In 1939 Lord Fairhaven created the Rose Garden, a quintessentially English feature. The Rose Garden produces spectacular colour and scent in the summer months*

*From the Anglesey Abbey Gardens guidebook

The central panel shows the legend of St. George killing a dragon outside the city of Antioch.

Below is his wife Sabra who has just borne three boys, one of whom is being carried off by a lion. This romantic addition to the legend was current in the sixteenth century.

St. George is the patron saint of England and of the Royal Order of the Garter. He was also venerated by warrior kings like Henry VIII.

Above St. George are reclining male nudes: a popular motif of renaissance art. God appears in blessing above them.

At the top and the bottom are the initials of Henry and Anne Boleyn: ‘H’ and ‘A’.

Down either side is a frieze of military trophies, appropriate to the general martial theme.

Several different carvers have worked on the stall. The central round panel and the figure of God above it are much finer than the rest of the work. *

*From a signboard next to the artwork

The floor at the east end of King’s College Chapel has been lowered to enable Rubens painting, the ‘Adoration of the Magi’ to be displayed beneath the great East Window.

This powerful masterpiece was painted by Sir Peter Paul Rubens in 1634 for the convent of the White Nuns at Louvain in Belgium, and was subsequently acquired by the Marquess of Lansdown when the Convent was suppressed in 1783. It came into the possession of the Grosvenor family and, in 1959, was sold at auction (for a the world record price). It was presented to the College in 1961 by the purchaser, Major A E Allnatt, who wished that it should again be an altar-piece in a great church.*

*From a guide to King’s College Chapel, Cambridge

The memorial chapel on the south side, was once the chantry chapel of John Argentein. Provost 1501-1507, who was physician to Edward IV and the young Edward V and his brother, the murdered princes in the Tower. His brass lies before the altar, and in this chapel there is also a record of the Provosts of King’s through the centuries. The chapel was converted into a war memorial in 1920-1921 and renamed All Souls Memorial Chapel. A tablet recalls college members who died in the two world wars, among them the poet Rupert Brooke.*

*From a guide to King’s College Chapel, Cambridge

King’s College Chapel is arguably the most magnificent example of late medieval English architecture in the entire country. Guidebooks run out of superlatives to describe the richness of its interior decoration and the sumptuous flowing lines of the structural elements.

The Chapel was founded by Henry VI in 1441 as part of his grand scheme for creating at King’s a college to take graduates of Eton, founded the previous year. The chapel was intended to form one side of a grand court but the residential ranges planned for the other three sides of the court were never completed.

Henry compelled landowners in the town to sell him plots along the river, and he proceded to pull down residences, shops, and even a parish church to make room for his creation. Henry intended his chapel to be without equal.

He employed his royal architect, Reginald of Ely, to draw up plans for a church along the lines of a cathedral choir, and Henry himself laid the foundation stone of the new chapel on 25 July 1446.
Building continued until 1461, through the opening hostilities of the Wars of the Roses. But when Henry VI was taken prisoner by thefuture Edward IV, workmen packed up their tools and went home. It is said that a half-cut stone left by the workmen was eventually used as the foundation stone for the Gibb’s building in 1724.

The extent of this early building phase is clearly noticeable. The builders used white Tadcaster limestone, and the upper limit of this stone can be traced, particularly in the butresses. Very little building was done under Edward IV, but Richard II’s short reign saw the first 5 bays of the chapel completed and put into daily use.

Henry VII provided the necessary funds to turn the half-finished chapel into a complete building. The chest which carried Henry’s initial gift of money is preserved in the Chapel Exhibition in the northern side chapel. The main structure was finished in 1515, and Henry VIII funded the interior woodwork and screen.

The magnificent – there is no other word to describe it – fan vaulting was completed in just 3 years, between 1512-1515 by master mason John Wastell.

The chapel surprisingly escaped major damage during the Civil War, despite the fact that Cromwell’s troops used it for a training ground in inclement weather. It is possible that Cromwell himself, being a Cambridge student, gave orders to spare the chapel. Most of the stained glass was removed during WWII, and the Chapel again escaped damage.

King’s College was founded in 1441 by Henry VI, who had founded Eton College (qv) in 1440 and subsequently linked the school to King’s in order to supply college scholars. King’s College chapel was begun in 1446. Following Henry’s deposition in 1461, the college’s income was much reduced, and the only building of his great scheme to be built was the chapel, which took about a century to complete. The initial court, Old Court, was built north of the chapel (this area, since 1829, part of the Old Schools precinct owned by the University), with the intention that it should be superseded by the great scheme, of which the chapel would have been the north side of the resultant court. Building was slow and piecemeal throughout the following centuries, Front Court not being finished until the early C19. The site remains (1998) in college use.

St John’s distinctive Great Gate follows the standard contemporary pattern employed previously at Christ’s College and Queens’ College. The gatehouse is crenelated and adorned with the arms of the foundress Lady Margaret Beaufort. Above these are displayed her ensigns, the Red Rose of Lancaster and Portcullis. The college arms are flanked by curious creatures known as yales, mythical beasts with elephants’ tails, antelopes’ bodies, goats’ heads, and swivelling horns. Above them is a tabernacle containing a socle figure of St John the Evangelist, an Eagle at his feet and symbolic, poisoned chalice in his hands. The fan vaulting above is contemporary with tower, and may have been designed by William Swayne, a master mason of King’s College Chapel.

This ancient parish church is an Anglo-Saxon foundation dating from around 1020, when Canute was King of England. It is dedicated to St Benedict and has been a place of Christian worship for nearly a thousand years. Michael Ramsey, who was to become Archbishop of Canterbury, was vicar here in 1938. The church was staffed from 1945 and 2005 by the society of St Francis, who established the pattern of daily worship following monastic practice.*

For many years St Bene’t’s has been firmly linked with the history of change-ringing, as the famous 17th-century campanologist, Fabian Stedman, is believed to have been the parish clerk here. However, this has been somewhat shaken by the discovery that Stedman appears to have been in London at the same time, suggesting that St Bene’t’s Stedman might be a coincidence rather than the same man**

*From a church leaflet

**From 111 Places in Cambridge that you shouldn’t miss

Snowy Farr lived in Oakington and was a well known fundraiser for blind charities.

When Snowy retired he decided he wanted to help raise money for charity, so he stood on Market Hill collecting with his flowing white beard and dressed himself in a antique military uniform with an eccentric looking stripped top hat.

He became a instant success and decided to carry on doing more fundraising, but started to bring some friends with him which included a cat and some white mice.

As the years went by his companions grew to include a cockerel, a duck, pigeons, rabbits, guinea pigs and a goat.

Snowy trained his cat to sit on the top of his hat and the mice would run around the rim.