page_title: St Giles' Church, Cambridge
section_title: Foundation
hierarchical_section_title: St Giles' Church, Cambridge / History / Foundation
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of Cambridge dated 1575. The inscription reads: Cantebrigia: opulentissimi Anglie Regni, urbs celeberrimi nominis, ab Academie conditore Cantabro, cognominata: A Granta, fluvio vicino, Cairgrant; saxonib, Grauntecestre, et Grantebrige, iam olim nuncupata.
context_page_description: The Church of St Giles is a Grade II*-listed church in Cambridge, England. It is a Church of England parish church in the Parish of the Ascension of the Diocese of Ely, located on the junction of Castle Street and Chesterton Road. It was completed and consecrated by the Bishop of Ely in 1875, to replace an earlier church founded in 1092. The church, which added "with St Peter" to its appellation when the neighbouring St Peter's Church became redundant, is home to both an Anglican and a Romanian Orthodox congregation and is used as a venue for concerts and other events. It also serves as a main location of the Cambridge Churches Homeless Project.
  The war memorial in the churchyard, designed by Bodley and Hare and unveiled in 1920, is Grade II-listed.
context_section_description: St Giles' Church was founded in 1092 by an endowment from Hugolina de Gernon, the wife of Picot of Cambridge, baron of Bourn and county sheriff. According to the 12th century writings of Alfred of Beverley, Hugolina, who had been suffering from a long illness which the king's physician and other doctors had been unable to treat, had prayed to Saint Giles on her death bed promising to build a church in his honour if she were to recover, which she duly did. Picot reportedly constituted the church, after consulting with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm, and the Bishop of Lincoln, Remigius de Fécamp, under the supervision of the Canon of Huntingdon and his own patronage against the curtain walls of his home at Cambridge Castle. Former county archaeologist Alison Taylor, however, speculates that, rather than founding a new priory, Picot placed an existing minster serving the area in control of the Norman Canons Regular, and that this was done for purely economic reasons.
  The church was initially served by a group of six Augustinian canons, who remained at St Giles' for twenty years until after the death of Picot, when they were granted land in Chesterton by Pain Peverel upon which they established Barnwell Priory. The small St Giles' Church continued to operate over the following centuries but failed to develop due to its impoverished location outside the town walls in a densely inhabited area that was badly affected by the Black Death.
  Under Queen Elizabeth I, the rectory and advowson were granted to the Bishop of Ely in 1562. The church's register of baptisms begins in 1596, those of marriages and burials in 1607, and the churchwardens' accounts in 1620.
  The land within the parish boundary of St Giles (about 1,370 acres) remained largely unenclosed until the beginning of the 19th century. Under the enclosure act of 1802, thirty-three acres went to the Vicar of St Giles, in compensation for the loss of small tithes, and 165 acres to the Bishop of Ely, as an "appropriator of the Rectory of St Giles", in compensation for great tithes. More than half the enclosed land went to the colleges, and remained largely as pasture until the 1870s.
caption: Late 16c. map depicting old St Giles' church (bottom left corner) situated below Cambridge Castle (uphill, to the north) and above Magdalene College (by riverside, to the south).
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