INTRODUCTORY.

The consecration of the new Chapel of the Holy Spirit by the Bishop of London, on Tuesday, the 25th May, 1909, marks the completion of the large scheme for the enlargement and beautifying of St. Peter’s, upon which the Church Council has been earnestly engaged for nearly three years. The new organ has already been very fully described in the “Dedication Service” booklets of last year, and it has been suggested that some description of the chapel may be of interest to many who worship at St. Peter’s. Those who read it must pardon the writer if from inexperience or lack of knowledge he has failed adequately or accurately to describe it, or if, in describing it, he may have been driven by the depth of his own feelings to strike too personal a note.

The chapel has been erected to form at once an integral portion of the church and a feature distinctive in itself. Ancient precedents for such treatment are numerous, wherein a richness of material or ornament marks the chapel as a pious memorial or its erection as an act of devotion. In this case it is attached to the north side of the chancel, and opens from the north transept by a wide and simply moulded archway in harmony with the chancel arch. A short neck, lighted by a long lancet, connects it somewhat more richly with the chancel.

Occasion has been taken to gain light in this corner of the building, and the exigencies of lighting in a confined area have largely controlled the form of the chapel. It consists upon the ground floor of three bays, in the upper part of two only. The east window is thrown back from the party wall, and carried by a rich segmental arch at the end of the second bay. The recess thus formed at the east end shelters the altar and reredos under a panelled vault into which the canopies grow.

The two loftier bays of the chapel have LIERNE and slightly domical vaults, each compartment intersected by the figure of a cross formed by the ribbing, which is brought down in an Ogee point to the wall rib. The springers are arranged to form canopies over a series of sixteen figures—Angels, Apostles, Prophets, Martyrs and Holy Church, the Archangel Gabriel and the Blessed Virgin in the Annunciation flanking the east window. The head of our Lord crowns the eastern vault, and in the surrounding bosses angels bear the emblems of the Passion. The Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, surrounded by angels bearing the insignia of the various learned societies with which the donors are associated, decorate the western bay.

Upon the walls the ornament is confined to the lower parts, which are richly arcaded on the north side, and occupied by Sedilia and Piscina on the south. A bronze railing with gates separates the chapel from the transept, and access is given to the chapel from the clergy vestry by a narrow carved oak door. With the exception of the mullions of the windows which are of Doulting stone, only fine Bath stone has been used in the interior of the chapel, the exterior being finished in Doulting and Kentish Rag.

The above is a concise general description of the chief features of the chapel drawn from notes kindly furnished by Mr. W. D. Caröe (the architect), of 3, Great College Street, Westminster, to whose designs and under whose supervision the chapel has been erected. So far, therefore, there is not much difficulty. The difficulty begins when we commence to try and describe the many details of the chapel interior. It is almost impossible to convey adequately to a reader all the many thoughts and ideas that have been worked up into and enwrapped in the carved stone or painted glass or mosaic that will go with other things to complete the little chapel. There is much that is very personal about it, perhaps too deep for words, but the spirit of the chapel may be the more easily comprehended, if only those who read this will remember three things. In the first place, it is a morning chapel primarily, nay, essentially, intended for the administration of the Holy Communion. In the second place, it is to be dedicated to the Holy Spirit, “the Spirit of Truth,” the promised Comforter by whose light the hearts of all faithful people were to be taught and all the sayings of our Lord Jesus Christ were to be brought into remembrance. Lastly, it is a chapel which has been built to the glory and praise of God, and as a memorial by children and descendants to their beloved parents and forefathers, of whom many, though born in New England and educated at her Universities of Harvard and Yale, have always valued and kept close the ties that bound them to that older England in which their forefathers were born, and to those older Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in which their forefathers were nurtured. Those who in the days before the Commonwealth went forth from the Old England across the broad Atlantic to lay the foundations of a Commonwealth not unworthy to be called by the name of New England carried with them from Oxford and from Cambridge the spirit of places where Culture was not as yet largely dissociated from Religion, and where faithful regard was as yet paid to a founder’s injunction: “Religionis puritatem ac vitæ ad posteros nostros propagare.” Their descendants may be pardoned if, looking back through the centuries to the great Universities of those days, and regarding them as centres not merely of culture, but also of religious light and truth, they picture them as being the instruments by which the Holy Spirit has moved the world, and have tried in the vaulting of the chapel roof to transmute this idea into carved stone.

With these explanatory remarks it may now be possible to enable the reader the more easily to catch the spirit of the place.