The CHAPEL is a typical Marian product, large and wholly Gothic in style. It was erected in 1555-64. The intention was at first not to project E of the Great Gate. The three E bays are an afterthought. The length of the whole building is 205 ft. It is a plain rectangle without angle turrets, but with one stair turret at the N side to lead up to the loft of the original rood-screen. The turret has a stone cupola like those of King’s Chapel. The stone for the building was partly re-used from the dissolved Grey Friars at Cambridge and from Ramsey Abbey in Hunts. All windows are in the Perp style, of four lights on the N and S, of nine on the E and W. The N and S windows have one transom and no tracery at all, just cusped arched heads to the individual lights. The (blocked) W window is different from the later one at the E end. Both have only the most elementary panel tracery. The roof is equally lacking in enrichment. It is flat and has very shallow arched principals. The main division between antechapel and Chapel is now by means of a SCREEN of the most splendid Wren style. The antechapel is all white paint, white statuary and clear glass, the chapel proper all venerable gloom. The Screen has large Corinthian columns and carries the organ. It belongs to the extensive redecoration scheme carried out under Bentley from 1706 onwards. Of the original woodwork only the STALLS in the antechapel remain, modest and of Early Renaissance style, with thin busts sticking out above the segmental tops of the back panels. The CHOIR PANELLING is again early C18, as is the gorgeous, if somewhat restless REREDOS with coupled Corinthian columns and a round arch above which, but separated from it by rich scrolly carving, rises a broken pediment. The design is far from academically correct. The ORGAN CASE is of 1708; it encloses a Father Schmidt organ. The CHOIR STALLS were added by Blore in 1831-2 and some other alterations made.
More was done in 1867-75 under Sir Arthur Blomfield. The extensive WALL PAINTINGS were carried out by Heaton, Butler, & Bayne to a programme drawn up by Professors Lightfoot and Westcott. They represent from W to E the development through the Old Testament to St John and the Virgin, and between them in the middle of the E wall the Triumph of Christ. The STAINED GLASS was designed by Henry Holiday.* - MONUMENTS: The earliest monument is in the Vestry, in a deplorably mutilated state: Thomas Sekford d. 1624, by Edward Woodrofe. Standing wall monument as Dr Caius’s had been; headless semi-reclining effigy behind three columns. Recessed top with smaller allegorical figures. - Also in the Vestry: Charles Fox Maitland d. 1818 (aetatis 24) by R. Westmacott, tablet with two embracing angels in long flowing robes. - In the Choir Vestry tablet to George Chare d. 1676 signed by J. Latham. - John Wordsworth, bust, 1840 by Weekes. - The antechapel contains the famous standing statue of Newton ‘qui genus humanum ingenio superavit’, by Roubiliac, 1755, a masterpiece of quiet characterization. In addition five seated statues and a number of wall monuments - a real Valhalla. The seated figures provide an illuminating survey of Victorian and Edwardian sculptural style. They range from 1845 (Bacon by Weekes, imitated from the statue in St Michael’s Church, St Albans) and 1853 (Barrow by Noble) via two Woolners (Macaulay 1868, Whewell 1872) to Thornycroft’s Tennyson of 1909 - like the prima donna’s noble father in Italian opera, characteristically Edwardian, compared with Woolner’s dignified simplicity. - On the floor of the antechapel Neo-Gothic brass to William J. Breamont d. 1868. – Most of the wall monuments have portrait busts, and here again a survey in chronological order will be found instructive: Daniel Lock d. 1754, no doubt by Roubiliac. - Francis Hooper d. 1763 by Nicholas Read, former apprentice of Roubiliac. - Thomas Jones d. 1807 by Nollekens. - Porson d, 1808 by Chantrey. - P. P. Dobrée d. 1825 by Baily. - Sheepshank d. 1855 by Foley. - Without a bust, I. Hawkins Browne, 1805, by Flaxman, a minor work, with three floating genii in the arched top and a small portrait medallion above.
* Details of the glass and paintings in Willis and Clark.
