A virtual tour of the Chapel at Jesus College,
Cambridge:
The Chapel Court at Jesus College, Cambridge:
The “First Court” at Jesus College, Cambridge:
The following information is provided on the Chapel
and Choir, to wit:
“Jesus College Chapel exists for the glory of God,
and has been used for worship since the twelfth century. It is open during the
day for prayer and quietness, and all members of the College community,
whatever their religious beliefs, are welcome to visit the Chapel and to attend
any of the services, taking from them what they can. The Anglican tradition is
designed to be accessible to those from a wide range of backgrounds. The two
Choirs enrich the worship of the Chapel at four evensongs each week, and for
these more formal occasions members of the College are encouraged to wear their
gowns.” See: http://www.jesus.cam.ac.uk/chapel-choir/
Additional information on this history of the
Chapel, to wit, at: http://www.jesus.cam.ac.uk/chapel-choir/history-of-the-chapel-2/
“Jesus College Chapel is
the oldest college chapel in Cambridge and it is unique in that it was not
originally designed as a college chapel, since it precedes the foundation of
the college by three and a half centuries, and the university by more than half
a century. It was originally a large Norman church dedicated to St Mary which
served the twelfth-century Benedictine convent of St Radegund, which is why the
plan of the present chapel, like that of the cloisters that surround it, has a
conventual rather than a collegiate character (1). It also served as the church
of the parish of St Radegund which grew up around the convent, which was at
that time a semi-rural area located just outside the city of Cambridge: a
charter of 113 from Nigellus, the second Bishop of Ely, refers to ‘the nuns of
the little cell lately instituted without the town of Cantebruge’. (2)
The church took about a
century to build, being begun about 1157 and completed about 1245, and it was
at that time the largest church in Cambridge, being about 58 metres in length
and of cathedral-like proportions. Like the modern chapel, it was built in the
form of a cross, though with aisles to the north and south of chancel and nave,
with a high pitched roof, and was surmounted by a belfry or steeple which was
visible for miles around. In 1277 the belfry collapsed, and in 1313 and again
in 1376, devastating fires destroyed much of the surrounding convent but
largely spared the church itself, causing only some discoloration to the tower.
The church itself fell into some degree of dilapidation due to the convent’s
lack of funds to repair the fabric of the building.
When the convent of St
Radegund was dissolved in 1496 by John Alcock, Bishop of Ely, and a new college
was founded in its place, the conventual church of St Mary was rededicated to
the name of Jesus and part of the church was demolished and the remaining
portion was drastically modified. Alcock, who was an architect as well as a
bishop, having been Comptroller of the Royal Works and Buildings under Henry
VII and having designed parts of Ely Cathedral and Great St Mary’s church in
Cambridge, himself designed many of these alterations, which were intended to
create a chapel that was more suitable in scale for a small community of
scholars than the existing church. The beginning of this work on the new chapel
was superintended by one of Alcock’s friends, William Plombe, who was one of
the original fellows of the college, in 1497-98. After Alcock’s death in 1500,
the work was continued by some other friends of Alcock, Dr William Chubbes, the
first master of the college, and the architects Sir John Rysley and Sir
Reginald Bray. The reconstruction took considerable time, since Sir John
Rysley, who died in 1512, bequeathed £160 towards its completion (3).
The chancel chapels and
the aisles of the nave of the church were pulled down and the cloisters were
enlarged. The new cloisters were enclosed by walls that contained four windows
in the Perpendicular style. The dilapidated belfry was taken down and the high-pitched
roofs of the church were replaced by a lower-pitched flat roof with an oak
ceiling. The lancet windows in the eastern wall were replaced by a plain
Perpendicular window. Two thirds of what had been the nave of the church were
replaced by college rooms, which subsequently became part of the eastern wing
of the Master’s Lodge, and the chapels on the north and south sides of the
choir were pulled down and the northern aisles became part of the cloister: the
original columns are still embedded in the wall. The screen which had divided
the monastic from the parochial at the west end of the crossing was replaced by
a more open screen at the east side. The thirteenth-century arches which had
divided the aisles from the nave were either pulled down to make way for the
college rooms or were blocked off with stone and concealed with plaster. The
four arches in the chancel and the two arches in the north transept were all
filled in and covered over and in the new walls they placed Perpendicular
windows. In the south transept, the eastern arch was also filled in and covered
over, two Perpendicular windows were inserted in the eastern and western walls
and a very large Perpendicular window was inserted in the southern wall (4).
