The Chapel of Brasenose College, Oxford, dedicated to St Hugh and St Chad, is a Grade I listed building dating from the seventeenth century and constructed during Brasenose's second wave of building, started under the principalship of Samuel Radcliffe. It is believed to have replaced an earlier chapel where the Senior Common Room now is, and includes items of silverware from around the date of foundation. The chapel is in a mixture of architectural styles – Gothic, neoclassical, and baroque – and has not proven uncontroversial for this reason. The current chaplain is The Reverend David Sheen.
Radcliffe having failed to start work during his lifetime, his will set aside money and instructions for the construction of the new chapel on the south side of the college. For this purpose materials were taken from college properties – particularly from St Mary's College, which provided the hammerbeam roof and other materials for the project. The chapel and library cost together £4,000 at a time when college income was £600 a year. Disputes over the will and other problems meant that work on the construction did not begin until 1656 (eight years after Radcliffe's death), and was managed by the college bursar. An "overseer" called John Jackson took control of the project, and is believed to be the chapel's primary designer. The chapel was consecrated in 1666, and must have been almost complete at that date.
Various alterations were made to the chapel after completion. Although repairs were undertaken in the meantime, the interior of the chapel was renovated (having fallen into a poor state) in 1819, and the exterior beginning in 1841. In 1892–3 a new organ was purchased and fitted, paid for by the then Principal Charles Buller Heberden; the current organ was installed in 1973, and rebuilt in 2002–3.
Early history
The original buildings took some time to finish; only the original gateway was lavished upon from the beginning. The buildings were only of a modest splendour: the hall was not completed until the end of the seventeenth century; the rooms economically decorated without wood panelling; the main quadrangle only of one story and garrets.Buchan (1898). p. 14.Crook (2008) p. 18–19. Although an earlier chapel is suspected, the area above Staircase I – now the Senior Common Room – was in use by 1521. It appears that the ecclesiastical furnishings promised by Smyth never arrived, and have been presumed taken by the college's first Visitor, Cardinal Wolsey. Although the chapel (or perhaps oratory) was plain, two chalices and two patens survived from the original three of each and have been identified as older than those of Corpus or Trinity, dating to the late fifteenth century.
The college successfully navigated through the reformation period, despite the fact that the college retained strong Catholic tendencies, and support for the reforms of Henry VIII and Edward VI was minimal. The chapel's dean, Thomas Hawarden, was opposed to the reforms, and was once called to the King's Privy Council to answer for his actions. Eventually, though, the continuing reforms were carried through; in particular, despite an exception for the University from the Act of Uniformity in 1549 for services other than mass, the enforcement of the Book of Common Prayer severely limited the ability of the college to maintain the old Catholic services whilst outwardly adopting the new reforms. The careful, and generally slow, path trod was exposed under Queen Mary, when five Fellows left the college over its failings to reinstate the full Catholic mass quickly enough.Crook (2008) pp. 27–29. Under Thomas Blanchard and Richard Harris the college finally accepted the religious reforms, and, moving into the later sixteenth century the college was responsible for housing several important figures of Protestantism: John Foxe, publicist, Christopher Goodman, protégé of Peter Martyr, Nicholas Grimald and Alexander Nowell.Crook (2008) pp. 30–31. Despite producing several Anglican and evangelical sympathisers, the college retained many Catholic sympathisers. Six Brasenose fellows were executed for their loyalty to the pope: John Shert, Thomas Cottam and Laurence Johnson at Tyburn in 1582, and Robert Anderson, Francis Ingleby and George Nichols thereafter, only smaller in number than St. John's.Crook (2008) pp. 32–35.
Next to the Hall, westwards, and on the first floor, was the original chapel, now the Senior Common Room, entered from Staircase I through an ante-chapel, or "Outward Chapel" as it is called in the list of Room Rents. It had tracery windows both on the north and south sides, the marks of which may still be seen. Those towards the quadrangle have been replaced by sash windows, those to the south are now blocked up.Allfrey (1909). p. 8. From 1604 to 1612, £173 19s. 2d. on chambers over the library, seats in the chapel and other things, part of a system of works.Allfrey (1909). p. 11.
Construction
The seventeenth century saw a second wave of building at Brasenose, started under the Principalship of Samuel Radcliffe. Under his leadership an attic story was added to Old Quad in the 1630s, and a new chapel and library both constructed between 1656 and 1666.Crook (2008). p. 45.Buchan (1898). p. 81. The work totalled some £4,000, achieved eventually despite Brasenose's previous money problems; in comparison, in 1680 college income was a sustainable £600 a year.Crook (2008). p. 81.
