Cambridge No. 1 / Grentebrige

Image and permission received from the author (e-mail of 10 July 2021)

Results: 19 records

Click to view images and/or subjects

design element - motifs - cartouche

Scene Description: several of them of different shapes and with different decorations

Image Source: digital photograph 6 June 2021 by Colin Smith

Copyright Instructions: Image and permission received from the author (e-mail of 10 July 2021)

design element - motifs - floral and foliage

Image Source: digital photograph taken by David Ross, Britain Express [www.britainexpress.com/attractions.htm?attraction=1559] [accessed 31 March 2016]

Copyright Instructions: Standing permission

design element - motifs - floral and foliage

Image Source: digital photograph 6 June 2021 by Colin Smith

Copyright Instructions: Image and permission received from the author (e-mail of 10 July 2021)

design element - motifs - moulding - graded

Image Source: digital photograph taken by David Ross, Britain Express [www.britainexpress.com/attractions.htm?attraction=1559] [accessed 31 March 2016]

Copyright Instructions: Standing permission

design element - motifs - roll moulding

Scene Description: foliated moulding

Image Source: digital photograph 6 June 2021 by Colin Smith

Copyright Instructions: Image and permission received from the author (e-mail of 10 July 2021)

design element - motifs - roll moulding

Scene Description: braided moulding

Image Source: digital photograph 6 June 2021 by Colin Smith

Copyright Instructions: Image and permission received from the author (e-mail of 10 July 2021)

inscription

Scene Description: the date "1623" in a cartouche, right panel

Image Source: edited detail of a digital photograph 6 June 2021 by Colin Smith

Copyright Instructions: Image and permission received from the author (e-mail of 10 July 2021)

view of church exterior - northeast view

Scene Description: Source caption: "Pre mobile phone communication systems in Cambridge"

Image Source: digital photograph taken 21 February 2016 by Richard Humphrey [www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4835329] [accessed 31 March 2016]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0

view of church exterior - south view

Scene Description: Source caption: "View of Great St Mary's church in Cambridge by David Loggan, published 1690 -- This scan by Sanders of Oxford Ltd, from whom a copy of the original print may be available."

Image Source: digital scan from a print in David Loggan's Cantabrigia Illustrata (1690) [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Great_St_Mary%27s,_Cambridge_by_Loggan_1690_-_sanders_26302.jpg] [accessed 31 March 2016]

Copyright Instructions: PD

view of church exterior - southwest view

Image Source: digital photograph taken 29 April 2015 by Jean-Christophe Benoist [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cambridge_-_Church_of_St_Mary_the_Great.jpg] [accessed 31 March 2016]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-3.0

view of church exterior - west portal

Image Source: edited digital photograph taken 1 August 2013 by David Dixon [www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3586537] [accessed 31 March 2016]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0

view of church exterior - west tower - detail

Image Source: digital photograph 6 June 2021 by Colin Smith

Copyright Instructions: Image and permission received from the author (e-mail of 10 July 2021)

view of church exterior - west tower - west view - detail

Scene Description: the 17thC clock is located on the west side of the tower, above the west portal

Image Source: digital photograph 6 June 2021 by Colin Smith

Copyright Instructions: Image and permission received from the author (e-mail of 10 July 2021)

view of church exterior in context - southwest view

Image Source: digital photograph 6 June 2021 by Colin Smith

Copyright Instructions: Image and permission received from the author (e-mail of 10 July 2021)

view of church interior - detail

Image Source: digital photograph 6 June 2021 by Colin Smith

Copyright Instructions: Image and permission received from the author (e-mail of 10 July 2021)

view of font

Image Source: digital photograph 6 June 2021 by Colin Smith

Copyright Instructions: Image and permission received from the author (e-mail of 10 July 2021)

view of font and cover in context

Image Source: photograph taken by David Cotton

Copyright Instructions: Permission received (e-mail of August 2004)

view of font and cover in context

Scene Description: the font in the southwest corner of the nave

Image Source: digital photograph 6 June 2021 by Colin Smith

Copyright Instructions: Image and permission received from the author (e-mail of 10 July 2021)

view of font and cover in context

Image Source: digital photograph 6 June 2021 by Colin Smith

Copyright Instructions: Image and permission received from the author (e-mail of 10 July 2021)

INFORMATION

FontID: 01412CAM

Church/Chapel: Church of St. Mary the Great with St. Michael [aka Great St. Mary's, University Church]

