St Michael, Cambridge

Twas Michaelmas season

They'd got corn and pears in

And all the fields cleared save some rakings and thythes

Cote prygon flocks muster

Round beans shelling cluster

And done are the whettings o reap hooks and scythes.

     It is Michaelmas.  A blustery day here, with leaves spinning across the sky on the wind.  I suppose we all ought to be eating goose.  Here, however, are the photos I took of the exterior of St Michael's church in Cambridge. 

     After photographing the exterior of Great St Mary, I braved the rush hour 'crowds' and photographed St Michael's.  The church stands on Trinity St., a few hundred feet north of Great St Mary.  Not as grand as its southern neighbour, nor as unprepossessing as St Edward and St Bene't further s.  Oblong plan with projecting s tower and n porch.  The tower like that of St Edward is very plain, but none the worse for that; it originally had a blunt, diminutive lead spire.  Short nave, longer chancel.  Mainly Decorated Gothic.  Fine west window. S. aisle plastered, whitewashed, and scored to resemble ashlar masonry.

     The church essentially belongs to the rebuilding undertaken from 1325 onwards when it also became the chapel for the now defunct college, Michaelhouse.  It was later also used simultaneously by Gonville College.  Both colleges were eventually subsumed into other institutions, Michaelhouse into Trinity, and Gonville into Gaius, and St Michael became parochial once more. With the growth of the colleges, commencing in the 1820s, the parish was slowly denuded of parishioners until in 1908 parish was amalgamated with that of Great St Mary.  It entered into a period of some uncertainty for much of the twentieth century.  Various alternative uses were proposed and then rejected.  Eventually it became used as a parish hall.  The chancel, and s chancel aisle, were retained for worship, and the nave and the north aisle repurposed.  Kitchen, toilets etc were installed in 1966.  George Pace was the architect.  Controversially, work including a brick wall betwixt the nave and chancel.  In 2002, St Michael's became the 'Michaelhouse Centre', more popularly known as 'Michaelhouse Café'.  The interior was redesigned by Archimage, and included the removal of Pace's brick wall.

Great St Mary, Cambridge II

Great St. Mary's Church, Cambridge: interior towards the west end. Line engraving by J. Le Keux, 1824, after J.P. Neale. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark. Source: Wellcome Collection. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/pkfjy8nn

As I walked in Petty Cury on Trinity Day,
While the cuckoos in the fields did shout,
Right through the city stole the breath of the may,
And the scarlet doctors all about

Lifted up their heads to snuff at the breeze,
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 !”

And balmy it was ; and the sweet bells rocking
Shook it till it rent in two
And fell, a torn veil ; and like maniacs mocking
The wild things from without peered through.

Wild wet things that swam in King’s Parade

The days it was a marshy fen,
Through the rent veil they did sprawl and wade
Blind bog-beasts and Ugrian men.

And the city was not. (For cities are wrought
Of the stuff of the world’s live brain.
Cities are thin veils, woven of thought,
And thought, breaking, rends them in twain.)

And the fens were not. (For fens are dreams
Dreamt by a race long dead ;
And the earth is naught, and the sun but seems :
And so those who know have said.)

So veil beyond veil inimitably lifted :
And I saw the world’s naked face,
Before, reeling and baffled and blind, I drifted
Back within the bounds of space.

I have forgot the unforgettable.
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.

Dame Rose Macaulay 1881-1958

     And so to the interior.  And, as I have said in a previous post from years ago, it is a worldly place, where the civic and University, and the near constant flow of tourists combine to suppress the numinous.  It must be a hard task for the clergy to maintain even a modicum of the spiritual in such an environment.

     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.

Aberglasney

Be full, ye courts; be great who will;

Search for Peace with all your skill:

Open wide the lofty door,

Seek her on the marble floor:

In vain ye search, she is not there:   

In vain ye search the domes of Care!

Grass and flowers Quiet treads,

On the meads, and mountain-heads,

Along with Pleasure, close ally'd,

Ever by each other's side:   

And often, by the murm'ring rill,

Hears the thrush, while all is still,

Within the groves of Grongar Hill.

     From Carmarthen we drove east up the Towy valley to the gardens at Aberglasney, which lie beneath Grongar Hill, and are now in their final flush before the coming Autumn.

