty. From Caius Court the student passes through the Gate of Honour to the Senate House over the way, where he receives his degree.

This gate is the most distinctive architectural ornament of the college, though much of the elaborate decoration of pinnacles, sundials, and gilded roses is gone. Over the plastered archway is a middle stage reminding us of the front of a Grecian temple, with architrave and niches between the pillars, and above this is a six-sided structure crowned with a dome.

For his court Dr Caius bought stone from the ruins of Ramsey Abbey church. The chapel and part of the Master’s Lodge are between it and the quietly dignified Gonville Court, which has much of its medieval walling. The 15th century hall and library have become houses and chambers; the new hall and the new library were built last century.

The chapel still stands where it stood in 1393, though it was lengthened and had the east end rebuilt in Charles Stuart’s day, was refaced in the 18th century, and was given its apse (projecting into Tree Court) in the 19th. Long and narrow, with panelled walls, it has a host of 70 cherubs in the panels of its richly gilded roof (1637). In the marble walls of the apse, below the five windows, are roundels of mosaic showing Eli and Samuel, Jesus in the Temple, Our Lord at Bethany, and other Bible figures; in the mosaic of the dome the sick are coming for healing. The striking thing here is the monument of Dr Caius, who sleeps in the chapel; now on the north wall, it has an ornate pillared canopy above a sarcophagus, coloured and gilded. Here are two kneeling figures of Thomas Legge and Stephen Perse, and there are brasses of an unknown knight of long ago and Martin Davy, Master at the time of Trafalgar and Waterloo.

Approached from Gonville Court, a two-winged staircase brings us to the hall, where the bearded portrait of Dr Caius presides over the high table. The hall is magnificent with rich screens, panelled walls, hammerbeam roof, portrait gallery, and heraldic windows; but one precious possession it has that must move all who come, for on the right of the portrait of Dr Caius a curtain shrouds a framed blue silken flag with the college arms. It was Dr Wilson’s flag, which he took with him to the South ‘Pole. There he was to have left it, but there they found the flag of Amundsen which hangs in another hall in Cambridge (the Scott Polar Institute), and Wilson brought his flag back with him and it was found in the tent where he lay with Scott's arm round him. Like a beacon it shines in his college hall, and a fancy takes us that in its presence these portraits on the walls incline their learned heads. One is Jeremy Taylor, and keeping him company are the father of Nelson, Shadwell the poet laureate, and Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal Exchange. In another room are Lord Chancellor Thurlow and Charles Doughty of Arabia. The fine buildings on the other side of Trinity Street, curving like a crescent round St Michael’s church, are of our own time.

Flickr.

Clare College, Cambridge

The antechapel, with its fine cupula mouldings, the chapel and chancel ceiling and, of course, the two Hugh Easton windows are the stars of the show here.

The Master’s Lodge adjoins the Hall on the E. On the other side of the Hall the CHAPEL follows. It is reached by a doorway with a big shell-hood. The doorway must be older than the chapel. Its date is probably c. 1690. It must therefore have been made to give access to the old chapel. A passage leads to the entrance into the antechapel. This and the Chapel date from 1763-9. They were designed by James Burrough and carried on after his death by James Essex. The exterior is conservative for the date. With its E front clearly derived from Wren’s Pembroke Chapel and its S front with Corinthian pilasters, plain arched windows and a balustrade keeping to the height of the adjoining W front of the E range it seems more of the early than of the later C18. Inside, the antechapel is a fine design, more ambitious than any other. It is octagonal with skylighting from a glazed cupola. The detail is very chaste. In the Chapel itself the segmental vault of the ceiling and the segmental plan of the apse are both equally typical of their date (cf. Robert Adam or Dance). Noble W GALLERY and REREDOS (the painting of the Annunciation is by Giovanni Battista Cipriani, one of the founder members of the Royal Academy). The STAINED GLASS of the windows by Wailes has been destroyed, and two have been replaced by glass of Mr Hugh Easton’s in 1936. Time will show whether the change was wise.

Seen at its best from the beautiful river lawn of King’s, Clare’s walls of mellowed sandstone, topped by balustrades and pierced by handsome windows, appear to be a noble addition to King’s, though Clare is much older. It was founded as University Hall in 1326 by Richard Badew, and took the name of Clare from Lady Elizabeth de Clare, its second founder. The small quadrangle had become ruinous at the end of the Elizabethan Age, and was replaced by this splendid court. More like a palace than a college, as one admirer said of it, it took about 80 years to build, from the early days of Charles Stuart to the end of Queen Anne. It stands as a striking example of English Renaissance work. The beautiful ironwork of the gates and railings, designed by a great craftsman of Wren’s day, is a fit prelude to the fan-vaulting of the entrance; and both are a courtly introduction to the grace of a harmonious quadrangle which must have been thought a triumph by the architect and the masons too.

From the quadrangle a path leads to a charming stone bridge with three round arches under parapets, 300 years old and the best known of all the bridges of the Backs. No view of the river is complete without Thomas Grumbold’s bridge, and the scene from it where the willows overhang the river, closing in beyond so that the picture is like a dream, is. one of the favourite sights of Cambridge. Across the bridge the path continues along an elm avenue, with Warren’s gates at each end, to the new buildings of the college. Designed by Sir Giles Scott in memory of nearly 200 men of Clare who fell in the Great War, they stand on rising lawns behind great trees, a flight of steps mounting to an archway, which leads to a spacious court and frames a striking view of the great tower of the University Library.

