While the cuckoos in the fields did shout,
Right through the city stole the breath of the may,
And the scarlet doctors all about
And forgot they were bound for Great St-Mary’s
To listen to a sermon from the Master of Caius,
And ” How balmy,” they said, ” the air is !”
Shook it till it rent in two
And fell, a torn veil ; and like maniacs mocking
The wild things from without peered through.
Through the rent veil they did sprawl and wade
Blind bog-beasts and Ugrian men.
Of the stuff of the world’s live brain.
Cities are thin veils, woven of thought,
And thought, breaking, rends them in twain.)
Dreamt by a race long dead ;
And the earth is naught, and the sun but seems :
And so those who know have said.)
And I saw the world’s naked face,
Before, reeling and baffled and blind, I drifted
Back within the bounds of space.
All of honey and milk the air is.
God send I do forget. . . . The merry winds swell
In the scarlet gowns bound for St. Mary’s.
Entering through the s porch one immediately feels the weight of the galleries that fill the aisles; massive constructions encompassing the whole nave, the remains of an 18th liturgical 'refit', designed to accommodate the University for ceremonies and specifically the Sermons that then punctuated the academic year. That original scheme centred on a 'three decker' pulpit of extraordinary design; the two lower desks for the clerk and the rector faced e while behind them pulpit itself, tall and proud in the form of an octagonal tower. See above There were additional galleries at the w end and filling the chancel arch. Local tradition has it that the galleries were designed by James Gibbs. Whether that is true, they do give a good sense of what a Medieval church looked on the eve of the Oxford Movement. Apart from the side galleries everything else was ripped out during Sir George Gilbert Scott's thoroughgoing mid 19th century restoration. I don't think there were any other architectural interventions until the Post war period when the then Vicar Mervyn Stockwood brought in George Pace (an Anglican establishment architect if ever there was). Pace was responsible for a re-ordering of th chancel and, I think, a new vestry at the W end. (Could be wrong about the latter.)
As for the architecture, the nave is all, everything else an afterthought. And it is pretty spectacular 'all singing, all dancing' Late Gothic. The architect, it is pretty certain, was John Wastell, who we have encountered at two other buildings in E Anglia: Peterborough Cathedral and King's College Chapel, just the other side of Senate House Hill. The interior façade is rich and restless. There is scarcely any inert wall surface. The arcade is very tall and slim and the clearstory double. Construction commenced in 1478 and was completed just at the start of the Reformation.
For all that magnificence the interior feels ill at ease. There is an awful lot of contemporary semi-religious clutter, everything feels temporary, and nothing quite comes up to quality of Wastell's work. It is also for an Late medieval East Anglian church surprisingly dark., and over-pewed. It is a building I feel I would find it very difficult to pray in.
Like St Edward's, Great St Mary was the stage for the radical middle stage of the Reformation in England and Wales. The Reformer Martin Bucer was buried in the church in 1551. With the Marian reaction his remains were exhumed and publicly burned on Market Hill. A vindictive act.
