Fitzwilliam College, Chapel

Summary

The chapel of Fitzwilliam College in the University of Cambridge, constructed to the designs of MacCormac, Jamieson and Prichard (MJP), 1990-1991.

Reasons for Designation

The chapel of Fitzwilliam College in the University of Cambridge, constructed to the designs of MacCormac, Jamieson and Prichard (MJP), 1990-1991, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as an important work by MJP, a celebrated architectural practice;
* as an unusual example of a post-modern place of worship;
* for the conceptual strength of the building’s non-denominational architectural themes, which include the ascent from darkness to light, and the worship space as a floating ship;
* for the building’s deliberate relationship to the gardens beyond;
* for the building’s influence on later works, especially the Ruskin Library of Lancaster University.

Historic interest:

* as a progression of nearly eight centuries of college construction within the University of Cambridge;
* for its place in the highly significant body of post-Second World War university architecture in England.

Group value:

* for its functional relationship with the Grade II listed Grove, Central Hall Building, and New Court at Fitzwilliam College.

History

In 1869 Cambridge University established a Non-Collegiate Students’ Board for students who could not afford traditional college membership. By 1950 this had become ‘Fitzwilliam House’ and was facing an existential crisis as Government grants provided fully funded university places to more students than ever before. Fitzwilliam responded by attaining formal collegiate status within the University, and obtaining funds from the University Grants Committee (UGC) for the construction of a purpose built college in the west of Cambridge.

The site was ‘The Grove’, a Regency villa built in 1814. By the 1950s it was owned by Winifred Armstrong who provided the land needed to begin the college. However, Mrs Armstrong retained a life interest in the house and around three acres of gardens at the centre of the college site. They would be fenced off from the college until her death in 1988.

Denys Lasdun secured the role of architect, submitting his first designs in 1958. Construction was underway between 1960 and 1967 on the first phases of the college. His designs had to account for the stringent UGC budget and the physical obstacle of the Grove and its gardens. Neighbouring colleges Murray Edwards (formerly New Hall) and Churchill had twice and three times the budget for student rooms respectively in comparison with Fitzwilliam.

Lasdun’s masterplan allowed for almost all of the traditional features of a Cambridge college to be delivered from the very first phase, whilst also allowing for the continual expansion of the campus as the rest of the site became available. His ‘snail shell’ masterplan sought to create an orthogonal spiral of unenclosed courts, allowing every building to have views of the hall. At the centre of the spiral Lasdun envisaged a chapel, placed perpendicular to P Staircase. The 1959 masterplan showed the chapel standing in a pool of water on its east and south sides.

The plan was not fully realised. In 1969 Lasdun himself proposed a U-shaped court between the first phases and Storey’s Way. The chapel was to be relocated to stand in front of P Staircase, on the north side, and was a square-shaped building standing on a stepped plinth. The scheme was impossible at that date in light of the continued presence of the Grove. Lasdun finally parted ways with the college in 1982 in opposition to a scheme that would have added an extra storey to his residential block. The completion of his Fitzwilliam masterplan, or indeed any place of worship in his entire career, would never come.

The college finally began to expand again in 1984-1986 with the creation of New Court. The architects, MacCormac, Jamieson and Prichard (MJP), also produced a revised masterplan for the college. The new plan increased the density of accommodation by rejecting the snail-shell concept and building against the perimeter of the site.

MJP returned to Fitzwilliam 1990-1991 for the creation of the college’s first purpose-built chapel. The site was a slight departure from Lasdun’s intended chapel location: rather than standing perpendicular to P-Staircase, it would continue its eastern trajectory and form a termination to the residential block. As at New Court, MJP continued the brown brick and banded storeys of Lasdun’s earlier structures, whilst managing to create a building with a clearly separate identity.

Its drum-like form is broken open at the east end by a massive window, forming an axial relationship with a mature plane tree, and The Grove beyond. Internally, MacCormac married square structural features with the circular form. The ecclesiastical term ‘nave’ has been literally translated as a ship so that upper part of the chapel has the curving sides and swollen belly of a boat. MacCormac described the two-storey chapel as ‘an ark suspended between the upper and lower world’.

The building received a great deal of positive critical attention and was descrcibed in 1994 as one of the best C20 interiors in Cambridge. The Architects' Journal and the Architectural Review described the site variously as MacCormac's 'most impressive building', 'remarkably well-built', possessing an 'inspiring quality of light' and 'a calm and reverential atmosphere': 'a boat sail[ing] in its bath of light'.

The chapel has been little altered since its construction, except through the structural impact of the tree that forms its external altarpiece. The building has moved dramatically away from P-Staircase and is expected to undergo major structural remediation (2024).

Shortly after the completion of the chapel, the college held a competition for the design of a new conference centre at the south-east corner of the site. Wilson Court (1994) was designed by van Heyningen and Haward and continued some of the Post-Modern themes developed by MJP.