Preliminary
Having failed to achieve all his aims during his lifetime, in his will, read 24 April 1648, Radcliffe directs his executors:Allfrey (1909). p. 15. to sell Piddington within 1 year, give one years profits to the poor of Rochdale. This should return £1500, of which £1000 to the Chapel, & the material of the Coll. tenement by the Starre, to make the south side of the Quadrangle, £600 for a building on pillars betw. Mr. Sixsmiths Chamber & the Small Hall of Edmund; this will make a walk under cover the great want of Brasenose. "The Coll. tenement by the Starre" refers to St. Mary's College, situated to the west of Cornmarket Street, on the site of which Frewin Hall now stands; "the Starre" is now the site of the Clarendon Centre (once the Clarendon Hotel).
The college, accordingly, set to work to carry out the Principal's wishes. The sale of Piddington realized £1,850, two other legacies of £66 13s. 4d. and £15 respectively came in, and a subscription list shows that money continued to be given from time to time up to November 1671, when the total sum subscribed amounted to £4,775 4s. 4d. As well these legacies and subscriptions in cash, the college possessed a very valuable asset in the shape of the old buildings of St. Mary's College, which helped to keep costs down. This property was acquired in 1580 and in 1584 was let with the proviso that any unroofed buildings might be pulled down whenever required. In 1628, two masons and two carpenters viewed the buildings and other accessories which had been erected since it came into the hands of the college, and valued them at £1,480. Whether the college had any designs as to the ultimate fate of the chapel belonging to St. Mary's College before 1649 is unclear, but by this time its destruction was certainly planned, for the site was let to one John Kinge of the Inner Temple, reserving the right to "enter in with workmen and labourers, carts and horses, to pull down the old Chapel, and to carry away the materials to build the new Chapel according to the intencion of the last will and testament of Samuel Radcliffe". Even if a site for the new buildings had not been prescribed in the will, there would have been no difficulty in finding one.Allfrey (1909). pp. 15–16. The college had rented since 1530 and now finally acquired both Little St. Edmund Hall and the large piece of garden separating it from William Smyth's buildings, a plot well suited for the formation of a small quadrangle, with a "covered walk" on one side. The chapel could very well take the place of St. Edmund Hall itself, then to be pulled down, and be connected with the rest of the college by the cloister or covered walk, to which the Principal attached so much importance.Allfrey (1909). p. 16.
Both money and land, then, being provided, there seemed no reason why the work should not begin at once. Owing to various delays however, caused by disputes over the will, the sale of Piddington, the transfer of the site, and for various other reasons, an actual start was not made until 1656, so that eight years elapsed after the Principal's death before the preliminaries were all finally settled and operations could commence. The interval was employed in collecting timber and other material; when once begun, work went steadily forward without intermission until the chapel was close to complete. Preparations began soon after Principal Radcliffe's death, in 1651, when the selection and felling of timber in Mynchery Wood, the property of the college, was undertaken. The Bursar saw to this himself, and records his expenses: "given [that] day when I went to viewe [the] tymber to [the] 2 woodmen for their care 4s. and to [the] 6 workmen to drink 3s." Further items are given for felling and carting, and for sawing up at the college. By 9 July 1651 the last load of timber was drawn in, and all the carters received a "dinar and beverage bringing home [the] last timber from [the] woods to [the] college". Workmen's compensation is not forgotten: "to [the] poore man [that] had his leg broken in plucking down a tree 5s." In addition to all this, £84 was paid to Sir George Stonehouse for timber bought outright from him.Allfrey (1909). pp. 16–17.
Work begins It was not until 1656 that a real start on the chapel was made, when building operations began in earnest. The historical record of the construction, and the various problems that presented themselves, were recorded in a book entitled "The Book of Accounts for the New Buildings, in Brasenose College, in Oxford, begun Anno Dm 1656". Discovered in the Victorian era among the college's documents, it was originally the work of the then Bursar, Mr. Houghton, who seems to have had the entire management of the business side of the undertaking in his hands. His powers were formally recognized by the college on 4 November 1657, when it is decreed that Mr. Houghton to have sole charge of "finishing the new Chappell, and building a new Library upon a cloyster with buttresses ace. to ye modell and to receive such sumes of money as shall be issued out for that purpose out of the common chest for which he is to give an account to the Society once every month."Allfrey (1909). p. 17.
There was no contractor. The Bursar laid out the money thus entrusted to him in the purchase of materials, payment of wages, and so forth, and of all this the book is a complete and detailed record. Amounts paid for scaffold poles, stone, timber if required, tools, and all necessaries and materials for carrying out the work are put down. The names of all the workmen are entered, with their daily and weekly wages, notes are made of the important events during the progress of the works, such as the laying of the foundation stone of the chapel, the commencement of the cloister or library, and so on. Each page is totalled up, and signed by "Dan. Greenwood Pr[incipal]".Allfrey (1909). pp. 17–18.
The practical part, the superintendence of the building operations, and all that now falls to the architect and his clerk of the works, were in the hands of a Mr. John Jackson, the "overseer" as he is called in the book. Jackson was the overseer of the buildings, receiving wages of 20s. per week, undertaking the work on 24 March 1655. He was seemingly important, responsible for the model for the chapel roof, and he subsequently gave evidence in court as to the cost of the building.Allfrey (1909). p. 18.