The names of the men are written on panels in an old octagonal chapel with arcaded walls and a panelled dome. The chapel, of a fine simplicity, has its old panelling, a rich coved ceiling with floral bosses, a handsome organ resting on an imposing screen, Cipriani’s Annunciation for an altarpiece, and two windows with beautiful glass. In one Richard Badew is kneeling on a sphere, offering his University Hall and its band of scholars to the Madonna, who stands on a rainbow holding the boy Jesus, cherubs about her feet; in the other are Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ferrar, both of this college; both kneeling by a cross, Ferrar in court dress of flowing red, Latimer in the black and white garb of a priest. In the lantern beside him is a candle, reminding us of his last brave words:

Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man, for we shall this day light such a candle in England as I trust by God’s grace shall never be put out.

The 17th century hall is a lofty and stately chamber with a magnificent ceiling, and panelled walls adorned at each end with richly carved pilasters. Among the portraits are Lady Elizabeth de Clare, Richard Love, Edward Atkinson, Peter Gunning, Charles Townshend, Hugh Latimer, Isaac Bargrave, Thomas Holles (Duke of Newcastle), Thomas Cecil (Earl of Exeter), John Tillotson, Lord Cornwallis, Josiah Hort, and Martin Folkes.

Flickr.

St Catherine's College, Cambridge

This is another plain chapel with interesting monuments in the antechapel and some memorable glass, particularly the war memorial window and Tom Denny's 2012 wisdom window.

The first addition to the Court was the CHAPEL to the E of the Hall. It was begun in 1703 and consecrated in 1704, The mason was again Robert Grumbold, and the style is indeed a continuation of that of the W parts of the Court and of Grumbold’s N range at Clare. The large windows have still the cross of one mullion and one transom. They carry pediments. The door has attached unfluted Ionic columns and no pediment. The dormers were all given triangular pediments. The E front is the most original feature of the building, although its motifs derive from Wren, especially the straight blank panels on the lower floor which derive from Pembroke Chapel. Above is a large pedimented window flanked by niches, and the whole carries a big pediment. The Chapel has a plain white ceiling with only the cornice decorated. The wainscoting is simple, but the REREDOS and ORGAN GALLERY are splendid work, with the usual fluted: Corinthian columns. The pediment of the reredos is as Baroque as that of the frontispiece of twenty-five years before. The designer was the joiner Taylor of London; the carving was executed by John Austin. The Organ with its rich case was put in in 1894. In the antechapel is the large MONUMENT to Mrs Dawes d. 1705, with its remarkable ornamental mannerisms, no doubt from the same hand as the Churchill Monument in King’s.

It stands discreetly back from Trumpington Street, with a gate across the court through which we pass into Queen’s Lane, once one of the chief thoroughfares of the town. The mellowed red brick of the buildings, with dormers in the roofs and little flights of steps to the doors, and the 18th century iron gates and railings which form the fourth side of the quadrangle, preserve for it a certain homely dignity, though it is rather overshadowed by its magnificent neighbour King’s College, of which we might almost say it was a pensioner.

It was founded in 1473 by Dr Robert Wodelarke, third provost of King's; but his college has disappeared, the oldest portion now standing being the 17th century range known as Bull Court. Much of what we see comes from rebuilding in the same century. The chapel in the north range was completed by 1704, and the building corresponding to it on the opposite side of the court was begun half a century later. In the 19th century the hall was given its oriel and other new windows. A charming and gracious apartment with linenfold and traceried panelling, it has a balustraded old staircase leading to the Combination Room like a Minstrel Gallery above it; and here, as in the hall itself, the walls are hung with portraits. Robert Wodelarke looks down from above the high table; others are Archbishop Sandys, Dr Benjamin Hoadly, Bishop Drury, Bishop Turton, and John Ray the botanist.

There is beautiful panelling on the walls of the ante-chapel, and its richly moulded ceiling has wreaths and bands of fruit and flowers. On the floor is a stone to John Addenbrooke, benefactor of the college and founder of the hospital in Trumpington Street. Restored in 1895, the chapel is a dignified little place with beautiful modern woodwork. The walls have classical panelling, enriched in the sanctuary with pilasters supporting a cornice of leaves and palm. On the benches and stalls are 56 electric candles. The striking reredos has fluted pillars and a pediment with the words, Sursum Corda (Lift up your Hearts); and the fine screen has fluted columns supporting the organ in a richly carved case. In the fine glass in memory of men who fell in the Great War we see a woman reclining in a study, and being welcomed by angels as she enters Heaven.

Flickr.

Queen's College, Cambridge

I think I have to confess a guilty secret - I'm beginning to enjoy high blown Victoriana in all its ridiculous overblownness. Yes, I still have reservations but you can't help gasping at Bodley's creation in its self confidence - it's glorious.

The CHAPEL was built in 1890-1. It shows the serious mind and also probably the piety of Bodley. There is nothing of the self-assertion of Scott’s chapel of St John’s here. There is no tower, no spire, no fléche even. The building is of brick with stone dressings, the detail Dec. The interior is lofty and rather narrow, a feature which is stressed by the steeply pointed arches of the windows. In the antechapel several BRASSES from the old chapel: Priest c. 1480 (the head is lost); Martin Dunstan c. 1535; Robert Whalley 1591 bigger and more elaborate. The ALTAR PAINTING is a South German triptych of the late C15. The STAINED GLASS of the E (1890) and N (1892-1902) windows by Kempe, of the S windows (from the old chapel) by Hardman (1860 and 1879).

