Highways and Byways in Cambridge and ElyConybeare, John William Edward
History
Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely
Conybeare, John William Edward
Cambridgeshire (England) -- Description and travel; Isle of Ely (England) -- Description and travel
Leaving the distant prospect of the boathouses behind us, we resume
our way to Jesus College, the grounds of which are separated from
Midsummer Common by a broad ditch. Skirting this, we come to "Jesus
Lane," and, turning to the right, reach the main entrance to the
College, opposite the red brick facade of "Westcott House" (like
Ridley Hall, an Anglican Clergy Training School), and the tall spire
of the new Church of All Saints.[100] Iron gates admit us into a long
passage, between red brick walls, known as "the Chimney," which
conducts us to the College gate. Jesus is a large college, with
several courts, but all that is much worth seeing is the chapel with
its cloisters, to reach which we must seek a low-browed doorway to the
east of the entrance gate. Both are relics of the nunnery. The latter,
indeed, were rebuilt in the eighteenth century; but the nineteenth has
rediscovered, in their eastern range, the beautiful Early English
entrance into the Nuns' Chapter House. At the north-east corner of the
cloisters we find the door into the chapel.
[Footnote 100: This church, as has been already said, formerly stood
at the other end of its Parish, in the old Jewry, hard by Trinity and
St. John's.]
This bears little resemblance to the conventional College Chapel,
being a cruciform church of the ordinary Norman shape, with a central
tower. Very little of the work, however, is Norman, for the nuns did
not get far on with their design till the twelfth century had come in
and the Early English period had commenced. A beautiful gem of this
style the chapel is, and, for once in a way, the drastic "restoration"
to which it was subjected in early Victorian days is matter of real
thankfulness.[101] The building had been sadly mauled about in the
course of ages; the high-pitched roof lowered, the eastern lancets
destroyed. All is now brought back, in excellent taste, to what it was
at first. The old chancel has become the chapel proper, the transepts
and the short nave serving as the ante-chapel.
[Footnote 101: This restoration had the advantage of being carried out
under the auspices of a man of real architectural taste (though better
known by his geological distinction), the Rev. Osmund Fisher, then
Dean of the College. The discovery of the Chapter House entrance in
the cloisters was also due to him.]
[Illustration: _Oriel of Hall, Jesus College._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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