Thus St Mary’s church
became Jesus chapel. For the time being, it continued to serve as the church of
the parish (soon to be renamed ‘Jesus parish’) and it was used for baptisms and
marriages, and ‘Jesus churchyard’ was used for the burial of the dead, during
the first half of the sixteenth century. The last mention of ‘Jesus parish’ is
in a deed of 1552 and it seems to have gradually lapsed into obsolescence,
being subsequently incorporated into the parish of All Saints. The western end
of ‘Jesus churchyard’ was separated off early in the history of the college to
form the Master’s garden. The remainder eventually ceased to be used as a
burial ground and came to be known as ‘Fair Close’, because an annual fair was
held there every August for much of the sixteenth century. By the beginning of
the seventeenth century, the rest of the former churchyard had been transformed
into the fellows’ garden and the orchard.
The furnishings and
rituals of the chapel underwent the usual vicissitudes and reversals of fortune
due to the religious reforms and counter-reforms of the sixteenth century; in
1549, during the period of Protestant iconoclasm under Edward VI, the royal
Visitors destroyed six altars in the chapel and some images in the Master’s
Lodge. During the Catholic restoration that followed in the reign of Mary, Dr.
John Fuller was appointed Master, in 1557, and he restored the old ritual and
ornaments in the chapel. During the reign of Elizabeth, the college fellowship
became decidedly Protestant, although not Puritan, in its sympathies and the elaborateness
(and expense) of the services in the chapel was greatly reduced, and the
ornaments that had been replaced in the chapel were again removed, although the
organ was allowed to remain until 1585 (5). James I was a frequent visitor to
Cambridge and to Jesus College, in particular, and he worshipped in the college
chapel when he visited the city. In 1617, James’s Chancellor of the Exchequer
and an alumnus of Jesus, Sir Fulke Greville, planned to fill in the nave of the
chapel and create new college rooms to cater for the continually expanding
membership of the college. Fortunately, this scheme was never carried out. In
1634, under the Mastership of Dr Richard Sterne, a new organ was purchased and
an organist was employed to play it and, in 1636, new furniture, plate and
candlesticks for the altar were purchased, in the spirit of the High Church
reforms of Archbishop Laud. At this period, the college was known as a
stronghold of the High Church party in the University and the chapel services
were renowned for ‘good music, elaborate solemnity and attractive decency’ (6).
With the coming of the
Civil War, the college became embroiled in the dispute between the King and
Parliament. In 1641, the House of Commons issued an order to all the heads of
colleges ‘to displace the Communion table from the east end of their chapels,
to take away the rails and level the chancel, and to remove crucifixes, tapers,
and basins from the Communion table’ (7), so that the fellows found themselves
obliged to banish all the new furnishings that they had so recently purchased
to refurnish their chapel. The fellows were then required by Charles I to raise
a loan of £100 and to send pieces of the college plate to his camp in York.
Part of the plate was seized by Cromwell’s men before it could be conveyed out
of Cambridge, but most of it was successfully conveyed to York, for which the
Master, Richard Sterne, and the former Master, William Beale, were arrested by
Cromwell in the course of a service in the chapel and taken to the Tower of
London. The organ in the chapel was taken to pieces and hidden by the fellows
and the college plate which had not been sent to the King’s camp was buried in
the orchard. At Christmas 1643, William Dowsing, a puritan iconoclast, who was
commissioned by Parliament to purge the churches and chapels of Cambridge of
their ‘monuments of superstition’ visited the college and ‘digg’d up the Steps
there and brake down Superstitions of Saints and Angels, 120 at the least’ (8).