We may think that this, the college of the great Erasmus, outshines the rest in its modest perfection. Without the splendour of its neighbour King’s, or the majesty of the courts of Trinity, or the spaciousness of St John’s, it surpasses them all in having kept its picturesque buildings more or less complete.

For the most part of dull red brick, they stand between Queens’ Lane and the Cam, the walls of the west range dipping their moss-grown base into the river, which begins to take to itself the incomparable loveliness of the Cambridge Backs. If we cross the curious wooden bridge (built in 1749 and made new last century) there is a lovely vista of the river and its trees, and Queens’ itself is a charming picture as of a moated grange above the dark water. Forming a big crescent by the lawns on this west bank is a fine 20th century range with many gables.

Seven years after Henry the Sixth founded King’s, his wife Margaret of Anjou lent her patronage to Andrew Doket, the nominal founder of what was at first the college of St Bernard. Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Edward the Fourth, refounded and endowed it, so that it became the college of two queens.

Much that we see today was here before Elizabeth Woodville’s time. The first court has the hall on the west side, the library next to the old chapel, and the turreted gateway leading from Queens’ Lane, its vaulted roof painted red and green and gold, and enriched with bosses of flowers, a queen, and a bishop. Of the small towers at the corners of the court the south-west is known as Erasmus’s Tower, for it is said to have joined the rooms he used when he came to Cambridge as Greek professor. His friend John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, had been President of the college till 1508, and his patroness, the Lady Margaret, Countess of Richmond, stayed here in 1505.

Through a fine old panelled door with rich tracery we pass from the first court to the second, charming with its cloisters, and the timbered gallery of the President’s Lodge. The river wing (in which Wolsey, Catherine of Aragon, and Henry the Eighth were entertained) was built in 1460, and was joined to the rest by the cloisters. The beautiful gallery, with its oriel, and its bay windows resting on oak pillars, is 16th century; the interior was panelled by President Tindall in Elizabeth’s day, and some of the 16th century panelling turned out of the hall has been used in the President’s study.

The old chapel, remodelled in the 18th century and restored in the 19th, serves now as a lecture room and an addition to the library, which has remains of the older sloping desks beneath the Jacobean bookcases. Old glass in the chapel shows the Annunciation, St Andrew with his cross, and St George and the dragon; and over its entrance is a great sundial so elaborately constructed that Sir Isaac Newton is credited with having designed it. Actually it was painted after his death to replace one that existed before he was born. The signs of the zodiac are round the rim.

The new chapel of 1891 is in Walnut-Tree Court. Designed by Mr G. F. Bodley, it is a lofty building with rich carving in the stalls and in the panelling behind them, under a continuous coved canopy. The reredos has three paintings of the Betrayal, the Resurrection, and the Ascension, under a fine carved and coloured oak canopy. A screen leads us to the ante-chapel, where are three brasses: a headless priest with clasped hands, a tiny portrait of Andrew Doket, and Robert Whalley of 1591, in rich robes and ruff. His family were famous in Notts.

The interior of the hall was much restored in the 18th century. It has a gallery, dark panelling on the walls, a fine fireplace, fire-dogs with the Tudor rose, and windows glazed with coats-of-arms. Elizabeth Woodville presides over the high table. On the right of her portrait is that of Erasmus, and on her left is Sir Thomas Smith, 16th century scholar and author. From the hall a doorway leads to the beautiful Combination Room, roofed with noble beams and looking out on the garden. In the room is another portrait of Elizabeth Woodville.

The range of rooms at the end of the college next to King’s was built last century and at right angles to it is a block erected in our own time; its name is Doket Building, a tribute to the founder and first President of the college, whose statue adorns its eastern front.

Flickr.

Emmanuel College, Cambridge

After his stunning success at Pembroke I found Wren's second creation somewhat disappointing [as with St John's, I wrote this before I read Pevsner], but I suppose that to surpass perfection is hard. I went from Pembroke to Emmanuel and would never have imagined that Wren was responsible for both buildings. The Heaton, Butler & Bayne glass of protestant worthies is good, as is the ceiling but on the whole I'd rather be in Pembroke.

To the W and S are now C18 buildings, and to the E is Sir Christopher Wren’s CHAPEL. This with its adjoining colonnades was designed in 1666. The model arrived in 1667, and building was carried on from 1668 to 1674. The choice of Wren, not a famous architect yet, but the designer of Pembroke Chapel in 1663, was probably due to Dr Sancroft, Master from 1662-5 and then Dean of St Paul’s. He must have had dealings with Wren over the 1665 report on the restoration of St Paul’s (before the Cathedral was destroyed in the fire of 1666). Wren’s composition of a gabled chapel of three bays width and colonnades to the l. and r. with an upper storey over was taken almost exactly from Peterhouse chapel, built for Wren’s uncle in 1628-32. But where Dr Matthew Wren’s architect still used a mixed Gothic and Jacobean vocabulary, Christopher Wren worked with Italian motifs exclusively, although using them in an oddly unclassical way. Pembroke Chapel is much purer in the new classical style than the later Emmanuel Chapel. First of all, as far as planning goes, the chapel front is strictly speaking a sham. The chapel itself lies back behind the front which holds on the ground floor an open porch and on the upper floor part of the Master's Gallery, a Picture Gallery which extends all along the two colonnaded wings and the chapel front. Then, as far as elevational details go, the colonnades have closely-set round-headed arches on square piers, the centre, however, has two round-headed arches and one depressed segmental arch.* The chapel front has two giant angle pilasters, but the central bay has demi-columns so that the frieze above - decorated with garlands - slightly projects in the middle. The front is finished by a pediment, but since on the projecting centre part of the frieze stands a square block with the clock, the sides of the pediment seem to disappear  - a decidedly Baroque feature. On the block with the clock rests a big, rather heavy lantern, less elegant than that over the street end of Pembroke Chapel. The long sides of the chapel are of plain ashlar work with arched windows set into rectangular frames. The INTERIOR has a splendid plaster ceiling by John Grove who also worked for Wren at Pembroke College. The woodwork of 1676 was designed by Pearce and Oliver of London and executed by Cornelius Austin (1678). ** The COMMUNION RAILS are especially beautiful. The ORGAN CASE is of 1686 (by Father Schmidt), the REREDOS of 1687. The PAINTING in it, the ‘Return of the Prodigal Son’, is by Jacopo Amigoni and was presented in 1734. Amigoni came to England in 1729 and lived here for several years. The CHANDELIER in the chapel was given in 1732. The STAINED GLASS, put in a propos Sir Arthur Blomfield’s general restoration of 1883 is by Heaton, Butler, & Bayne.

