Little known information about the chapel
Welcome to Chapel's own information page. If anyone has any ideas of what to put on here, then please let us know. In the mean time, here are some notes our last Dean of Chapel, Dr Edward Norman, made about College's center of worship. Enjoy!
It was always intended that the Chapel - in a Church foundation - should promote the central purpose of the college by being at it’s focal point. The architectural design, by P. Newnham, (and built by Johnson Marshall, 1962-64), exactly fulfils this aspiration. Raised about the centralised nave plan, the crystalline roof, with it’s enormous triangular gables of pointed glass fins represents the crown of Christ the King, and can be seen from all over the city.
Designed structurally to admit floods of light to the open space below, this roof-tower also transmits light at night to the surrounding areas of the College, as a beacon summons travellers to a refuge. Viewed from inside the Chapel the roof strains upwards, heightening an atmosphere of transcendence also achieved by the diaphanous nave walls, with their glass panels. The entire upper part of the structure, indeed, seems almost to float about the nave; it is supported by such slender piers, and apparently thin sequences of brick wall, as to dissolve the solidity of the otherwise rather austere - even severe - interior. The result if a vortex of light and a quiet spaciousness where there might, in another arrangement of the structure, have been only a rectilinear hall. Continuity of the College’s religious function with the Christian past is suggested by the vista of the Cathedral, seen through the west windows of the nave, and by subtle “neo-gothic” devices in the structure of the Chapel itself. For here are the classic gothic characteristics - dematerialisation of the walls by glass, and inspiring height - in a building which is plainly not, otherwise, in the gothic mode. Yet there are other gothic echoes: the flattened crossed timbers of the aisle ceilings surely suggest rib-vaults; and the narrow piers which separate the aisles are placed exactly where a gothic architect would have put them.
The earliest designs for the Chapel show that there was to have been a shallow chancel. In the event this became a separate room (the former retro-chapel, latterly the Cloister room). The original gallery has now been converted, through a glass partition, into the Board Room: what more suitable function could it have in a College intended to promote the links of learning and religion? The integration of Christian worship with the general life of the College is also assisted by the glass screen at the north (entrance) end of the chapel - through which visitors and students, on arriving at the college, first see the interior.
The interior is, of course, decoratively dependant on the magnificent applique tapestry by David Holt, (1963), which spans a large area of the south wall behind the altar, and forms and extended retable. In contrast with the structural austerities and simple unadorned furnishings of the Chapel, the tapestry is rich visually and of complex iconographic significance. There, elevated about a rather stark representation of the Tree of Life - itself seen in relation to the sacrificial emblems of the passion - is Christ in majesty, surrounded by a silvered nimbus and a sunburst arrangement of bars of light. Unlike the often severe, and even terrifying face depicted in the Pantocractor representations of Christ in Orthodox churches, where he is seen as judge, here the face of Christ is serene and calm, as he sits enthroned to summon his people to redemption. This is Christ as supreme disposer of a universe that is familiar and actually crowded with life. Gradually the observer notices that the lower spaces of the tapestry are filled with people, and with animals and sea creatures and foliage (another Gothic echo). The figures are very much the people of the ordinary world of our experience: there are students and clerics, young and old. They seem to emerge from folds in the materiel, as if nervously distracted from their everyday preoccupations and expecting some dramatic cataclysm - to discover instead, that they are called to transcendence. The scheme represents the redemption of a suffering creation. Scriptural resonance is not merely latent in the symbols; it is actually spelled out in the words of texts: “Sown in corruption”, “raised in incorruption”, and so forth. The upwards movement of the whole tapestry is the consequence of it’s assemblage of human and other life being drawn towards the central figure of the ascended Christ. The effect is at once both awesome and consoling; the familiar experiences of sorrow and exultation, of interior desolation and of divine intimations, are here raised in juxtaposition with the vicarious offering of Christ. The drama of redemption penetrates the screen that separates the seen and the unseen worlds, and ordinary people, momentarily disorientated in the press of familiar pursuits suddenly discover that they are transformed. Dignity, nobility of vocation, the unexpected pervasiveness of spiritual reality; all are recognised in a worldly context where the ambiguity and moral frailty of human life ordinarily obscure the light and render human understanding opaquely obscure to discern the truth. The figures stand in isolation, each unaware of the visitation that is in reality common to them all; their awakening consciousness of the summons to join the celestial society derives from the ascending movement of the whole spiritual landscape, as Christ extends his arms in the divine acclamation. He calls them to an earthly paradise that is to anticipate the heavenly one.
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