The following year all the fellows, except for two, were ejected from the
college and Richard Sterne was deposed from the Mastership. In 1659 a bell was
purchased for the belfry. At the Restoration, the interior of the chapel was
repaired and restored to its former beauty by the new masters, Dr John Pearson
and Dr Joseph Beaumont, between 1660 and 1663, and the organ was rebuilt and
reinstated in the chapel. In 1676, the chapel was paved with black and white
marble and some time between 1660 and 1680 a gallery was built in the chancel
which faced towards the altar. The remains of a classical entrance still to be
seen on the south wall from the walk through to the new library may well date
from this time.
By contrast with the
preceding period, the early eighteenth century was an uneventful period in the
history of the college and very few additions or even repairs to the chapel
seem to have been made. However, between 1762 and 1765, the piers and arches of
the cloisters were demolished and rebuilt to designs by James Essex (9). The
use of the organ in the chapel was also discontinued during this period and the
organ was dismantled and given to the parish of All Saints (and the casework
may now be seen in Little Bardfield church in Essex). In the 1780s, the
perpendicular east window in the chancel was rebuilt and, between 1789 and
1792, a major restoration of the chapel was undertaken in order to bring the
architecture into accord with the reigning Classical ideal in architecture. In
the chancel, the sixteenth century stalls and some sections of the old carved
woodwork from the pulpit and the screen were removed and a partition wall of
plaster was built to block off the eastern arch of the tower, above the gallery
and entrance of the choir, which was adorned with Ionic pillars. The oak roof
of the chancel, with which Alcock had replaced the original high-pitched roof,
was now hidden by a new flat plaster ceiling and another plaster ceiling was
built across the open square of the tower to hide the roof-storey gallery.
About thirteen years later, the external walls of the chapel were overlaid with
cement and the battlements and the mouldings of the windows were similarly
repaired (10).
The nineteenth century
saw major new restoration work on the chapel, inspired by the new spirit of the
Gothic revival, which was carried out between 1846 and 1849, and which largely
reversed the earlier repairs. The main instigators of this new restoration were
the Rev. John Gibson, then Dean of the College, who was responsible for issuing
an appeal to old members of the college and was appointed treasurer of the
restoration fund, and a notable Victorian geologist, the Rev. Osmond Fisher.
Their aim was to restore the ritual as well as the architecture of the chapel,
including the restoration of music to the chapel services through the purchase
of an organ and the reinstatement of the choir. The new organ was designed and
purchased in 1849 by John Sutton, a fellow commoner of the college and a
musician, who devoted much of his career at Jesus to writing a book on the subject
of organs, and who served as the college organist and published a collection of
anthems for use in the chapel.. He also instituted a choir school in the
college and taught the boys himself (11).
Under the direction of
Anthony Salvin, who had recently undertaken a controversial restoration of the
Round Church, the eighteenth century partition wall in the chancel arch was
removed in 1846, along with the gallery on its eastern side, and a new combined
organ chamber and vestry was built on the eastern side of the northern
transept. The two arches which opened into the choir were rediscovered and
unblocked, together with the two arches which opened upon the north transept
below the gallery. The re-opening of the arches of the northern chapel
seriously weakened the north-eastern pier of the tower and the removal of its
upper story was debated. However, the tower was eventually strengthened by
filling the two arches below the gallery with heavy tracery, uniting those in
the chancel with a low solid screen of stone and building a heavy buttress in
the vestry. The upper story of the tower was also strengthened with heavy iron
bolts. These repairs were carried out on the advice of the architect Augustus
Pugin (famous for his work on the Houses of Parliament) who was a close friend
of John Sutton and who had come down to Cambridge to take the measurements for
the organ chamber. On Sutton’s recommendation, the college also decided to
employ Pugin to direct the continuing programme of the restoration of the
chapel (12).