* But this anomaly does not exist in Wren’s drawing.
** For woodwork by Pearce cf. also Sudbury, Derbyshire.

Every good American accepts the invitation of the gateway in its classical front to enter the older quadrangle, for through it John Harvard passed as an Emmanuel man. At the tercentenary of the college in 1884 Harvard men placed a memorial window to him in the chapel. But the expectation that his room can be found is an illusion. Nobody knows exactly where he lodged; yet certainly he sat in the chapel, dined in the hall, and let his eyes rest on the ancient wall of the monastery of the preaching friars which was here when Queen Elizabeth’s Chancellor, Sir Walter Mildmay, took over their 13th century monastic buildings and established in their stead this college. The story is told that when Mildmay came to Court Queen Elizabeth charged him with setting up a Puritan foundation, and Sir Walter answered: “No, madam; but I have set an acorn which, when it becomes an oak, God alone knows what will be the fruit thereof.”

The old wall is one of the few reminders of this origin, and the delightful garden of which it is the boundary has the old fishpond, now a lake where swans and cygnets float among the lilies. The noble gardens are the most abiding impression of Mildmay’s foundation, which has been considerably extended by other benefactors.

The buildings are a mingling of styles, perhaps the most persuasive being the cloistered block designed by Wren. Its striking west front, facing the entrance, embraces the gallery of the Master’s Lodge above the cloister, and the west end of the chapel roof, which has a clock tower with a cupola breaking into a pediment. The chapel itself pushes into a garden, which has a mulberry tree, a tremendous beech, and a swimming bath for the Fellows, whose garden this is.

The chapel has a floor of black and white marble, and Cornelius Austin’s woodwork in the fluted and gilded background of the altar and the rich wall-panelling. In the magnificent plaster ceiling is a lovely oval wreath of flowers, and from it hangs a splendid candelabra in 18th century glass. In the fine gallery of portraits filling the windows we see John Harvard (with a ship in the background), Laurence Chaderton, who was chosen by the founder to be first Master of the college, Thomas Cranmer with his Book of Common Prayer, John Fisher, Anselm, and Augustine; with churches or colleges for their background are John Colet, Tyndale with his New Testament, Benjamin Whichcote, Peter Sterry, John Smith, and William Law.

The hall on the north side of the first court has a richly moulded ceiling, and a classical screen with fine doors of ironwork. The panelled wall behind the high table has gilded pilasters, and here hangs the portrait of the founder in a fur-lined gown, with ruffs at the neck and wrists, and rings on his fingers. Other portraits here are of Sir William Calvert 1761, John Balderston 1719, James Gardiner 1705, Peter Giles 1935, F. J. Anthony Hort 1892, William Richardson 1775, Anthony Askew 1774, and Thomas Young 1829. A second hall near by was originally the founder's chapel, and the lower part of its walling belongs to the monastic buildings Mildmay found here. Some of the modern panelling opens to show the old masonry. We enter through a massive oak screen which was hidden for centuries behind plaster and brickwork. Here are painted portraits of John Bickton of 1675, Sir Walter Mildmay of 1589, Thomas Holbeach of 1680, and Archbishop Sancroft in his robes, sitting at a gilded table on which is a paper with the words, To the King. Sir Anthony Mildmay of 1617 and Charles Fane of 1691 are also here. This old chapel served for a time as the library; now a modern library stands by the Close, with a low brick building of the 17th century for company.

Flickr.

Pembroke College, Cambridge

To me this is the best classical building I've ever visited - inside and out it's perfect. A piece of architectural genius which, perhaps surprisingly, seems to have been enhanced by Scott's 1880 additions.

