Chapel Guide
Stepping into All Souls College Chapel you find yourself in another world, a late medieval world, of beauty made of lucid space and friendly light – all serenely complete.
Even the huge screen, painted dark green and lavishly gilded, although it was put up two centuries later and according to quite different canons of taste, enhances the delicacy of the original fifteenth-century architecture.
The chapel was built in 1438-41. It is a beautiful example, intimate but glorious, of the English version of late gothic architecture, called ‘perpendicular’. Five and a half centuries have brought about the chapel’s present appearance. If you had visited it in 1450 or 1550 or 1665 or 1750 you would have seen a very different chapel: the same building but furnished and decorated according to spectacularly contrasting forms of belief and worship.
Outer Chapel
The Outer Chapel, also called the antechapel, is open to everybody. It contains a number of interesting architectural features and hosts a number of events across the year, including musical performances.
1 Vestibule entrance
2 The Founders
3 Stained Glass Windows
4 Screen
5 Fragments of Judgement
Inner Chapel
The Inner Chapel is for the Fellows of the College and is divided from the outer chapel by the ornate screen. The founder of the College. Archbishop Chichele, presided over the inaugural sacrament of the Mass here in June 1422.
6 Reredos
7 Marble Floor
8 Sedelia
9 Anson Monument
10 Desks and Stalls
11 Eagle
12 Stained Glass
1
Vestibule entrance
Situated in the entrance is a sculpture (formerly placed over the college gate) of the reanimated bodies of human souls rising from their tombs for the last judgment.
2
The Founders
Portrait-sculptures of the two founders: Henry VI and Archbishop, Henry Chichele. These masterpieces of the fifteenth-century sculptor John Massyngham once stood over the college gate, so are eroded by weather.
3
Stained Glass Windows
Fine stained glass windows of 1441 by John Glazier of Oxford: apostles of Christ in the upper lights and female saints below.
4
Screen
The grandiose dark-blue screen: the lower part by Sir Christopher Wren in 1664 in his austere ‘Roman’ style, the upper and more ornate part by Sir James Thornhill in 1716.
5
Fragments of Judgement
High up on the wall, flying ‘nakeds’: fragments of a Last Judgment by Isaac Fuller, 1660-3.
6
Reredos
The reredos was originally built in 1493. The original statues were removed in the radical reformation of religion in 1537 and replaced with the present figures in 1872-7 by Sir Gilbert Scott, who also restored the elaborate framework of which most survives with its original colouring.
7
Marble Floor
The polychrome marble floor is modelled on the sanctuary floor of Westminster Abbey.
8
Sedilia
Three seats for the officiating clergy, with exquisite coloured miniature vaults above.
9
Anson Monument
A monument of Sir William Anson, Warden and reformer of the fellowship, his books are at the feet of his marble effigy.
10
Desks and Stalls
Original desks and stalls on either side of the inner chapel. They have crisply carved foliage ‘poppy heads’.
11
Eagle
Victorian brass eagle lectern holding the Bible, flanked by two gothic revival brass candlesticks designed by Pugin (1850), each originally holding one big candle.
12
Stained Glass
All the stained glass in the inner chapel is by Clayton and Bell (1877-9) with biblical heroes above and scenes from the Bible below, progressing historically from the screen to the reredos.
Chapel Guide
A new historical guide to the All Souls College Chapel was published in 2024. Written by The Very Revd Dr John Drury, Emeritus Fellow and All Souls College Chaplain (2003-2024), the guide covers the historical background of the chapel and its architecture, including the reredos, memorials and stained glass windows.