Stapleford History Society was formed with the aim of promoting public interest in local heritage.
We arrange meetings on alternate months throughout the year to hear a range of talks of local and more general historical interest. Reports of past meetings can be found on this site. Admission to our meetings for non-members is £3, free for Members. Membership of the Society is just £10 yearly for Individuals, £15 for a Family.
Occasionally we hold coffee mornings for specific purposes – such as gathering local memories of recent events, for future historical interest.
We also host a comprehensive archive of material, covering diverse aspects of village life during the earlier part of the 20th century. A sub group of members regularly meet with the aim of cataloguing the archive.
This excellent talk was given by an academic who has taught in both of the Cambridge Universities. He used many slides and spoke without notes about the period from 1441 – 1547, posing the question of why Kings College Chapel is so big?
In the Middle Ages, Cambridge was a very small town which was originally the chosen place of refuge for disaffected clerics from Oxford. By 1400 the University numbered between 400 and 500 scholars and was seen by the ruling elite to be more orthodox than Oxford though Oxford was much more famous. At this time Church and State were virtually indivisible.
In 1441 Henry VI was crowned King of France and England in the royal Saine Chapelle, Paris. He was only 19 years old, very pious and subject to fits of madness. He visited Oxford and was very impressed by New College Chapel and All Saints Chapel. Consequently, he founded Eton College and its chapel, then Kings College in the same year, as a suitable place for Eton scholars to further their studies.
By 1448 Henry had decided that he wanted a chapel for his new college and drew up its proportions. He wanted it to be plain and simple, 228 feet long, 40 feet wide, 90 feet high, with small side chapels and a regularity and repetition in its design. The building work began with the foundations being no deeper than 3 feet on a bed of gravel above a layer of chalk. The time taken to build the chapel spanned the reigns of five monarchs and three dynasties: Henry VI, Edward IV, Richard III, Henry VII and Henry VIII – Yorkist, Lancastrian and Tudor kings. Interestingly there was not a single college founded in Oxford during that time.
The stone used was Magnesium Limestone from a quarry near Towton (Tadcaster). Reginald (of) Ely was one of the master masons who supervised the use of this material. Building work was affected by the 100 Years War, the Wars of the Roses and the general upheaval of dynastic change. For example, the Battle of Towton in 1461 was the largest and bloodiest ever fought in England with 28,000 dead, according to contemporary sources. Inevitably some masons and general workmen would have lost their lives there.
While the exterior of the Chapel reflects the influence of the French style, as at Mont St Michel, the decoration inside reflects the tastes of the Tudor monarchs. There is a Spanish influence on the carving, reflecting the link of the Tudors with the Spanish Kingdom of Aragon, Henry VII having arranged the marriage of Catherine of Aragon to his then heir, Prince Arthur. Later there is the influence of the Italian renaissance on some of the carving. Henry VIII wanted to be seen as a European prince and had a crown carved in the style of the Holy Roman Emperor. Glaziers from Europe were brought to design the stained glass windows where there is clear evidence of the influence of Rubens and Michelangelo.
Returning to the question originally posed by the speaker, it is clear now that the Chapel is so big because it was built as a Royal chapel. Five kings of three dynasties were instrumental in the design, the build, the decoration of this building and, inevitably, its financing.