In 1663 Christopher Wren appeared on the scene, then a distinguished scientist of thirty-one, Professor at Oxford, and interested in architecture. It was only with his journey to Paris in 1665 and the Fire of London that Wren made up his mind to devote all his energies to building. In the same year as PEMBROKE CHAPEL he began the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford, but finished it later than the smaller less exacting chapel. The chapel was consecrated in 1664. It was the gift to his college of Wren’s uncle, the Bishop of Ely, who after eighteen years of captivity had been released in 1659. He presented £5,000, and Christopher Wren used the money to give Cambridge its earliest purely classical building. The front towards Trumpington Street is the most impressive, of quiet, well balanced proportions, with one large arched window, two simple arched niches to the l. and r. and four Corinthian pilasters separating the three bays. A large pediment crowns the wall with an octagonal lantern on top. The carving of the capitals of the pilasters and the garlands in the pediment is uncommonly fine. The design in its classical purity (probably derived from one in Serlio’s Architettura) was entirely new for Cambridge, where until then Fellows’ Building at Christ’s had been the most modern piece of architecture. The chapel at the time when it was built stood entirely on its own to the S of the (since destroyed) S range of Old Court. A short connecting range was at once built (mason: Christmas) known as HITCHAM’S CLOISTER, as it has a colonnade towards the court. The street side was still carried on in complete harmony with the medieval work rather than with the new style introduced by Wren. The colonnade has broad shortish pilasters between the arches. The upper storey has the brickwork exposed. The sides of the chapel are now also brick with stone dressings, but were originally plastered. The windows are arched with straight entablature on corbels and below them are straight blank panels as an articulation of the bare wall. The Chapel was lengthened towards the E to the designs of Sir George G. Scott in 1880. In the INTERIOR OF THE CHAPEL that meant the addition to what had been a plain rectangle of a short chancel separated by coupled Corinthian marble columns. The original part of the chapel has an exquisite plaster ceiling, the chief panel rectangular and added to it on the W and E semicircles. The ornament is chiefly of the acanthus-scroll kind. The stall backs have simple tall arched panels with thin festoons at the top. They look rather later than 1664 and may well belong to the same date as the organ front, i.e. 1707. The Organ Gallery probably is part of the 1664 work. The Painting, a Deposition copied after Barocci, comes from the collection of Sir Joshua Reynolds.

It is the younger neighbour of Peterhouse, but has stood on the other side of Trumpington Street at the entrance to the University since the 14th century, and has preserved an unbroken front. It came on the tide of scholars and colleges flooding into Cambridge in those days, and was the foundation and pride of Marie de Saint Paul, widow of Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke.

Founded as the Hall of Valence Marie in 1347, it was in the early days a quadrangle modest to meagreness, barely more than 30 by 20 yards. So it remained with little change till the 17th century, when the buildings of the second court were set up and Wren’s Chapel was built. The 19th century saw some of the old buildings pulled down and the erection of new ones. The old chapel is of special interest as the first college chapel in Cambridge; the new one was built at the expense of Matthew Wren, uncle to Sir Christopher. His benefaction was in fulfilment of a vow made by him when a prisoner in the Tower, and the chapel was the first work of his famous nephew. A dignified building in classical style, it has a magnificent moulded ceiling which is one recessed panel of flowers. There is rich old carving in the stalls and the charming altar rails. The altarpiece, a Descent from the Cross by Baroccio, is interesting for having belonged to Sir Joshua Reynolds. The glass of the east window is a tribute to Sir George Gabriel Stokes, who was Master of Pembroke. It shows the Crucifixion, with the Countess of Pembroke and Matthew Wren beside the Cross, and figures of Henry the Sixth (with Soham church for a background), Laurence Booth (Archbishop of York in the 15th century), William Smart by his Wharf at Ipswich, William Moses (Master in the Commonwealth), Sir Robert Hitcham (a 17th century benefactor), and Mrs Sarah Lonsdale.

The new hall is part of Alfred Waterhouse’s architectural scheme of last century. It is a fine long chamber full of light, with rich panelling, a splendid oak fireplace by the high table, and portraits of members and Masters, including bishops, martyrs, poets, and statesmen. We see Marie de Valence and Henry the Sixth, Nicholas Ridley and John Bradford; Archbishop Edmund Grindal, and Bishop Felton, Master in 1617; Matthew Wren and Ralph Brownrig; Edmund Spenser, William Mason (by Reynolds), and Thomas Gray; William Pitt and Roger Long, a clever inventor who, while Master here between 1733 and 1770, designed a metal sphere 18 feet in diameter to illustrate astronomical science, and made a water-velocipede which he used in the garden. There is a bust of Sir George Stokes as well as his portrait, and busts of Pitt and Gray.

The portrait of Sir Robert Hitcham reminds us that his bequest of an estate at Framlingham helped the completion of the 17th century buildings of the second court, where the beauty of mellowed red brick and dormer windows is seen on the north and south sides. Beyond this court, on the other side of an old gateway, is a garden with an avenue of elms and limes and an old mulberry tree daringly called “Spenser’s mulberry tree,” but to all appearance much too young to be so. A more notable possession is Bishop Ridley’s chair in the Combination Room.

Flickr.

Christ's College, Cambridge

Whilst I don't think the chapel woodwork is particularly pleasing, the antechapel and chapel are both full of interest, from an Anthony Caro sculpture, two brasses, the Joseph Catterns monument to Thomas Baines and John Finch, some good glass and a fantastic C15 lectern. Whilst I wasn't over impressed, Christ's was certainly one of my favourite chapels of the day.

