King’s College Chapel: A Perpendicular Gothic Chapel in Cambridge
Site at a Glance
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- Popularity
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- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Medieval
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- British, English
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Chapel
On this page13 sections
History
King’s College Chapel is the collegiate chapel of King’s College in Cambridge, United Kingdom. Built under successive English kings between 1446 and 1515, it is a major example of Perpendicular Gothic architecture, a late medieval English style defined by strong vertical lines, large windows, and elaborate tracery. The chapel forms the surviving architectural centre of a much larger scheme begun by Henry VI for King’s College, which he founded in 1441 as a planned counterpart to Eton College.
Foundation and royal plans
Henry VI first established a smaller chapel in 1444. He later expanded the project dramatically, setting out the intended chapel’s dimensions in his Will and Intent of 12 March 1448. A substantial part of Cambridge was cleared for the proposed college court and chapel, including the church of St John Zachary. The broader scheme was never completed, but the chapel went forward.
Henry VI laid its first stone on 25 July 1446, the Feast of St James the Apostle. Reginald Ely was probably the architect responsible for the general design. He worked on the chapel from the 1440s until his death in 1471 and completed the eastern parts to the level of the window transoms. Nicholas Close, a priest of the demolished St John Zachary and one of King’s first six fellows, was recorded as surveyor and was also associated with supervising the work.
Construction during the Wars of the Roses
The Wars of the Roses, a series of dynastic conflicts between Lancaster and York, shaped the chapel’s construction. After Henry VI was deposed in 1461, Edward IV withdrew funding from the Lancastrian foundations at King’s and Eton. Work slowed sharply, and the planned stone vault was abandoned in favour of a timber roof. The wider college project remained suspended until the eighteenth century.
Construction continued in stages under several monarchs. After Ely, John Wolryche raised the eastern parts to the window heads, while Simon Clerk completed and roofed the eastern five bays. Richard III supported the work, and by the end of his reign in 1485 five bays had been completed with a timber roof, allowing services to take place in the building.
Henry VII visited the unfinished chapel in 1506, financed the resumption of construction, and left money for the work to continue after his death. Under Henry VIII, the building shell was completed in 1515, although the large windows were still unfinished. John Wastell then constructed the fan vault between 1512 and 1515. A fan vault has ribs that spread outward in repeated fan-shaped patterns, and the chapel’s vault became a defining feature of the completed interior.
Worship, conflict, and later changes
The chapel was dedicated to Our Lady and Saint Nicholas. It remains an Anglican place of worship associated with the Church of England, although, like other Cambridge college chapels, it is not formally part of the Church of England’s institutional structure. Its dean is customarily licensed by the Bishop of Ely, the senior Anglican bishop of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction associated with Cambridge.
During the English Civil War, Parliamentarian troops used the chapel as a training ground. The building was largely spared destruction or serious damage, possibly because Oliver Cromwell, the Parliamentarian military and political leader, had studied at Cambridge and is said to have ordered its protection. Graffiti made by soldiers remains visible on the north and south walls near the altar.
Most of the stained glass was removed and stored during the Second World War as a precaution, and the chapel consequently avoided wartime damage. In 1968, Peter Paul Rubens’s The Adoration of the Magi was installed above the altar. The work required the sanctuary floor leading to the High Altar to be lowered. Removing the steps, previously attributed to James Essex and dated to 1774, revealed Tudor brick arches beneath the floor. Human remains in intact lead coffins with brass plaques were also exposed. The burials dated from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries and were later disinterred.
Music and continuing use
King’s College Chapel remains an active place of worship and is used for concerts and college events. It is the home of the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, whose services, concerts, recordings, and broadcasts have given the building an international musical identity. The BBC has broadcast the choir’s Nine Lessons and Carols from the chapel on Christmas Eve since 1928, including the opening solo treble verse of Once in Royal David’s City.
The mixed student choir King’s Voices sings Evensong during term time. The dean is responsible for services to the College Council and Governing Body, while a Chapel Committee administers chapel affairs and a Use of Choirs Committee organizes choir engagements. During Full Term, the dean and chaplain normally participate in services six days a week, and the dean preaches once or twice each term.
