Oundle School Memorial Chapel

Oundle School Memorial Chapel

Built 1922-3 by architect A C Blomfield, this memorial chapel to the fallen of the First World War stands among the buildings of Oundle School, founded as a grammar school in 1556. The chapel is set in a large lawned area and represents one of the last generation of archaeologically correct Gothic Revival churches in the country, carefully recapturing the spirit and detail of 15th-century Perpendicular architecture.

The chapel is constructed in coursed limestone ashlar with clay tile roofs and lead coverings on the flat roofs of the porch and ambulatory. The design comprises a nave of six bays with north and south aisles, a west porch, southwest stair turret, chancel with three-sided apse and ambulatory, north vestries, and a south transept with southwest stair turret.

The exterior displays consistent 15th-century Perpendicular styling throughout. The nave is tall with a prominent clerestory, flanked by low lean-to aisles, all with embattled parapets (the western end of the nave having plain parapets). The clerestory is divided into bays by gabled buttresses, between which are large three-light windows with panel tracery beneath four-centred heads. The western end features a large five-light transomed window with panel tracery. Each aisle bay has a two-light square-headed window. The buttressing system spans the aisles and forms half arches internally. At the southwest corner stands a large polygonal stair turret with one-light windows and a demi-octagonal roof, providing access to the western organ gallery. The west porch is low with a flat roof. The eastern end terminates in a three-sided apse surrounded by an ambulatory with flying buttresses extending from its corners. The south transept features a polygonal bell-turret capped by a concave-sided spirelet.

The interior walls are partly plastered and whitened, partly bare limestone. The nave has an arcade with four-centred arches that die into responds; the piers carry moulded wall-shafts rising to short timber wall-posts beginning at the level of the clerestory window springing. Between the arcade arch-heads and clerestory windows runs a foliage frieze. The entrance to the chancel is marked by a tall two-centred chancel arch with a moulded head and demi-shafts in the responds. An impressive hammerbeam roof spans the nave. The aisles contain half-arches spanning each bay, expressing the buttressing system internally. The eastern apse is canted with three-light windows in each bay, below which the walls display blind cusped arcading. A gallery at the western end houses an organ.

The furnishings are simple, with richness reserved for a remarkable series of stained glass windows. The apse windows were designed by John Piper and Patrick Reyntiens and installed in 1955-6. These comprise nine large single figures which, as Sir Nikolaus Pevsner noted, are "not realistic, but recognizable, and in their entangled forms and deep colours emotionally potent without being too exacting. The nearest parallel is the German and Dutch Expressionism of the 1920s, but the style is undoubtedly quite independent." Piper also designed the hanging behind the altar. A series of windows representing the Seven Ages of Man, by Hugh Easton, dates from 1949. Additional stained glass by Mark Angus of Bath, commissioned for the aisles, west end of the nave, and west porch, was installed in 2002-5 and illustrates saints, angels, and Old and New Testament themes.

The chapel houses two organs. A classical instrument built in 1984 by Frobenius of Denmark, situated in the west gallery, has three manuals and pedals with thirty-five speaking stops and mechanical action. A second instrument, installed by Copeman Hart in 2000, is positioned at the eastern end of the chapel.

Arthur Conran Blomfield (1863-1935) had been employed at the school since at least 1907-8, when he was responsible for the Great Hall and Library. He remained the school's architect until his death, with his last work being a north extension to the Art School in 1934-5. Blomfield was the son of Sir Arthur Blomfield, a well-known Victorian architect noted for church work; Arthur senior had designed the Lower Chapel at Eton College (1889-91), also in Perpendicular style. The chapel is architecturally significant as a fine building, but of particular importance for its post-Second World War stained glass. The chancel windows by Piper and Reyntiens represent their first major stained glass commission and are of great importance in the history of the medium in post-war Britain.