The Chronicle, Spring 2019

30 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

The School Chapel: 145 Years on By Chris Nathan, School Archivist

Once Algernon Simeon, second Headmaster and first Warden, had signed the contract for the building of the new School, on what were then turnip fields in North Oxford, he made no secret that the Chapel was his main priority. On 25th November 1873, using the same trowel Thomas Chamberlain had used to lay the foundation stone for the School itself, the Bishop of Oxford, John Fielder Mackarness, and the architect, William

March 1876 it was announced that ‘the tower is to be commenced at once’. By June of that year the roof was finished, and the stalls, desks and fittings ordered but there were still insufficient funds for the £300 organ, and no pulpit had yet been ordered. In 1877 an organ was forthcoming although it wasn’t fully paid for. Eventually the Chapel was finished. It was consecrated by the Bishop of Oxford on 5th June 1877 with great pomp and ceremony. There was a little controversy too. Simeon’s Tractarian ideas, and the fondness for incense and candles and bells, were not popular in the North Oxford area. However, the Chapel was now the centre of school life as Simeon had intended and until he retired in 1893 the whole school day revolved around four daily services - Matins, Prime, Evensong and Compline. The congregation was fully surpliced for many services, the sacristans bedecked in red, and the choir entering the Chapel via the cloisters linking the Chapel to the Main Buildings, carrying banners and a huge crucifix. Probably the most significant sign of High Anglicanism was the altar, with five steps leading up to it and its six magnificent candlesticks, six brass vases of flowers, richly-worked frontal cloths and Oberammergau Crucifix. Up to 1880 the congregation sat in chairs facing the altar; this changed in 1890 when each side faced each other across the aisle. The stained glass windows by Charles Kempe were added later from 1888.

Wilkinson, laid the foundation stone for the Chapel. Until it was ready for use, a temporary Chapel was constructed in the Beauchamp Dormitory (Apsley today). Over the next four years the Chapel began to emerge despite rising costs, dreadful weather and a constant lack of funds. Simeon even managed to fall out with both the architects and the builders. Appeals went out in the Chronicle for donations for an organ (1875) and bells (1876) and in

The Chapel in 1885

The temporary Chapel in what is now Apsley