Set back between the shadowing trees, the gatehouse (facing Trinity Street) is like a herald proclaiming the greatness of this famous college, which has no equal for size in any English University. Into his magnificent foundation Henry the Eighth absorbed the endowments of King’s Hall, Michaelhouse, and a number of hostels, all of which stood on the present site. With the new buildings that began to rise (including the present chapel which Mary Tudor began and Elizabeth finished), the hall and kitchen of Michaelhouse, as well as the gateways and some ranges of King’s Hall, continued to serve the needs of the college, and it was not till the time of Thomas Nevile, Master from 1593 to 1615, that the great transformation took place. With Ralph Symons for architect, he planned to bring the mass of buildings into an ordered whole. He kept what was good, he rebuilt and built anew, with the result that Trinity’s Great Court, a quadrangle about 334 feet by 258, is the most spacious of any in the world, charming with creepered walls, battlements, dormers, gateways, and the old chapel on one side.
The Great -Gateway, which was left standing facing Trinity Street, was built 400 years ago as the main entrance to King’s Hall. Over its two archways between the flanking towers stretches a broad band of shields on which are emblazoned the arms of Edward the Third and his six sons. Between this princely row and the handsome parapet carved with quatrefoils are four windows, and a canopied niche in which stands Henry the Eighth, the statue from Elizabethan days. Over the smaller archway is tracery with roses and a crown; the other has fine doors of linenfold and a vaulted roof, and on the side facing the court is a quaint group of statues of a rather unwieldy James the First, his wife Anne of Denmark, and his son Charles Stuart. On the north side of the court is King Edward’s Gateway, the earliest of the Cambridge gateway-towers; erected in 1427, it served as the approach to King’s Hall till the Great Gate was built, and was moved to its present position from its original site by Nevile, who gave it the statue of the king and much of its ornament of arms and emblems. When Nevile rebuilt the south range of the court he gave it the Queen’s Gateway, adorning it with the statue of Elizabeth.
In this noble court, with six lawns about the beautiful 18th century fountain, we are reminded of the men, kingly of intellect, who came and went within it. In the first floor chambers north of the Great Gate Sir Isaac Newton formulated his Laws of Motion and interpreted the action of gravity. Thackeray’s rooms were below, opposite Macaulay’s.
The chapel and its spacious ante-chapel recall these and other men by their memorials and the glass in the windows. There are statues of Tennyson sitting with his book; Macaulay, another seated figure; Francis Bacon reclining in his chair (a striking figure as we see it from the sanctuary, framed by the arch of the screen); Dr Whewell, who gave two pleasant courts on the other side of Trinity Street, with a fine bronze Mercury seated on a marble rock in the second of them; Dr Isaac Barrow, founder of the 17th century library; and his pupil Sir Isaac Newton (standing deep in thought); it was this statue which seemed to Wordsworth:
The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
Among the busts and plaques we see John Wordsworth, Richard Sheepshanks, Jacob Spedding, Francis Hooper, Charles Fox Maitland, and Richard Porson (his bust by Chantrey). A 19th century rector, John Beaumont, has a brass portrait showing him in vestments. Among the 120 figures in the windows are kings and queens and a host of great folk, including Latimer, Ridley, Chaucer, Tyndale, Wyclitfe, Erasmus, Bacon, George Herbert, and Newton with his apple. The glass was part of the chapel’s decoration last century. The rich 18th century woodwork includes the canopied panelling, the great altar-canopy (its fluted pillars shining with gold), and the massive organ screen.
Nevile gave the hall (in the west range) the proportions of that in Middle Temple, London. It has a hammerbeam roof, a richly carved screen, windows bright with heraldry, and many portraits telling again the college history. Henry the Eighth presides over the high table, and on one side of him is a fine copy of Antonio More’s unsmiling portrait of Mary Tudor, a rose in her hand, while on the other is the charming William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester, painted as a boy by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Others are Sir Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, Earl of Essex, John Dryden, and Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax; Byron, Tennyson, Sir Charles Stanford, Sir J. J. Thomson, and Stanley Baldwin.
The old hall of Michaelhouse became the buttery, with the Combination Room above, and this part of the range was rebuilt in 1774. The Master’s Lodge, flanked by a turret, still stands on the other side of the hall, its oriel window having replaced an earlier one last century. The old library in the north range reached King Edward’s Gateway, through which we pass to the bowling green, a delightful place shut in on the eastern side by the remains of the medieval quadrangle of King’s Hall.
