King's College Chapel, Cambridge - a photo on Flickriver

The main reason for visiting Cambridge was to see King's College Chapel.

I must first than two friends, Simon K and Aidan for posting shots from Cambridge and so firing up my desire to visit.

Things fell into place and I found myself on a train last Sunday, and a place on the first tour of the day Monday morning.

I will add more thoughts as I post shots, but this for a start.

Quite the strongest emotional response I have ever had to a building, I had to choke back tears!

All chairs and seating have been removed, so there is just the building.

"Just."

Just a handful of us early visitors had the entire chapel to ourselves.

I followed up, not on purpose, a Japanese lady who was walking round with an i phone of a selfie stick, recording herself walking round the chapel, rather than the chapel itself. Which I know is her choice.

I saw the wonderful glass in the windows of the side chapel, so decided to photograph those too. Took some time.

No restrictions on photography, just don't "use flash on the Rubens" in the chancel. I was told.

In truth, there's more than enough in the Chapel for a whole day, as I'm sure new details would reveal themselves each time you looked.

I walked out into the college grounds, to walk to the bridge over the river. I mean, really, there was no one else out there, and a couple of punts were drifting past, so I wandered round the large square of grass, half of which had been apparently wild flowers, but now cut to look like a rough lawn.

The chapel has a 16th sundial, and marvellous lead drain downpipes. I snap them all.

I had, I thought, photographed what I could, and as I saw the next group coming in, I thought I would leave them to enjoy the chapel as sparsely crowded as I had.

So I walk to the south door, where the roped off path lead round to the west end of the chapel, then around another large grassed area to the banks of the river and a bridge to the meadows beyond.

I paused by the west door to photograph the arch and carvings, and gilded dragons on the ironwork.

On the bridge, I meet up with a volunteer already on a break. She looked at my two cameras and asked if I had good shots.

I had no idea and modest to say I had. But I scroll through some shots taken with the 50mm lens and show her shots of the side chapel glass. She was impressed, hardly anyone goes in there, she says. Even the guides don't take groups in the chapels.

Which I guess I can understand, as the chapel is a heck of a building as a whole, but the parts of it, from the glass panels, the chapels, carvings, rood screen, Rubens and all the other things make for one hell of an experience, but to pause and drink in the details, to be lost in a pair of ancient windmills, of bear witness to some ancient king's coronation, while the world turns without us noticing.

That is something not to miss.

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Begun by Henry VI, completed under the direction of Henry VII, the glass scheme installed under the somewhat-disinterested Henry VIII. 'The heart and soul of early 20th Century Anglicanism' according to M R James, the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols begun here during the First World War helped invent the modern Christmas. The fan vaulting is spectacular, the proportions (300ft long, 40ft wide, 90ft high) almost shocking in their single-minded Perpendicular triumphalism. The Chapel vies with Ely and Peterborough Cathedrals as the best single medieval building in Cambridgeshire, but the vast scheme of early 16th Century glass is undoubtedly the biggest and best of its kind anywhere in the British Isles.

www.flickr.com/photos/norfolkodyssey/21007385075/in/album...

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King's College Chapel is the chapel of King's College in the University of Cambridge. It is considered one of the finest examples of late Perpendicular Gothic English architecture and features the world's largest fan vault.[3] The Chapel was built in phases by a succession of kings of England from 1446 to 1515, a period which spanned the Wars of the Roses and three subsequent decades. The Chapel's large stained glass windows were completed by 1531, and its early Renaissance rood screen was erected in 1532–36. The Chapel is an active house of worship, and home of the King's College Choir. It is a landmark and a commonly used symbol of the city of Cambridge.

Henry VI planned a university counterpart to Eton College (whose Chapel is very similar, but not on the scale intended by Henry). The King decided the dimensions of the Chapel. Reginald Ely was most likely the architect and worked on the site since 1446.[6] Two years earlier Reginald was charged with sourcing craftsmen for the Chapel's construction.[6] He continued to work on the site until building was interrupted in 1461, having probably designed the elevations.[6] The original plans called for lierne vaulting, and the piers of the choir were built to conform with them.[6] Ultimately, a complex fan vault was constructed instead.[6] Reginald probably designed the window tracery at the extreme east of the church's north side: the east window of the easternmost side chapel, which unlike the Perpendicular style of the others is in curvilinear Gothic style.[6] The priest and later bishop Nicholas Close (or Cloos) was recorded as the "surveyor", having been the curate of St John Zachary, a church demolished to make way for the Chapel.[7][8][9]

The first stone of the Chapel was laid, by Henry himself, on the Feast of St James the Apostle, 25 July 1446, the College having been begun in 1441. By the end of the reign of Richard III (1485), despite the Wars of the Roses, five bays had been completed and a timber roof erected. Henry VII visited in 1506, paying for the work to resume and even leaving money so that the work could continue after his death. In 1515, under Henry VIII, the building was complete but the great windows had yet to be made.

The Chapel features the world's largest fan vault, constructed between 1512 and 1515 by master mason John Wastell. It also features fine medieval stained glass and, above the altar, The Adoration of the Magi by Rubens, painted in 1634 for the Convent of the White Nuns at Louvain in Belgium. The painting was installed in the Chapel in 1968; this involved the lowering of the Sanctuary floor leading up to the High Altar. It had been believed that gradations were created in 1774 by James Essex, when Essex had in fact lowered the floor by 5 1/2 inches,[10] but at the demolition of these steps, it was found that the floor instead rested on Tudor brick arches.

During the removal of these Tudor steps, built at the Founder's specific request that the high altar should be 3 ft above the choir floor, human remains in intact lead coffins with brass plaques were discovered, dating from the 15th to 18th centuries, and were disinterred.[12]

The eventual installation of the Rubens was also not without problems: once seen beneath the east window, a conflict was felt between the picture's swirling colours and those of the stained glass.[13][title missing] The Rubens was also a similar shape to the window, which "dwarfed it and made it look rather like a dependent postage stamp".[14] Plain shutters were proposed, one on each side, to give it a triptych shape (although the picture was never part of a triptych) and lend it independence of form, which is how one sees the Rubens today. The installation was designed by architect Sir Martyn Beckett, who was "philosophical about the furore this inevitably occasioned - which quickly became acceptance of a solution to a difficult problem."[15]

During the Civil War the Chapel was used as a training ground by Oliver Cromwell's troops, but escaped major damage, possibly because Cromwell, having been a Cambridge student, gave orders for it to be spared. Graffiti left by these soldiers is still visible on the north and south walls near the altar.[16] During World War II most of the stained glass was removed and the Chapel again escaped damage.[17]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_College_Chapel,_Cambridge

Taken on: September 20, 2021

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