The NORTH RANGE offers an architectural problem too intricate to be discussed here. It was the first to be built, and was probably in existence before the time of Lady Margaret, but was altered to fit in with her general scheme. How much of the masonry is late C15, how much early C16 is a question for the specialist. In any case the outside wall on the N is the one where the original masonry can best be observed, a mixture of clunch and brick no doubt meant to be plastered. The chapel turret is of brick, its picturesque top was added in 1722. The two N vestries also belong to the original work. The stone work of the chapel is exposed in the covered passage-way between the two. Inside the CHAPEL some early features have been preserved, especially the heavy moulded beams of the antechapel, and others, recently rediscovered, have been made accessible by providing swing-panels in the panelling. Thereby two doorways have come out; one leading into the Master’s Lodge. The antechapel is nearly square and has four handsome Corinthian columns of wood put in in 1661. The chapel itself was panelled in 1700-2 by John Austin. The front of the gallery above the antechapel is of a fine composition with columns flanking arched seats. The organ is to the N (by Father Schmidt 1705) and next to it under a heavy segmental pediment is the excellent double MONUMENT to Sir Thomas Baines and Sir John Finch. It is the work of Joseph Catterns of London, erected in 1684: two portrait medallions, two putti and very artfully carved big garlands are the chief motifs. The REREDOS is relatively low, as it keeps the five-light E window unobstructed. The ALTAR-RAILS have alternating straight and twisted balusters. The CEILING is a good addition by Bodley (1899). The brass EAGLE LECTERN is one of the best of its date in England, big and heavily and richly moulded. It is identical with lecterns at Isleham, and also at St Mark’s Venice, Peterborough, and Thorverton Devon. The provenance is probably East Anglian, the date late C15. The four greyhounds, a Beaufort badge, are of different metal and were no doubt added later, when Lady Margaret took over the Lectern made for the Chapel of God’s House. The STAINED GLASS in the N windows dates partly from that time, partly from c. 1505-10. The name of the master of the latter glass is known: Thomas Peghe. Due to him are the smaller figures. The larger figures are earlier. Their most likely date is c. 1475-80. All this glass was probably made in the royal workshops, but none of it shows yet any signs of the style of Bernard Flower who was made King’s Glazier in 1505 (see King’s College Chapel). The S windows are by Burlison & Grylls on a German Renaissance style (1882), the E window was designed c. 1912 by Sir William Nicholson.

Where Petty Cury joins St Andrew’s Street and all the business of the town streams by, the grey walls of the college front come to the pavement, with the fine gateway-tower standing as it stood when Lady Margaret Beaufort set her arms on it. They are the same, with a slight difference, as those on the gate of entrance of St John’s, the same queer antelopes supporting the arms of England and France.

Through the archway with its linenfold door is the charming quadrangle where creepered walls and dormer windows look on to cobbles and lawn. Much of its early appearance has been lost through repairs. In the range facing the entrance are the hall and the Master’s Lodge, the upper floor of the lodge having been used by the founder. Shining with colour and gold below an oriel window here are her arms and her motto, For Remembrance; and here, according to an anecdote of old Thomas Fuller, she is said to have admonished the Dean to correct a scholar gently. A stone fireplace with her badges is still to be seen.

But it is not for its gracious founder that Christ’s is best remembered. Beneath her portrait in the hall, showing her in kennel headdress, are those of men who have lent the college everlasting fame, John Milton and Charles Darwin. Here these immortals walked. Even the garden, the most unaltered of all among the colleges, invites attention to its swimming bath as Milton’s pool, and claims the old mulberry tree, propped up on a mound, as his. There is a bust of him in the hall.

One of the deep bay windows by the high table has 21 figures, among them Lady Margaret with a plan, John Fisher at whose instigation she established God’s House as Christ’s College, King Edward the Sixth, Charles Danvin, John Milton, William Paley, Edmund Grindal, Francis Quarles, John Leland, Ralph Cudworth, Sir Walter Mildmay (founder of Emmanuel), and William Bingham. The screen has a traceried gallery, and a border carved with shields, angels, animals, and the initials MB. The passage leading to the hall has linenfold panelling and an oak roof with floral bosses.

In a corner of the main court we come to one of the oldest college chapels in Cambridge, with its original roof, high wainscoting 200 years old, and a portrait of the founder kneeling at a desk. She is one of the kneeling figures in the east window, where a figure oft Our Lord Risen, above a fine picture of the college buildings, symbolises its dedication. The old glass showing two crowned figures and a saint was once in God’s House, and after being stowed away in a lumber room for a long time was happily recovered. Within the altar rails is the brass portrait of John Sickling, the last Proctor of God’s House and the first Master of Christ’s. A monument with long epitaphs has the busts of Sir John Finch and Sir Thomas Baines, who founded fellowships and scholarships. On the south side of the chapel is an oak oriel with leaded panes, put here in 1899. Behind it is the stone window through which Lady Margaret looked from her oratory to the chapel; below it is an old doorway with a door of linenfold, seen behind the panelling. The fine brass eagle has the slits in back and tail which was to be found in ancient lecterns. The antechapel has four oak pillars supporting the floor of an upper room. Some of the panels open to reveal part of an old doorway, a stoup, and a painted cross in a circle, perhaps a consecration cross. Here is a brass with portraits of a man in armour with his wife, who was lady-in-waiting to Lady Margaret.

With its balustraded parapet and an archway leading to the garden, the Fellows Building is a fine example of 17th century architecture, built just before the Civil War, and is equalled in the beauty of its style only by the old single court of Clare College. Near it is a modern block in similar style.

Flickr.

St John's College, Cambridge

I was slightly irritated to find, having forked out the £10 entrance fee, that the chapel was closed for, I assume, an upcoming graduation ceremony. A week later I returned to find the notice board outside the gatehouse had a "Chapel closed today" notice which made it worse!*

Having said that the antechapel is full of interest and resulted in 98 photos on it's own. To be honest I didn't particularly warm to St John's, it all felt rather industrial [I hadn't read Pevsner when I wrote this]. When I return for Trinity and Peterhouse I'll consider paying out again but will make sure the chapel itself is open.

