3-011-495 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Views of Merton College, Oxford: the Chapel, 1864. 'The Chapel, a peculiar building of great beauty, being anciently the parish church of St. John the Baptist, continues to this day parochial as well as collegiate, according to the terms of its original appropriation to the society. The building consists of the choir, the transepts, and the tower, the latter originally intended to form the centre of a cross; but the nave and side aisles were never completed. Adjoining the church are the remains of the ancient Lady Chapel, St. Mary's, the old church. Though it was successively a chapel, or chantry, a sacristy, and a brewery, its architecture, in the style of Edward III., with traceried windows, is nearly perfect. The choir, or inner church, was erected about the year 1300...The chapel remained for a whole century unfinished, but was completed in 1424, chiefly at the expense, and probably from the design, of Dr. Kempe, then a Fellow of the college...The noble choir is lighted by fourteen windows, the glass of the same age as the stonework, and one of the best examples of the glazing of the Decorated Style now remaining in England'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.