Church Patron Saints: St. Mary the Virgin & St. Michael

Church Location: The University Church, Senate House Hill, Cambridge CB2 3PQ, United Kingdom -- Tel.: +44 1223 741720

Country Name: England

Location: Cambridgeshire, East

Directions to Site: Cambridge is 78 km N of London. Great St. Mary's is in the city centre, on Market Hill

Ecclesiastic Region: Diocese of Ely

Historical Region: Hundred of Cambridge

Font Location in Church: Inside the church, in the W end of the nave, near the W entrance [cf. FontNotes]

Date: 1632

Century and Period: 17th century(early), Carline

Workshop/Group/Artisan: heraldic font

Credit and Acknowledgements: We are grateful to Colin Smith for his photographs of this church and font, and to David Cotton for his photograph of this font

Church Notes: St Mary the Great with St Michael is both a parish church in the Cambridge Deanery and the University Church of the University of Cambridge -- it occupies an island site in the heart of Cambridge, between the Senate House and the market and in view of King's College.

Font Notes: Click to view font notes

There are five entries for Cambridge [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/TL4458/cambridge/] [accessed 29 March 2016], none of which mentions cleric or church in it. A late pseudo-Gothic, 1632, font, one of the better kind, whose author, according to Bond (1908), would have deserved being "put in the stocks" by any Christian parish in the 15th century. Bond (ibid.) further claims that "hanging would not have been good enough for those who wrought the fonts of Tuxford", Bottesford or Wensley! Noted and illustrated in the RCHM (Cambridge, 1959) with a 17th-century cover. The Victoria County History (Cambridge..., vol. 3, 1959) notes: "The Church of St. Mary the Virgin, by the Market, known after 1352 as Great St. Mary's and commonly called the University Church, was the only church whose patronage was in the Crown in 1279. It is first mentioned in 1205 [...] St. Mary's was completely rebuilt between 1478 and 1519;" no font here mentioned in the VCH entry. Pevsner (1970) writes: "Font. Still entirely in the Perp[endicular] tradition, although the date is 1632 and the ornament corresponds to that date. It has strapwork and typical thin leaf scrolls. The plain cover is of the same time." The font is octagonal and overly ornate, decorated with foliage and shields on the vertical basin sides; the chamfer is also octagonal but rounded and, again, very ornate, as is octagonal the stem of the base -more foliage. The Gentleman's Magazine issue for July-Dec. 1841 includes an irate letter to Mr. Urban the editor, by "V. M. C. Schol.", in which, amid a barrage of complaints about the barbarous treatment of the interior of the church, notes: "the font removed from its appropriate position at the west end of the church, and set up in an out-of-the-way corner, at the east end of the south aisle; to see a huge building, more resembling a tower than a pulpit, with all the array of reading desk and clerk's desk, erected where the font shoud have stood; and indeed frequently serving instead of it, as I hear that generally, at a baptism, a small earthenware basin is placed on the clerk's desk [italised], and the sacrament administered there!"

COORDINATES

Church Latitude & Longitude Decimal: 52.205311, 0.117974

Church Latitude & Longitude DMS: 52° 12′ 19.12″ N, 0° 7′ 4.7″ E

UTM: 31U 303074 5787789

MEDIUM AND MEASUREMENTS

Material: stone, type unknown

Font Shape: octagonal (mounted)

Basin Interior Shape: round

Basin Exterior Shape: octagonal

INSCRIPTION

Inscription Language: numbers

Inscription Notes: The date appears in Arabic numerals inside a cartouche

Inscription Location: in a basin side panel

Inscription Text: "1632"

Inscription Source: Image source in Majestas (March 1998)

LID INFORMATION

Date: 1632 / 17th century

Material: wood,

Notes: much restored, according to the RCHM (Cambridge, 1959)

REFERENCES

Victoria County History [online], University of London, 1993-. Accessed: 2016-03-31 00:00:00. URL: https://www.british-history.ac.uk.

Bond, Francis, Fonts and Font Covers, London: Waterstone, 1985 c1908

Broughton, Lynne, "Great St Mary's font", March 1998, Majestas, 1998

Great Britain. Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the city of Cambridge, London: H.M. Stationary Office, 1959

Pevsner, Nikolaus, Cambridgeshire, Harmonsworth: Penguin, 1970