Cambridge - St. John's Chapel Prior to 1905

            The Postcard

A postally unused postcard bearing no publisher's name that was posted in Winchester using a ½d. stamp on Saturday the 30th. December 1905. The card was sent to:

Miss Frier,
8, Leinster Gardens,
Bayswater,
London W.

The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:

"Just to wish you a 
happy new year, with 
many thanks for your 
card.
Hoping you are well,
A. V."

St. John's College Chapel

The Chapel of St John's College is entered by the northwest corner of First Court. It was constructed between 1866 and 1869 to replace the smaller mediaeval chapel which dated back to the 13th. century. 

When in 1861 the college's administration decided that a new building was needed, Sir George Gilbert Scott was selected as the architect. He had recently finished work on the chapel at Exeter College, Oxford, and went about constructing the chapel of St John's College along similar lines, drawing inspiration from Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.

The benefactor Henry Hoare offered a down payment of £3,000 to finance the chapel's construction, in addition to which he promised to pay £1000 a year if a tower were added to Scott's original plans, which had included only a small flèche. 

Work began, but Hoare's death in a railway accident left the college £3,000 short of his expected benefaction. The tower was nevertheless completed, replete with louvres but without bells; it is based on Pershore Abbey. The tower is 163 feet (50 m) high.

The chapel's antechamber contains statues of Lady Margaret Beaufort who founded the college, and John Fisher. Inside the building is a stone-vaulted ante-chapel, at the end of which hangs a 'Deposition of the Cross' by Anton Rafael Mengs, completed around 1777. 

The misericords and panelling date from 1516, and were salvaged from the old chapel. The chapel contains some fifteenth-century glass, but most was cast by Clayton and Bell, Hardman, and Wailes, in around 1869. 

Freestanding statues and plaques commemorate college benefactors such as James Wood, Master 1815–39, as well as alumni including William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson and William Gilbert. 

The college tower can be climbed, and is accessed via a small door on First Court. However, this access was closed in 2016 for the duration so that important structural repairs could be carried out to the tower pinnacles and roof.

The chapel is surrounded on three sides by large tabernacles which form part of the external buttresses. Each contains a statue of a prominent college alumnus, alumna or benefactor. 

An Assassination in Idaho

So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?

Well, on the 30th. December 1905, in Caldwell, Idaho, a bomb killed former Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg.

As he was opening the gate to his front yard, a charge of dynamite was detonated, and Steunenberg, who had been governor from 1897 to 1901, died 20 minutes later. 

The subsequent investigation led to a trial against leaders of the Western Federation of Miners.

The Merry Widow

Also on that day, Franz Lehár's operetta The Merry Widow was first performed, premiering at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna.

Taken on: June 24, 2023

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