The CHAPEL was built from 1863 to 1869 by Scott. On the choice of shape and style he wrote in his memorandum to the college: ‘In selecting the style to be followed . . . we may either adopt the best variety of pointed architecture, irrespective of the history of the College, or we may choose between the date of the College itself and that of the preceding establishment. . . . Had the date of the College itself coincided with that of the highest perfection of pointed architecture, there would have been no room left for doubt; as, however, this was not the case, it is satisfactory that such a coincidence does exist as regards the date of the older chapel, which belongs to the latter half of the thirteenth century. I have therefore adopted that period as the groundwork of my design. The type  of Chapel I have chosen is that so frequent at Oxford, having an ante-chapel placed in a transverse position, something like a transept, at the west end. . . . In adopting this type I have not been actuated by my desire to introduce an Oxford model, but have done so because it happens to be particularly well suited to the position.’ So the chapel has its W transept and a tall square-topped crossing tower on the meeting place between this and the chapel proper. The transept is made two bays wide to allow for a tall pier on the N and one on the S as additional supports for the tower. Pershore gave the style for the external details of the tower.* For the chapel altogether Scott had remembered the Sainte Chapelle in Paris with its polygonal apse. The apse faces St John’s Street, and it is chiefly this apsidal form which will not join up with the rectangular shapes of the other buildings and the court that makes the chapel appear so alien in the community of collegiate buildings. But Scott and his contemporaries visualized their buildings in isolation. They did not believe in that moderate degree of uniformity or at least accepted relationship without which no precinctual composition is possible. In plan the gap in the E front of the college is especially painful.

The chapel is 193 ft long, the tower 163 ft high. The building is of good Ancaster stone, with tall pointed windows. The tracery imitates 1300 and the blank arcading inside the apse is of C13 style. The piers of the crossing are of Peterhead red granite. Lizard serpentine and various British marbles are also used - again an example of how the Victorians wished to isolate individual motifs. The stone carving was done by Farmer & Brindley in London, the wood carving by Rattee & Kett in Cambridge. In front of the altar fine PAVING with allegorical figures and scenes, in a subdued Italian style. Good work; who may the designer be? To the r. of the altar is the PISCINA, behind Scott’s arcading. This is original work of the later C13 from the old chapel. With its intersected round-headed arches it is very similar to the more ornate Piscina in Jesus College Chapel. - ORGAN FRONT. 1890 by Oldrid Scott. - STALLS. Twenty-two on each side are of 1516. - PAINTING. Large Pieta by Anton Raphael Mengs, in the S transept. - STAINED GLASS. Mostly by Clayton & Bell, with their typical dark browns, reds, and whites. N transept Blunt Window by Hardman, c. 1869; Tatham window by Wailes (more colourful and more strident), c. 1869 (TK). - MONUMENTS. Fisher Chantry. Of Bishop Fisher’s chantry chapel one of the entrance arches has been re-erected in the S wall of the S transept. The other two are copies. - Hugh Ashton d. 1522. The tomb-chest is opened below so as to allow a corpse to be seen inside. On the chest Ashton’s recumbent effigy. Panelled four-centred arch and straight cresting above. The iron railings seem to be contemporary. – John Smith d. 1715, tablet by E. Stanton. - Henry Kirke White, died as an undergraduate 1806, with fine head in medallion, by Chantrey. - Charles Fox Townshend, died as an undergraduate 1817, bust by Chantrey. – James Wood, seated statue by Baily, 1843.- War Memorial 1914-18, designed by H. M. Fletcher.

* On the W face fragment of the E window of the old chapel.

Its story takes us back to the oldest foundation in Cambridge, for it stands on the site of a small hospital for the sick, founded about 1135 by Henry Frost and managed by Augustinian friars. It was here that Hugh de Balsham tried to establish his college in 1280, but the experiment met with no success, and a few years later the bishop founded Peterhouse for his secular scholars. The hospital carried on till the 16th century, when Margaret Beaufort, mother of our Tudor dynasty, founded a college in its place. As Henry the Eighth seized most of her bequest for himself, the college was not opened till seven years after her death, but St John’s is now surpassed only by Trinity in size and wealth.

Its original buildings were destroyed last century to make way for the chapel built by Sir Gilbert Scott, a splendid addition in stone to a delightful court which for the rest is of red brick, keeping much old work in the ranges east and west, and the foundations of the old chapel laid bare in its gracious lawn.

We come to it from St John's Street by the loveliest of all the gateway-towers in Cambridge, Tudor but much restored. The turrets fronting the street have been made afresh and windows framed in new stone; but to replace bricks mouldered beyond repair old cottages were bought and every fragment fit to be used again was numbered. The great stone panel over the archway, gleaming with colour and gold, has the arms of France and England supported by the heraldic antelopes of Beaufort. Beneath the shield is the Tudor rose; to the left and right of it the rose and portcullis are under crowns; the ground is dotted with marguerites and other flowers, and over a band of flowers is a charming cornice of vine. Between the windows above is a statue of St John under a lovely canopy, set here in 1662. The archway has a roof of exquisite fan tracery enriched with two bosses - a red rose and a portcullis among marguerites; and its magnificent old door is carved with linenfold.