Richard MacCormac (1938–2014) was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and at the Bartlett School in London. After stints with Powell and Moya and Lyons, Israel and Ellis, he joined the London Borough of Merton in 1967, designing acclaimed groups of low rise housing which developed the ‘perimeter planning’ concepts first advanced by Martin and March at the Cambridge School of Architecture. MacCormac partnered with Peter Jamieson in 1972 and was later joined by David Prichard to form MJP, with MacCormac in the role of principal designer and spokesman. Their early focus was on housing schemes, including extensive estates at Newport, Gwent, at Milton Keynes, and at Shadwell Basin (Grade II listed, 1986-1988, their only listed building). The 1983 Sainsbury Building at Worcester College, Oxford, marked a breakthrough for the practice. It was swiftly followed by projects at Fitzwilliam College (their first in Cambridge), Trinity College and Trinity Hall in Cambridge, as well as Wadham, St John’s and Balliol Colleges in Oxford. Later buildings include work at Warwick and Lancaster Universities, a new centre for Cable and Wireless outside Coventry, and Southwark underground station. MacCormac was knighted in 2001.

Details

The chapel of Fitzwilliam College in the University of Cambridge, constructed to the designs of MacCormac, Jamieson and Prichard (MJP), 1990-1991.

MATERIALS: the chapel is constructed of blue-brown brick with white concrete bands. Internally the building has a concrete structure and white oak fittings.

PLAN: the building is axially planned to continue the line of Lasdun’s accommodation blocks, and has a traditional liturgical orientation facing east. There are two storeys internally; a lower chapel in the undercroft and the principal worship space above. The upper storey has a cruciform layout within the building’s drum shaped volume.

EXTERIOR: the chapel is a tall drum that stands between Lasdun’s residential P Staircase and the gardens of the Grove. A narrow two storey opening separates it from Lasdun’s block. The archway itself echoes his earlier entrance way between O and P, now (2024) partially infilled. The access to the chapel is glazed in its upper storey, lighting the rear of the chapel.

The north and south walls explode outwards and arc to give the building its circular form. Bands of white concrete blocks follow the expressed floor slabs of Lasdun’s residential buildings. Pairs of slit windows are the only break in these curved surfaces.

The east end has a solid base of curving, rough concrete bands. Standing on this is a projecting, two-storey grid of clear glass, set back from the north and south walls, and glazed even across its roof.

INTERIOR: the chapel is entered from the ground floor, where symmetrical stairways lead upwards to the principal worship space, or a central doorway leads down into the lower chapel or undercroft. This lower space is walled in rough-faced concrete. The ceiling bows downwards and is boarded with planks of white oak so that it resembles the hull of a ship floating above. The curving east wall is framed by two concrete pylons that lean towards the outer walls and receive the weight of the structure above. To the north and south there are re-sited stained-glass windows and memorials from the First and Second World Wars.

Ascending to the first-floor worship space, the stairs follow the curve of the outer walls. The balustrade of the upper level leans outwards, so that the chapel feels like the upper deck of a ship. This, and all of the timberwork including the organ, is made of white oak. At the crossing of the cruciform plan is a cubic volume framed in polished concrete columns and beams. To the north and south sides the oak roof fans outwards, supported by wooden struts from a concrete cill, and is lit from above by roof lights.

At the east end, the chapel looks out towards a mature plane tree, and to the Grove beyond. A wide oak altar or communion table forms a liturgical focus. It has a curving underside and rests on stanchions of polished steel fixed into concrete blocks. Beyond this, the balustrade conceals a third staircase providing access to the vestry and undercroft for the chaplain.

Sources

Books and journals
Bradley, Simon, Pevsner, Nikolaus, The Buildings of England: Cambridgeshire (2014), 96-99
Holy Vessel in Architects' Journal, ,Vol. 196 (1), (1 July 1992), 25-33
Working details. Internal joinery: Chapel in Architects' Journal, ,Vol. 196 (1), (1 July 1992), 35-37
Cambridge classic in Architects' Journal, ,Vol. 194 (6), (7 August 1991), 22-25
Taylor, N, Booth, P, Cambridge New Architecture (1970), 150-154
Special issue. Building faith. in Architectural Review, ,Vol. 1142, (April 1992), 24-80
Special Issue. Design for Worship. in Architecture & Design, ,Vol. 14 (6), (Nov/Dec 1997), 23-123
Lepine, A, Charlton, S, Harwood, E, Price, C, 100 Churches 100 Years (2019), 137

Websites
Building Fitzwilliam College, architects' oral histories: 2013, accessed 23/01/2024 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8hLkEJRM1s
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: "MacCormac, Sir Richard Cornelius", by Andrew Saint, 2018, accessed 23/01/2024 from https://doi.org/10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.108981

Other
“Building Fitzwilliam – The Lasdun Years” – History of College Architecture, exhibition material: 2023

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