Chapel
-
Winchester College Chapel
-
East Window
-
Chapel Ceiling
Situated on the south side of Chamber Court, the Chapel is part of the original College buildings and retains its original wooden fan-vaulted ceiling. Built to accommodate just over 100 people, it long ago became too small to accommodate the whole school (currently 690 boys). Additional seating installed in the re-ordering and extension carried out by the Victorian architect Butterfield allows the Chapel to seat 320 people. On Sundays half the houses worship in Chapel, while the other half worship (at the same time) in St Michael's Church (known as Michla), a redundant parish church central among the boarding houses, which the College took over in the last century. Weekly choral services are sung by the Choir in Chapel on Tuesdays and by the Quiristers on Thursday and Saturday evenings in Fromond's Chantry, which is in the middle of the Cloisters. Roman Catholic boys attend mass every Sunday morning in Michla.
The Chapel's most striking feature is its stained glass. The East window depicts the stem of Jesse. Down the Chapel's north and south sides is a collection of saints. Little of the original medieval glass, designed by Thomas Glazier, survives. A firm of glaziers in Shrewsbury was tasked with cleaning the glass in the 1820s. At that time there was no known process for cleaning the badly deteriorated glass and so it was copied, while most of the original glass was scattered or destroyed. Some pieces have been recovered. The south west corner holds the largest piece, bought and donated by Kenneth Clark. Five other figures bequeathed by Otto von Kienbusch and two more donated by Coleorton Church, Leicestershire were placed in Fromond's Chantry in 1978.
Until Victorian times the chapel was divided into a Chapel and Ante-Chapel, and had decorative panelling. This panelling was recovered by the school in the 1960s and used in the building of New Hall, the school concert hall, the design of which was specifically planned so as to house it.
The Chapel Choir sings regular services in the Chapel, as well as other venues. This consists of sixteen Quiristers (who attend the The Pilgrims' School) and a similar number of senior boys and a few dons (masters). There is also a choir to sing the services in Michla .
- Chapel Restoration
-
North Side (pre-restoration)
-
North Side (post-restoration)
The exterior of the Chapel and the Hall have recently undergone extensive restoration of the stonework.
Read more about this topic: Winchester College
Famous quotes containing the word chapel:
“I never went near the Wellesley College chapel in my four years there, but I am still amazed at the amount of Christian charity that school stuck us all with, a kind of glazed politeness in the face of boredom and stupidity. Tolerance, in the worst sense of the word.... How marvelous it would have been to go to a women’s college that encouraged impoliteness, that rewarded aggression, that encouraged argument.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)
“One thing’s certain. With a name like Abrahams, he won’t be in the chapel choir, now will he?”
—Colin Welland (b. 1934)
“The religion of England is part of good-breeding. When you see on the continent the well-dressed Englishman come into his ambassador’s chapel and put his face for silent prayer into his smooth-brushed hat, you cannot help feeling how much national pride prays with him, and the religion of a gentleman.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)