South of the gateway in this eastern range was the old library. In the fine old west range of mottled brick, with a statue of Lady Margaret as high up as the battlements, are the kitchen and the buttery, and the beautiful hall. Through a doorway adorned with the rose and portcullis we come to the second court, a truly illustrious example of the brickwork of Elizabethan builders, and the gift of Mary Cavendish, wife of the 7th Earl of Shrewsbury, whose statue is on the turreted gateway in its west range. The north range of this court was originally the Master’s gallery; its transformation into the Combination Room, one of the finest of its kind, was one of the alterations by Sir Gilbert Scott.

The first portion of the small third court to be erected was the present Library, an extension towards the river from the Master’s gallery. Built in 1624, it has traceried windows giving it something of the appearance of a Gothic chapel; it is well furnished with the old bookcases and desks, and is entered by a richly carved door, guarding among its treasures examples of early printing and valuable manuscripts. The quadrangle was completed in the time of Charles the Second. Through one of the archways of its cloistered west range we come to an exquisite thing, a bridge like a stone screen spanning the river, its window tracery filled with iron grilles, its parapets embattled and pinnacled. Known as the Bridge of Sighs (probably because it has the same delicate beauty as the Venice Bridge of Sighs), it was built last century as an approach to the long narrow court on the other side of the river, its buildings rising impressively on three sides, with many windows in their high embattled walls, and an imposing north entrance with turrets and a tower with a lantern. The fourth side of this New Court is a lofty vaulted cloister, of which the archway leading to the Backs has beautiful fan tracery with a great pendant boss. From this bank of the stream the view of the old buildings of the college and their setting is enchanting; curved gables crown the river front, near by is the old balustraded bridge to which comes John’s Lane, and beyond are the gables of Trinity and the turrets of King’s College Chapel. On a pier of the cloister in the Library Court are two flood marks of the height to which the river rose in 1762 and 1795.

St John’s may well be proud of its hall, its chapel, and the Combination Room. Spacious and stately, the hall has panelling of fine old linenfold with a cornice of leaves and flowers, the screen behind the high table magnificent with richly carved pilasters, coved cornice, and a great coat-of-arms reaching the roof. Much of the hammerbeam roof is old, and in the gallery of fine portraits are many fine folk. Looking down on the hall she never saw, though she planned it, is Margaret Beaufort in white kennel headdress, kneeling at a desk under a striking canopy of rich brocade glowing with dull gold. It is a noble group of men that keeps her company. We see the great John Fisher, whose devotion persuaded Lady Margaret so that all the opposition to the fulfilling of his dream of St John’s was overcome; Thomas Wentworth, the tragic Earl of Strafford, who here started that career which ended on Tower Hill; William Wilberforce, who saved the slaves; Roger Ascham, Greek reader at St John’s and scholar at the court of Queen Elizabeth; the immortal Ben Jonson and the inimitable Robert Herrick; Lord Palmerston and Viscount Castlereagh; and our noble Wordsworth, who lodged as an undergraduate in dark chambers by the kitchen, as we read in an inscription in one of the windows. With these portraits hang those of Matthew Prior (painted by Rigaud); Richard Bentley, scholar and critic; Sir John Herschel and John Couch Adams, the astronomers (of whom there are also busts); William Cecil, Queen Elizabeth’s great Lord Burleigh; Henry Kirke White, Edward Villiers, and Sir Noah Thomas, whose portrait is by Romney.

The fascinating Combination Room has a rich plaster ceiling moulded by Italian craftsmen, and panelled walls on which, on high days and holidays, the silver sconces twinkle with the light of a hundred candles. There are a score of especially fine Chippendale chairs, two fine carved chests, and two beautiful fireplaces, one with inlaid pictorial panels brought to this princely gallery from a Cambridge house. Old glass in the oriel window shows Henrietta Maria, whose marriage contract was signed in this room, and among the portraits of the college’s great people is Margaret Beaufort herself. On the stairway to the room is a portrait of Samuel Butler painted by himself, and a collection of his paintings and sketches is in the Green Room by the lobby.

There is architectural splendour in the style of the 14th century in Sir Gilbert Scott’s chapel, with its arcaded walls, open parapets, pinnacled buttresses with statues in canopied niches, and the massive tower rising to about 160 feet, saints in niches adorning its handsome belfry. The tower rests on fine arches with clustered pillars, and its roof inside is 95 feet above the floor. In a wall of the antechapel is one of the original arches which led to Bishop Fisher’s chantry; his head is peeping out of the tracery. Another of the four chantries in the old chapel was that of Hugh Ashton, comptroller of Lady Margaret’s household, and his arresting monument is here for us to see. He lies in his robes, a coloured figure at prayer, and under the table on which he lies is a skeleton to remind us that the glory of this world passes away. In the handsome canopy above him, enriched with tracery and a delicate cornice, are ash leaves growing from tuns, and we see this play on his name again on the original iron grille still protecting his tomb. Other figures here are of Charles Townshend of 1817, and William Wilberforce sitting in a chair; this is the plaster model for his memorial in Westminster Abbey. The stalls and benchends with saints sitting on pinnacles under the fleur-de-lys poppyheads, and the beautiful piscina with interlacing arches are from the old church, and are over 700 years old. The fine screen at the west end is modern.

The lecture-rooms at the end of the college front are as old as the chapel, to which they are linked by fine railings. The Master's Lodge, on a site north of the library, is of the same time, and a little later is the range projecting from the north side of the two smaller courts.

Flickr.

* Having returned to Cambridge to do the 'new' chapels I asked the porters about chapel accessibility and it turns out only the antechapel is open to the public except during services - so misplaced irritation now shifted to wondering why it's closed to the public.