7 - Religion in the university: its rituals and significance

Summary

THE RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENT: COLLEGE CHAPELS

In the afternoon of Tuesday 29 July 1710 Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, a visitor from Germany, toured the buildings and courts of St John's College, and crossed the bridge over the Cam into the garden and bowling green.

We did not however stay long in the garden, but as we heard the bell ring for sermon, went to King's chapel, the finest here. It is certainly an incomparably elegant building of stone, especially as regards the quantity of carved work about it. But it is no such great miracle, as it is made out to be in the Délices d'Angleterre, Tom. I, that it is without pillars, for, though long and lofty, it is not at all broad. We heard the sermon, and admired exceedingly the goodness of the organ; for it is small, and yet of a deep and extremely pleasant tone.

So even von Uffenbach, whose diary is described by his editor as ‘full of girdings and sniffings at the people and things he sees’, was impressed, like all visitors, by King's College chapel. Dwarfing the meagre secular buildings of King's College and the Old Schools nearby, the university's premises and the home of its library, the chapel was the most imposing structure in the city, and far larger than any parish church. It was much the most visible symbol of obligations embodied in university and college statutes, in the duties of college fellows and the observances laid upon undergraduates, and in the curricula of their studies.