The passage through the screens opens into the Cloister Court, built by Nevile out of his own pocket.. It is still pleasantly Jacobean, though much altered, and its fine eastern terrace with steps and balustrading was probably of Wren’s designing. Above the northern cloister Byron lodged; the south cloister gives on to the New Court, built last century; and the fourth side of the quadrangle is closed by the library, the noble building designed by Wren. He raised it above the cloister after the fashion of the library of St Mark’s in Venice; he put in the bookcases we see, made by a Cambridge carpenter and enriched with Grinling Gibbons’s carving in limewood of fruit and flowers. Wren designed the ceiling.
On Wren’s pedestals at the ends of the bookcases the white busts of Trinity’s great men gleam in rows extending the length of the room. Many are by Roubiliac, and the vista is closed by a statue of Byron which has an unusual history. Thorwaldsen sculptured it in the expectation that Westminster Abbey or St Paul’s would receive it; but the Abbey declined to accept Lord Byron, and after the statue had lain 12 years at the Custom House the poet’s old college gave it honoured lodging. There is the cast of Sir Isaac Newton’s face taken shortly after his death, and a telescope associated with his name.
Great possessions of many kinds are in this illustrious library. Among the manuscripts by monkish scribes centuries before the college was founded are 10th century Gospels, wonderfully illuminated with much gold; St Jerome’s Commentary on the Psalms (12th century); exquisitely illuminated work of the 13th and 14th centuries; and, for comparison, examples of the fine printing of the Kelmscott Press. Among the manuscripts in the handwriting of Cambridge men is a book in Milton’s hand, containing his Lycidas and Comus and the first dramatised version of Paradise Lost. Here also in manuscript are Thackeray’s Esmond, Tennyson’s In Memoriam, and Macaulay’s Diary. Most curious of all is a 15th century Roll of Carols, the first known harmonised musical manuscript. The notation is hard to make out, and the setting appears to be for two voices, tenor and treble. There are 13 of these carols, and the Roll displays the Agincourt Hymn beginning:
Our King went forth to Normandie
With grace and might of chivalrie
There God for him wrought marvellouslie.
Pepys saw it and copied it, and Burney published it.
From New Court, where Arthur Hallam lived, a gate leads to Bishop’s Hostel, a small block built in 1670 on an older site. The ranges on two sides of it are 19th century. Through the gates of the fine iron screenwork below the library we come to the river, where an 18th century bridge crosses to the Backs.
Flickr.
The Great -Gateway, which was left standing facing Trinity Street, was built 400 years ago as the main entrance to King’s Hall. Over its two archways between the flanking towers stretches a broad band of shields on which are emblazoned the arms of Edward the Third and his six sons. Between this princely row and the handsome parapet carved with quatrefoils are four windows, and a canopied niche in which stands Henry the Eighth, the statue from Elizabethan days. Over the smaller archway is tracery with roses and a crown; the other has fine doors of linenfold and a vaulted roof, and on the side facing the court is a quaint group of statues of a rather unwieldy James the First, his wife Anne of Denmark, and his son Charles Stuart. On the north side of the court is King Edward’s Gateway, the earliest of the Cambridge gateway-towers; erected in 1427, it served as the approach to King’s Hall till the Great Gate was built, and was moved to its present position from its original site by Nevile, who gave it the statue of the king and much of its ornament of arms and emblems. When Nevile rebuilt the south range of the court he gave it the Queen’s Gateway, adorning it with the statue of Elizabeth.
In this noble court, with six lawns about the beautiful 18th century fountain, we are reminded of the men, kingly of intellect, who came and went within it. In the first floor chambers north of the Great Gate Sir Isaac Newton formulated his Laws of Motion and interpreted the action of gravity. Thackeray’s rooms were below, opposite Macaulay’s.