In the north transept,
the Norman windows that were embedded in the north wall were rediscovered. They
were preserved as recessed arches and the whole wall was restored. New stalls
and a new pavement were also supplied for the chancel. Pugin removed both the
eighteenth century plaster ceiling and Alcock’s low-pitched roof which he
replaced by a high-pitched roof, in a thirteenth-century style. He also rebuilt
the choir stalls and the eastern wall and removed Alcock’s Perpendicular east
window, replacing it with three tall lancet windows; archaeological evidence
had been unearthed in the course of the restoration that showed that this was
the original form that the windows had taken. Pugin installed stained glass
windows of his own design in 1850 and the other windows were later glazed, in
the same style, between 1850 and 1858. The newly purchased organ was installed
in the organ chamber and on All Saints’ Day 1849 the chapel was re-opened with
a full choral service (13).
In 1862, cracks began to
appear in the arches and piers of the tower and further repairs were carried
out between 1864 and 1867 by George F.Bodley, who was also working
simultaneously on All Saints’ Church, opposite the entrance to the college. The
tower was refaced and restored, a solid buttress was built for its support in
the south-east corner of the Master’s garden and a wrought iron rod was placed
above the choir screen. Decorations for the newly-panelled ceilings of the nave
and the tower were designed by William Morris and painted under his direction
in 1867; and between 1873 and 1877 the windows in the nave and transepts of the
chapel were glazed by Morris and Company from designs by Edward Burne-Jones and
Ford Madox Brown. A larger and more powerful organ was purchased to replace
Sutton’s organ in 1887 and was installed in a new gallery at the west end of
the nave. Thus by the end of the century the chapel had attained its present
proportions and appearance, in which the Norman original, together with Early
English, Decorated and Perpendicular elements, Essex’s eighteenth century
cloisters and Pugin’s and Burne-Jones’ nineteenth century restorations combine
to form this remarkable building (14).
The twentieth century
saw the abolition of compulsory chapel, and the consequent removal of the organ
and gallery from the west end of the nave – though the gallery may still be
seen over the road at Westcott House. The organist cum schoolmaster was
replaced by an organ scholar in 1919, and the twentieth century has seen some
distinguished church musicians having their early training at the college.
Though the fixtures and fittings have remained much as they were at the
outbreak of the Great War, several restorations, the most recent in 2004, have
revealed more of the glories of the building, especially with the more advanced
lighting systems available to us now. Of particular interest was the uncovering
of work on the north wall of the nave, which gives every appearance of being
William Morris’s demonstration of what the walls would look like if decorated –
the fellows, preferring a more austere finish, demurred, and it remained
covered in whitewash for over 130 years.
A further enrichment of
the college’s distinguished choral tradition will take place during the course
of 2006, thanks to a generous benefaction, with the installation of a new organ
to replace the Mander of 1969, by Kuhn of Switzerland. As the college now has
two choirs, of men, women and boys, and a full time director of chapel music,
this will be a great asset indeed.
References
1.
Morgan, I and G: The stones and story of Jesus Chapel Cambridge
(1914), p.2
2.
Ray, N: Cambridge architecture: a concise guide (1994), p.33
3.
Sikes, J and Jones, F: Victoria History of the counties of England
Vol 3: Cambridgeshire (1959), p.421
4.
Morgan, I and G: The stones and story of Jesus Chapel Cambridge
(1914), p.107
5.
Sikes, J and Jones, F: Victoria History of the counties of England
Vol.3: Cambridgeshire (1959), p.424
6.
Morgan, I and G: The stones and story of Jesus Chapel Cambridge
(1914), p.197
7.
Morgan, I and G: The stones and story of Jesus Chapel Cambridge
(1914), p.184
8.
Morgan, I and G: The stones and story of Jesus Chapel Cambridge
(1914), p.194
9.
Webster, H and Howard, P: Cambridge: an architectural guide
(2000), Part 4, p. 44
10.
Morgan, I and G: The stones and story of Jesus Chapel Cambridge
(1914), p.254
11.
Morgan, I and G: The stones and story of Jesus Chapel Cambridge
(1914), p.295
12.
Morgan, I and G: The stones and story of Jesus Chapel Cambridge
(1914), p.300
13.
Morgan, I and G: The stones and story of Jesus Chapel Cambridge
(1914), p.307
14.
Ray, N: Cambridge architecture: a concise guide (1994), p.34
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