The chapel has been a Grade I listed building since 26 April 1950. Grade I is England’s highest category of statutory protection for buildings of exceptional architectural or historic interest. The building is also widely treated as a landmark and symbol of Cambridge, including in the logo of Cambridge City Council.
Remains
King’s College Chapel is approximately 88 metres long, with a nave about 12 metres wide, an interior height of about 24 metres, and an exterior height of about 29 metres. Its major elements include the nave and choir, four spires, a timber roof, the fan-vaulted ceiling, large stained-glass windows, the High Altar, the pulpitum, and the organ. The building’s surviving form brings together the Perpendicular Gothic design developed through successive medieval building phases and later furnishings installed within it.
Vault, windows, and altar painting
Fan vault and side chapel
Reginald Ely’s original plans called for a lierne vault, a ceiling system using additional decorative ribs that do not run continuously from support to support. The choir piers were built for that design, but the eventual ceiling was the fan vault constructed by John Wastell between 1512 and 1515. The easternmost side chapel on the north side contains window tracery probably designed by Ely in a curvilinear Gothic style, contrasting with the Perpendicular tracery elsewhere.
Stained-glass windows
Twelve large windows run along each side of the chapel, with larger windows at the east and west ends, giving twenty-six large windows in total. Except for the west window, they were produced by Flemish craftsmen between 1515 and 1531. Barnard Flower, the first non-Englishman appointed King’s Glazier, completed four windows. Galyon Hone and three partners, two English and one Flemish, made the east window and sixteen others between 1526 and 1531. Francis Williamson and Symon Symondes made the remaining four medieval windows.
The lower sections of the glazing depict episodes from the life of the Virgin Mary, while the scenes above come from the Old Testament and foreshadow Mary’s life and the birth of Christ. The west wall contains the chapel’s only modern window, made by Clayton and Bell and donated by King’s alumnus Francis Stacey in 1879.
The Adoration of the Magi
Above the altar hangs Peter Paul Rubens’s The Adoration of the Magi, painted in 1634 for the Convent of the White Nuns at Louvain. After Josephinist reforms led to the dissolution of Belgian monasteries, the painting was sold in 1788 to William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne. It later passed to Robert Grosvenor, 1st Marquess of Westminster, and was auctioned by Grosvenor’s descendant in 1959. Alfred Ernest Allnatt acquired it and donated it to King’s College.
The painting was initially considered visually overpowered by the east window and too similar in shape to it. Plain side shutters were therefore installed beside it. They now function visually as the empty wings of a triptych, although the painting had never formed part of a triptych. Sir Martyn Beckett designed the arrangement.
Screen and organ
Pulpitum
A large carved wooden pulpitum, a substantial screen separating the choir from the nave or ante-chapel, divides the interior and supports the organ. Henry VIII commissioned it for his marriage to Anne Boleyn, and it was erected between 1532 and 1536. Its Renaissance decoration contrasts with the chapel’s Gothic architecture. Nikolaus Pevsner called it “the most exquisite piece of Italian decoration surviving in England.”
Organ
The chapel’s organ tradition reaches back to the fifteenth century, when two organs were repaired in 1450 and 1451. Thomas Browne built a new instrument in 1508, which was probably dismantled and sold after 1564. Thomas Dallam built another organ in the early seventeenth century, and Robert Dallam installed it on an organ loft in 1617.
The present organ derives from the instrument reorganized and enlarged by Harrison & Harrison in 1934. The latest recorded work took place in 2016. The organ has 81 stops, including some transmissions, distributed across four manuals and pedals, with electro-pneumatic action for the keys and stops.
The prominent main organ case is among the oldest in England and probably survives from Dallam’s early seventeenth-century instrument. The Choir Organ case probably dates from the mid-seventeenth century. The main case was doubled in depth in 1958 to accommodate the enlarged organ. Together with the chapel’s notable acoustics, these elements continue the building’s long musical use.
