We use cookies to improve your experience, some are essential for the operation of this site.

Holy Sepulchre, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire

Location
(52°12′30″N, 0°7′9″E)
Cambridge
TL 449 588
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Cambridgeshire
now Cambridgeshire
medieval not confirmed
now Ely
  • Ron Baxter

Please use this link to cite this page - https://www.crsbi.ac.uk/view-item?i=7956.

Find out how to cite the CRSBI website here.

Description

12thc. circular aisled nave with unlighted gallery and central ribbed dome on a lighted drum. To this is attached a rectangular two-bay aisled chancel, originally of the 13thc. The present appearance owes much to Salvin's restoration of 1841: particularly the chancel, the W doorway, the gallery capitals and the entire drum and dome of the nave, which replaced a 15thc. bell-storey. The church is built of ashlar.

History

The site was granted by Abbot Reinald of Ramsey (1114-30) to the members of the Fraternity of the Holy Sepulchre, an organisation about which nothing else is known. Such authentic work as remains suggests a date at the end of Reinalds' abbacy.

Features

Exterior Features

Doorways

Interior Features

Arcades

Nave

Wall passages/Gallery arcades

Gallery

Vaulting/Roof Supports

Nave
Other

Interior Decoration

String courses
Comments/Opinions

Very little of this sculpture is authentic work of the 12thc., probably only the nave arcade capitals and the capitals of the aisle vault responds (though not the corbels of the diagonal ribs). Perhaps the main interest of the building for the historian of sculpture is in the range of pseudo-Romanesque forms used in Salvin's restoration and enthusiastically approved by the Cambridge Camden Society.

Bibliography

N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England. Cambridgeshire, Harmondsworth 1954 (2nd ed. 1970), 230-31.