CHAPTER VI
THE CHURCHES IN THE TOWN
Almost everyone who goes to Cambridge as a visitor bent on sightseeing naturally wishes to see the colleges before anything else, but it should not be forgotten that there are at least two churches, apart from the college chapels, whose importance is so great that to fail to see them would be a criminal omission. There are other churches of considerable interest, but for a description of them it is unfortunately impossible to find space.
Foremost in point of antiquity comes St. Benedict's, or St Benet's, possessing a tower belonging to pre-Conquest times, and the only structural relic of the Saxon town now in existence. The church was for a considerable time the chapel of Corpus Christi, and the ancient tower still rises picturesquely over the roofs of the old court of that college.
Without the tower, the church would be of small interest, for the nave and chancel are comparatively late, and have been rather drastically restored. The interior, nevertheless, is quite remarkable in possessing a massive Romanesque arch opening into the tower, with roughly carved capitals to its tall responds. Outside there are all the unmistakable features of Saxon work—the ponderously thick walls, becoming thinner in the upper parts, the "long and short" method of arranging the coigning, and the double windows divided with a heavy baluster as at Wharram-le-Street in Yorkshire, Earl's Barton in Northamptonshire, and elsewhere.
Next in age and importance to St. Benedict's comes what is popularly called "the Round Church," one of the four churches of the Order of Knights Templar now standing in this country. The other three are the Temple Church in London, St. Sepulchre's at Northampton, and Little Maplestead Church in Essex, and they are given in chronological order, Cambridge possessing the oldest. It was consecrated the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and was built before the close of the eleventh century, and is therefore a work of quite early Norman times. The interior is wonderfully impressive, for it has nothing of the lightness and grace of the Transitional work in the Temple, and the heavy round arches opening into the circular aisle are supported by eight massive piers. Above there is another series of eight pillars, very squat, and of about the same girth as those below, and the spaces between are subdivided by a small pillar supporting two semi-circular arches. Part of the surrounding aisle collapsed in 1841, and the Cambridge Camden Society (now defunct) employed the architect Salvin to thoroughly restore the church. He took down a sort of battlemented superstructure erected long after the Norman period, and built the present conical roof.
After these early churches, the next in interest is Great St. Mary's, the University Church, conspicuously placed in the market-place and in the very centre of the town. It has not, however, always stood forth in such distinguished isolation, for only as recently as the middle of last century did the demolition take place of the domestic houses that surrounded it. And inside, the alterations in recent times have been quite as drastic, robbing the church of all the curious and remarkable characteristics it boasted until well past the middle of the nineteenth century, and reducing the whole interior to the stereotyped features of an average parish church.
If we enter the building to-day without any knowledge of its past, we merely note a spacious late Perpendicular nave, having galleries in the aisles with fine dark eighteenth-century panelled fronts, and more woodwork of this plain and solemn character in front of the organ, in the aisle chapels, and elsewhere. A soft greenish light from the clerestory windows (by Powell), with their rows of painted saints, falls upon the stonework of the arcades and the wealth of dark oak, but nothing strikes us as unusual until we discover that the pulpit is on rails, making it possible to draw it from the north side to a central position beneath the chancel arch. This concession to tradition is explained when we discover the state of the church before 1863, when Dr. Luard, who was then vicar, raised an agitation, before which the Georgian glories of the University Church passed away. Before the time of Laud, when so many departures from mediaeval custom had taken place, we learn, from information furnished during the revival brought about by the over-zealous archbishop, that the church was arranged much on the lines of a theatre, with a pulpit in the centre, which went by the name of the Cockpit, that the service was cut as short as "him that is sent thither to read it" thought fit, and that during sermon-time the chancel was filled with boys and townsmen "all in a rude heap between the doctors and the altar." But this concentration on the University sermon and disrespect for the altar went further, for, with the legacy of Mr. William Worts, the existing galleries were put up in 1735, the Cockpit was altered, and other changes made which Mr. A.H. Thompson has vividly described:
… the centre of the church was filled with an immense octagonal pulpit on the "three-decker" principle, the crowning glory and apex of which was approached, like a church-tower, by an internal staircase. About 1740 Burrough filled the chancel-arch and chancel with a permanent gallery, which commanded a thorough view of this object. The gallery, known as the "Throne," was an extraordinary and unique erection. The royal family of Versailles never worshipped more comfortably than did the Vice-Chancellor and heads of houses, in their beautiful armchairs, and the doctors sitting on the tiers of seats behind them. In this worship of the pulpit, the altar was quite disregarded…. The church thus became an oblong box, with the organ at the end, the Throne at the other, and the pulpit between them.
Of all this nothing remains besides the organ and the side galleries, and of the splendid screen, built in 1640 to replace its still finer predecessor, swept away by Archbishop Parker nearly a century before, only that portion running across the north chapel remains.
Until the Senate House was built, the commencements were held in the church, but thereafter it would appear that the sermon flourished almost to the exclusion of anything else.
The diminutive little church of St. Peter near the Castle mound is of
Transitional Norman date, and has Roman bricks built into its walls.
O fairest of all fair places,
Sweetest of all sweet towns!
With the birds and the greyness and greenness,
And the men in caps and gowns.
All they that dwell within thee,
To leave are ever loth,
For one man gets friends, and another
Gets honour, and one gets both.
AMY LEVY: A Farewell.