Great St Mary, Cambridge I

     I am in Cambridge. Here for three days.  I arrived yesterday after a 'trying' journey from the Infernal City, and I am staying in the serene St Catherine's College on Trumpington St.  My room is very close to the chapel and inside, at the moment, a choir is practicing.  In less than half an hour the college clock will strike the hour.

     This morning, earlier, before I had to be at the station to meet a friend, I went to Great St Mary to take some photographs for the blog. Sadly you will have to wait until a day or so for some pictures of the interior as there was some sort of conference going on.  This large church, which I described in a previous post as Anglican establishment, being both the civic and University church, and the sort of church where ambitious incumbents pass through on the way to deaneries and bishoprics.  Appropriately enough, it stands poised between 'Market Hill' and 'Senate House Hill', the academic centre of the University.  It is built of stone (rubble and ashlar) and some brick.  The stone will have come across the Fens from the quarries of the Limestone Belt, such a Barnack and Ketton.  It is a Late Gothic basilican plan church with square ended chancel and side chapels; an ostentatious display of the mercantile wealth and piety of the city* and the prestige of the University.  A proud building rather like the other great burghal churches of E Anglia and Essex, such as Lavenham and Saffron Walden.  Rubble walled aisles contrasting with sophisticated ashlar clearstory.  No n porch, but on the s side there are the rood loft stairs and a south porch which looks entirely Victorian.  Apparently, it is a copy of the Medieval original. The base of the w tower is of the same period as the church but the top story and battlements are Post-Reformation.  It is surrounded by a small graveyard, but, I believe, it was once hemmed in by buildings to the e.  Below the e window is the Boer War Memorial, cast bronze in a Gothic frame.  Restorations by Essex, Salvin, and George Gilbert Scott.

* Cambridge was than a mercantile city plugged in, via King's Lynn, to an international trade network across northern Europe as far east as the Baltic.