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 Stained Glass Detail, Kings College Chapel, Cambridge, Co. Cambridgeshire
The single most beautiful building in Cambridge , King’s College Chapel is the finest and grandest examples of late medieval Gothic architecture in the land.
 Kings College Chapel - Cambridge
Built through the patronage of the kings; Henry VI, Henry VII and Henry VIII , the Chapel took 70 years to complete. The pious King Henry VI established the ‘royal and religious’ colleges of Eton and King’s College Cambridge in around 1441. The Chapel of King’s college was planned to dominate the city measuring some 88m long and 24m high. Its decorative adornments surpass any other building in Cambridge and have drawn the admiration of artists and writers such as Turner, who painted the fabulous perpendicular exterior and William Wordsworth who wrote three sonnets about the Chapel.
The splendid fan vaulting of the Chapel ceiling has been much remarked upon. The is the largest single span vaulted roof in existence, it weighs nearly 2,000 tons supported by 22 stone buttresses, apparently the architect Sir Christopher Wren commented, that he would make one himself, if only somebody could show him where to lay the first stone. The 16th Century Stained Glass windows, depicting a range of biblical scenes are another fabulous feature and the wooden Screen is a superb example of Tudor craftsmanship, interwoven with a wealth of heraldic carvings, most famously the Tudor Rose, incorporating the warring roses of Lancaster and York. Overlooking the Screen are two trumpeting angels, part of the decoration of the huge 17th Century organ case. However the most renowned feature at King’s College Chapel is the spectacular altarpiece - Rubens painting of ‘the Adoration of the Magi’, gifted to the college in 1961.
Exhibitions in the various side chapels detail the stories and allegories behind the many crests and Stained Glass features. Around the Front Court of King’s College are the prestigious college buildings and at the centre of the lawn is the bronze statue of the man who started it all Henry VI, erected in 1879.
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