page_title: King's College Chapel, Cambridge
section_title: Construction
hierarchical_section_title: King's College Chapel, Cambridge / Construction
caption_attribution_description: English: Ceiling of King's college, Cambridge
context_page_description: King's College Chapel is the chapel of King's College in the University of Cambridge. It is considered one of the finest examples of late Perpendicular Gothic English architecture. The Chapel was built in phases by a succession of kings of England from 1446 to 1515, a period which spanned the Wars of the Roses and three subsequent decades. The Chapel's large stained glass windows were not completed until 1531, and its early Renaissance rood screen was erected in 1532–36. The Chapel is an active house of worship, and home of the King's College Choir. The Chapel is a significant landmark and a commonly used symbol of the city of Cambridge.
context_section_description: Henry VI planned a university counterpart to Eton College (whose Chapel is very similar, but not on the scale intended by Henry). The King decided the dimensions of the Chapel. Reginald Ely was most likely the architect and worked on the site since 1446. Two years earlier Reginald was charged with sourcing craftsmen for the Chapel's construction. He continued to work on the site until building was interrupted in 1461, having probably designed the elevations. The original plans called for lierne vaulting, and the piers of the choir were built to conform with them. Ultimately, a complex fan vault was constructed instead. Reginald probably designed the window tracery at the extreme east of the church's north side: the east window of the easternmost side chapel, which unlike the Perpendicular style of the others is in curvilinear Gothic style. The priest and later bishop Nicholas Close (or Cloos) was recorded as the "surveyor", having been the curate of St John Zachary, a church demolished to make way for the Chapel. 
  The first stone of the Chapel was laid, by Henry himself, on the Feast of St James the Apostle, 25 July 1446, the College having been begun in 1441. By the end of the reign of Richard III (1485), despite the Wars of the Roses, five bays had been completed and a timber roof erected. Henry VII visited in 1506, paying for the work to resume and even leaving money so that the work could continue after his death. In 1515, under Henry VIII, the building was complete but the great windows had yet to be made.
  The Chapel features the world's largest fan vault, constructed between 1512 and 1515 by master mason John Wastell. It also features fine medieval stained glass and, above the altar, The Adoration of the Magi by Rubens, painted in 1634 for the Convent of the White Nuns at Louvain in Belgium. The painting was installed in the Chapel in 1968; this involved the lowering of the Sanctuary floor leading up to the High Altar. It had been believed that gradations were created in 1774 by James Essex, when Essex had in fact lowered the floor by 5 1/2 inches, but at the demolition of these steps, it was found that the floor instead rested on Tudor brick arches. 
  During the removal of these Tudor steps, built at the Founder's specific request that the high altar should be 3 ft above the choir floor, human remains in intact lead coffins with brass plaques were discovered, dating from the 15th to 18th centuries, and were disinterred. 
  The eventual installation of the Rubens was also not without problems: once seen beneath the east window, a conflict was felt between the picture's swirling colours and those of the stained glass. The Rubens was also a similar shape to the window, which "dwarfed it and made it look rather like a dependent postage stamp". Plain shutters were proposed, one on each side, to give it a triptych shape (although the picture was never part of a triptych) and lend it independence of form, which is how one sees the Rubens today. The installation was designed by architect Sir Martyn Beckett, who was "philosophical about the furore this inevitably occasioned - which quickly became acceptance of a solution to a difficult problem."
  During the Civil War the Chapel was used as a training ground by Oliver Cromwell's troops, but escaped major damage, possibly because Cromwell, having been a Cambridge student, gave orders for it to be spared. Graffiti left by these soldiers is still visible on the north and south walls near the altar. During World War II most of the stained glass was removed and the Chapel again escaped damage.
caption: The world's largest fan vault (1512–1515)
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