Duxford Chapel
Encyclopedia
Chapel
A chapel is a building used by Christians as a place of fellowship and worship. It may be part of a larger structure or complex, such as a church, college, hospital, palace, prison or funeral home, located on board a military or commercial ship, or it may be an entirely free-standing building,...
that was once part of the Hospital of St. John at Duxford
Duxford
Duxford is a village in Cambridgeshire, England, some ten miles south of Cambridge.-History:The village formed on the banks of the River Cam, a little below its emergence from the hills of north Essex...
, in Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire is a county in England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
.
Built in the 14th century, only the chapel survives today.
The Chapel of the Hospital of St John the Baptist is a small rectangular chapel which mostly dates to around 1337 and was built using flint rubble for the walls and limestone for the doorways and windows. Some sections of the building, including a small part of the southern wall, are considered to date from its 13th century predecessor, which formed part of a hospital.
The chapel is a single storey building. The main entrance is near the western end of the north wall. There are two similar doors in the south wall, one directly opposite the main entrance, the other (a priest's door) located towards the eastern end. The north wall is pierced by four windows, dated to circa 1330-1360, each containing a single light with tracery of trefoil design. The four windows on the southern side are of similar date and design, although each formerly contained two lights divided by a central mullion.
In 1548 the chapel was suppressed during the dissolution of chantries in the reign of Edward VI and sometime after 1554 the chapel was used as a barn.
The chapel was acquired and restored by the Ministry of Works in 1947-54 and is currently (2011) under the guardianship of English Heritage
English Heritage
English Heritage . is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...
.
There are some pictures and a description at the Cambridgeshire Churches website http://www.druidic.org/camchurch/churches/duxfordchapel.htm.