Cambridge

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill GREAT SAINT MARY'S CHURCH: CLARE HALL: PEMBROKE COLLEGE The Church of St. Mary the Great, of which the chancel and tower were shown in our last illustration, demands a more detailed consideration than we were enabled to give to it when describing the Market Place. It is not only the largest, but on many grounds the most interesting, church in Cambridge. Though completed at a time when medieval architecture was declining, and though we see it now in a somewhat mutilated condition?without the vestry that once stood on the south side of the chancel, and without the tracery that once filled the windows of the aisles, it is still a dignified building. To members of the University it is hallowed by associations that go far to efface any architectural shortcomings; but the most indifferentobserver could hardly fail to admire the lofty nave, admirably lighted by the twenty windows of the clerestory, and still preserving its ancient roof of carved oak; or to acknowledge that the tower, though inferior in beauty to that of the sister church at Oxford, is yet massive and well- proportioned. The first connection of the church with the University is lost in that obscurity which necessarily hangs over events separated from our own times by five or six centuries. In all probability it was an arrangement dictated, in the first instance, by convenience, and subsequently maintained by respect for ancient usage. And, when we find secular ceremonies habitually held in St. Mary's, we must remember that the peculiar respect with which churches are now regarded is a sentiment wholly of modern growth. Throughout the Middle Ages cathedrals and churches, being the largest buildings in the towns, were used for all purposes for which a large covered space was required. The altar alone was regard...