In the heart of Cambridge, King's College Chapel raises its single nave, a vast vessel of stone and glass. Its ceiling — the largest fan vault ever built — is the last dazzling flourish of English Gothic, while its wooden screen bears the first signs of the Renaissance: one place, two worlds.
The farewell song of the Gothic
King's College was founded in 1441 by Henry VI, who wished to give it a chapel without equal. The building stretched over nearly eighty years, through civil wars, and was only completed under the early Tudors: Henry VII, and then Henry VIII, funded its completion, around 1515. The result is prodigious: a nave eighty-eight metres long, lit by immense windows, and above all a fan vault covering the whole space with a spread of radiating ribs — the largest in the world, the absolute summit of Perpendicular Gothic. It is the last masterpiece of an art at its height, at the very moment the Renaissance was knocking at the door.
The screen, where the Renaissance enters
Beneath this medieval vault, one object announces the new world: the carved oak screen, given by Henry VIII in the 1530s. Its decoration is no longer Gothic but Renaissance — scrolls, putti, Italian arabesques — and it bears, entwined, the initials H and A, Henry and Anne Boleyn. Commissioned in the time of their marriage, it was only finished after the queen's fall, but no one erased her cipher: a love letter in oak has outlived the woman who inspired it. The great windows, filled in the sixteenth century with Flemish stained glass, complete this passage from Gothic to Renaissance, while, later, a painting by Rubens would adorn the altar.
What to see
- The fan vault, the largest in the world, the summit of Perpendicular Gothic.
- Henry VIII's Renaissance oak screen, with the initials H and A.
- The great windows with their sixteenth-century Flemish stained glass.
- The single nave, an immense vessel of stone and light.
Did you know?
The chapel's screen is a rare survivor: given by Henry VIII at the time of his marriage to Anne Boleyn, it bears everywhere their entwined initials and the falcon, the queen's emblem. When Anne fell from favour and was beheaded in 1536, her memory was erased almost everywhere in the kingdom — but not here. At Cambridge, on the oak of the chapel, the name of Anne Boleyn still keeps watch, forgotten by the censors.
Practical information
King's College Chapel lies in the heart of Cambridge, along the river Cam. It is a working college chapel, famous for its sung services (among them the Christmas broadcast, A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols). It may be visited outside services, on hours liable to change; it is best to check them against the official sources before visiting.
Quiz
- What kind of vault, the largest in the world, covers the chapel?
- A fan vault
- A dome
- A barrel vault
- Which entwined initials does the wooden screen bear?
- H and A (Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn)
- E and R (Elizabeth Regina)
- H and C (Henry and Catherine)
- Under which kings was the chapel completed?
- Henry VII and then Henry VIII
- Elizabeth I
- James I