The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
SIMON HEFFER HINTERLAND
Tomorrow’s Advent Sunday service at St John’s College, Cambridge, demands to be seen as well as heard
uch has been said, rightly, of the achievement of Stephen Cleobury, who died last week, in nearly 40 years at King’s College, Cambridge – notably in his stewardship of the college’s worldfamous carol service each Christmas Eve. I once had the privilege of attending it, and sharing the most stunning cultural experience, musically but also architecturally. Being, at dusk in the depths of winter, in that overwhelming building while listening to such fine music made an impression hard to articulate.
There is another Cambridge Christmas tradition I recall with equal fondness. As an undergraduate 40 years ago I had friends at St John’s College who smuggled me into their Advent Sunday service. This happens tomorrow and is broadcast live on
BBC Radio 3. The standard of music at John’s is every bit as high as at King’s – the college once boasted Herbert
Howells as director of music – and their chapel is, in its way, as impressive and as handsome as King’s, though less celebrated.
John’s is a Tudor foundation – dating from 1511 – so in Cambridge terms one of the younger colleges. Its chapel, however, is a masterpiece of the high Victorian gothic revival. Pevsner says that “as a display of Victorian ecclesiastical art in Cambridge it is without rival”. It was built between 1863 and 1869 and the architect was the high priest of gothic, George Gilbert Scott.
His creation is like a small cathedral, or great parish church: as one drives off the motorway from the west of the city its grand tower looms above the skyline. Scott had originally envisaged a spire but a donation from a rich alumnus enabled the tower to be built instead, to a height of 163ft. It is proportionate to the chapel’s length, which is 190ft.
When one stands in the antechapel, and looks down the long, high apsidal nave to the east, with its exceptionally fine woodwork and stained glass, one understands Pevsner’s point about the superlative display of Victoriana exactly. He found the apse unsympathetic to the uniformly rectangular buildings of the 16thcentury First Court, but one presumes that Scott was trying to recreate an authentic 13th-century experience in his design. His work was mildly compromised in the Thirties when an art deco court and chapel cloister by Edward Maufe (the architect of Guildford Cathedral) was run across the chapel’s west front.
Inside, the details of the nave are a feat. Various stones are used for columns and capitals. Paintings depict the development of
Christianity through two millennia. There are numerous statues in finely carved niches, like the paintings reflecting the post-Oxford movement belief, widely held at both the old universities in the mid-19th century, that the Reformation never actually happened. This pretence continues in some of the paving, which depicts
Old Testament scenes.
However, for me the highlight of the interior is the woodwork of the choir stalls, dating from 1516, and the fine timber vaulting of the roof that catches the eye so well when viewed from the antechapel. Scott’s building was designed to give a rich and significant college a place of worship fitting for its status and its idea of itself, but it also provides the most superb setting for the traditional act of worship that will be heard around the world tomorrow, by many who can only imagine the chapel’s splendour.