The chapel and its spacious ante-chapel recall these and other men by their memorials and the glass in the windows. There are statues of Tennyson sitting with his book; Macaulay, another seated figure; Francis Bacon reclining in his chair (a striking figure as we see it from the sanctuary, framed by the arch of the screen); Dr Whewell, who gave two pleasant courts on the other side of Trinity Street, with a fine bronze Mercury seated on a marble rock in the second of them; Dr Isaac Barrow, founder of the 17th century library; and his pupil Sir Isaac Newton (standing deep in thought); it was this statue which seemed to Wordsworth:
The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
Among the busts and plaques we see John Wordsworth, Richard Sheepshanks, Jacob Spedding, Francis Hooper, Charles Fox Maitland, and Richard Porson (his bust by Chantrey). A 19th century rector, John Beaumont, has a brass portrait showing him in vestments. Among the 120 figures in the windows are kings and queens and a host of great folk, including Latimer, Ridley, Chaucer, Tyndale, Wyclitfe, Erasmus, Bacon, George Herbert, and Newton with his apple. The glass was part of the chapel’s decoration last century. The rich 18th century woodwork includes the canopied panelling, the great altar-canopy (its fluted pillars shining with gold), and the massive organ screen.
Nevile gave the hall (in the west range) the proportions of that in Middle Temple, London. It has a hammerbeam roof, a richly carved screen, windows bright with heraldry, and many portraits telling again the college history. Henry the Eighth presides over the high table, and on one side of him is a fine copy of Antonio More’s unsmiling portrait of Mary Tudor, a rose in her hand, while on the other is the charming William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester, painted as a boy by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Others are Sir Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, Earl of Essex, John Dryden, and Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax; Byron, Tennyson, Sir Charles Stanford, Sir J. J. Thomson, and Stanley Baldwin.
The old hall of Michaelhouse became the buttery, with the Combination Room above, and this part of the range was rebuilt in 1774. The Master’s Lodge, flanked by a turret, still stands on the other side of the hall, its oriel window having replaced an earlier one last century. The old library in the north range reached King Edward’s Gateway, through which we pass to the bowling green, a delightful place shut in on the eastern side by the remains of the medieval quadrangle of King’s Hall.
The passage through the screens opens into the Cloister Court, built by Nevile out of his own pocket.. It is still pleasantly Jacobean, though much altered, and its fine eastern terrace with steps and balustrading was probably of Wren’s designing. Above the northern cloister Byron lodged; the south cloister gives on to the New Court, built last century; and the fourth side of the quadrangle is closed by the library, the noble building designed by Wren. He raised it above the cloister after the fashion of the library of St Mark’s in Venice; he put in the bookcases we see, made by a Cambridge carpenter and enriched with Grinling Gibbons’s carving in limewood of fruit and flowers. Wren designed the ceiling.
On Wren’s pedestals at the ends of the bookcases the white busts of Trinity’s great men gleam in rows extending the length of the room. Many are by Roubiliac, and the vista is closed by a statue of Byron which has an unusual history. Thorwaldsen sculptured it in the expectation that Westminster Abbey or St Paul’s would receive it; but the Abbey declined to accept Lord Byron, and after the statue had lain 12 years at the Custom House the poet’s old college gave it honoured lodging. There is the cast of Sir Isaac Newton’s face taken shortly after his death, and a telescope associated with his name.
Great possessions of many kinds are in this illustrious library. Among the manuscripts by monkish scribes centuries before the college was founded are 10th century Gospels, wonderfully illuminated with much gold; St Jerome’s Commentary on the Psalms (12th century); exquisitely illuminated work of the 13th and 14th centuries; and, for comparison, examples of the fine printing of the Kelmscott Press. Among the manuscripts in the handwriting of Cambridge men is a book in Milton’s hand, containing his Lycidas and Comus and the first dramatised version of Paradise Lost. Here also in manuscript are Thackeray’s Esmond, Tennyson’s In Memoriam, and Macaulay’s Diary. Most curious of all is a 15th century Roll of Carols, the first known harmonised musical manuscript. The notation is hard to make out, and the setting appears to be for two voices, tenor and treble. There are 13 of these carols, and the Roll displays the Agincourt Hymn beginning:
Our King went forth to Normandie
With grace and might of chivalrie
There God for him wrought marvellouslie.
Pepys saw it and copied it, and Burney published it.
From New Court, where Arthur Hallam lived, a gate leads to Bishop’s Hostel, a small block built in 1670 on an older site. The ranges on two sides of it are 19th century. Through the gates of the fine iron screenwork below the library we come to the river, where an 18th century bridge crosses to the Backs.
Flickr.
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