The present Chapel was built between the years 1863 and 1869, from the designs of Sir George Gilbert Scott; it was consecrated by the Bishop of Ely, 12th May 1869. As we approach it we see on the right the outline of the old Chapel, which had served the College and the Hospital which preceded it for something like six hundred years. This former Chapel was a building quite uniform and simple in appearance, filling the whole of the north side of the Court. Originally built to serve the needs of the Hospital of St. John, it was considerably altered when the College was founded. Side Chantries were then, or shortly afterwards, added. In early times a good deal of the life of the College centred in the Chapel, in addition to its uses for worship. It was regarded as a place in which the Society was formally gathered together. In it the statutes, or rules for the government of the Society, were read at stated times, so that all might become aware of the rule under which they lived. The names of those who had not discharged their College bills were publicly read out by the Master. The elections of the Master and of the Fellows and Scholars were held within it; of this practice the sole part that remains is the election of a Master, which by the present statutes must be held in the Chapel. The scholastic exercises of Acts and Opponencies, in which certain doctrines were maintained and opposed, took place there. The seal of the College was kept in the vestry, and the sealing of documents took place in the Ante-Chapel. Though documents are now sealed elsewhere, the stock of wafers for the College seal is kept by the Chapel Clerk. The erection of a new Chapel for the College was contemplated for about 200 years before it was carried out. Dr. Gunning, who was Master from 1661 to 1670, afterwards successively Bishop of Chichester and of Ely, left by his will the sum of L300 "to St. John's College, towards the beginning for the building for themselves a new Chapel." Gunning died in 1684, and in 1687 the College paid to Robert Grumbold the sum of L3 for "a new ground plott modell of the old and new designed Chappell." Nothing, however, came of the proposal at that time, though the idea seems always to have been before the Society.