'Y Cymru Ramantaidd'

Grongar Hill invites my song,
Draw the landskip bright and strong;
Grongar, in whose mossy cells,   
Sweetly musing, Quiet dwells;
Grongar, in whose silent shade,
For the modest Muses made,
So oft I have, the ev'ning still,
At the fountain of a rill   
Sate upon a flow'ry bed,
With my hand beneath my head;
While stray'd my eyes o'er Towy's flood,
Over mead, and over wood,
From house to house, from hill to hill,   
'Till Contemplation had her fill.

     To Carmarthen yesterday and the former palace of the Bishops of St David's at Abergwilli, now the Carmarthenshire Museum. We were there to visit the 'Romantic Wales' exhibition - 'Y Cymru Ramantaidd'.  And quite the little treasure trove it was.  There were works by Turner (obviously), Samuel Palmer, and David Cox; John Nash, Graham Sutherland, and John Piper.  I was much taken with two of the works by Piper: Llanthony Abbey of 1941, and fittingly enough Grongar Hill of 1942.  Fitting because the hill is not so further up the Towy valley from Abergwilli, and plays a role in the development in Romanticism being the subject of the eponymous poem by John Dyer (1699–1757).  'A Welsh Funeral, Betwys y Coed', of 1847-50, by David Cox was rather a revelation in terms of technique; vibrant brushwork, almost Impressionist.  And then there was Turner's 'Tintern Abbey' 0f 1792, watercolour on paper with graphite underdrawing.  Masterly.
     My favourite, however, was Samuel Palmer's sensuous oil painting of 1835-6. 'Pistyll Mawddach'.  I think Samuel Palmer must be one of my favourite artists.

     The palace dates back to the Middle Ages, and went through various vicissitudes Post-Reformation.  In 1904 it suffered a fire and was subsequently restored by the Arts and Crafts architect W D Caroe (1857-1938).  The 'Buildings of Wales' implies that he played with fast and loose with the extant historical details on the exterior.  He is responsible for acres of roughcast.  The interior is interesting, if rather institutional; the best room is the chapel which, although over pewed, has some very good detailing.  Not a room designed, though, for ritual.

Kettle's Yard

     "I thought we'd make our way to Kettle's Yard, if that's alright."
     "I was hoping you'd say that."

     Well, not exactly a verbatim transcript of our conversation on Tuesday morning as we were leaving 'Hot Numbers Coffee' on Trumpington St. And that's about it - if you've read this blog before you will know all about Kettle's Yard and why it is so unbelievably special - on with the photographs!!!

St Edward, King and Martyr, Cambridge I

     Tucked away, in the remaining warp and weft of the Medieval city, stands St Edward's church, midway betwixt St Benet and Great St Mary.  From King's Parade you enter a narrow, atmospheric alley between shops - St Edward's Passage.  In a short while you emerge in a small urban space, quite picturesque, almost village-y.  Sadly that atmosphere is not maintained at the e end on Pease Hill, where the massive Guild Hall looms over all.

     St Edward's, is itself a rather village-y affair, humble with an interesting mix of materials particularly the use of plaster, which here and elsewhere in se England suggests the 18th & early 19th century.  There is a slim w tower, short nave (no clearstory), and chancel with two large chapels that were built to serve two of the University colleges - Trinity Hall on the N & Clare College on the S.*  They were apparently constructed post 1446, though the s chapel, if I didn't know better, looks entirely Dec to me (Yes, I know the tracery is probably 19th century or later).  It reminds me somehow of the s elevation of the chancel of St Benedict in Lincoln, although they are in fact completely different designs.   I can't help feel the design would be improved by a high pitched roof.  Wide, flat e end; e window by Sir George Gilbert Scott.  The church has been rather harshly restored at some point in the 19th century, probably by Brandon.  The west window and door are particularly regrettable.  I think Sir Albert Richardson worked here in the 20th century.

    A long time ago, when we were teenagers, a friend and I worshiped in this church one Sunday morning, sitting behind two elderly ladies, one of whom spent the whole service loudly criticizing the priest.

* Reginald of Ely, the first master mason of King's College chapel, has been suggested as the designer of these chapels, but the evidence is flimsy.  Firstly there is the question of the window in the s chapel.  It is supposed to be like Ely's tracery at King's College Chapel, but I can't see it.  Secondly, how can we trust the current tracery anyway?  If it was Ely's work it would be incredibly anachronistic.  Nearly a hundred years out of date.