Tim Ayers & J.P.D. Cooper 
St Stephen’s Chapel and the Palace of Westminster [PDF ebook] 

Traces the history of a magnificent landmark in the history of late medieval art and architecture.



As the principal royal chapel in the medieval Palace of Westminster, St Stephen’s was at the centre of worship for the Plantagenets, a major collegiate foundation of a new kind for the mid-fourteenth century, and a community of national significance in the development of sacred polyphony. During the Reformation, the Chapel was converted into a meeting place for the House of Commons, which it remained for 300 years, shaping the development of British political culture. Its influence continues to be felt today in the design of the Commons chamber. Following the disastrous Palace fire of 1834, the site of the upper chapel was rebuilt as St Stephen’s Hall, a gallery of national history, leading to the Central Lobby of the Houses of Parliament.



This book tells the story of St Stephen’s Chapel, from the thirteenth century to the present day. Sixteen chapters explain the building and its religious life, its political significance, and the antiquarian rediscovery of its former magnificence. Contributors highlight the interaction between visual and political culture; the contexts of kingship and international rivalry that informed the foundation and construction of chapel and college; the effect of medieval St Stephen’s on the development of the House of Commons; the adaptation and re-use of St Mary Undercroft; and the creation of St Stephen’s Hall in the 1840s. The hall would become a site of Suffragette activism in the campaign for Votes for Women, marked today by a monumental artwork
New Dawn, which is the focus of the final chapter.

Table of Content

List of Illustrations

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations


Introduction: St Stephen’s Chapel Westminster and its Legacies, 1292 to the Present

Tim Ayers, J. P. D. Cooper, Elizabeth Hallam Smith, and Caroline Shenton


Part I St Stephen’s Chapel and College in the Middle Ages


St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster: Presence and Absence

Tim Ayers


The Plantagenet Purpose: St Stephen’s Chapel and English Kingship, 1272-1377

W. Mark Ormrod


St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster: From a King’s to a Collegiate Chapel

John Harper


War, Politics, and Architecture: Iterative Design at St Stephen’s Chapel, 1292-1348

James Hillson


St Stephen’s College, 1348 to 1548

Elizabeth Biggs


The Imagery of St Stephen’s Chapel: An Overview

Paul Binski


The Iconography of the St Stephen’s Chapel Painting Fragments

Jane Spooner


Performing Spaces: The Art of Polyphony Within and Beyond St Stephen’s

Magnus Williamson


Part II St Stephen’s and the House of Commons


St Stephen’s under the Tudors: From Royal Chapel to Commons Chamber

J. P. D. Cooper


The Wren Commons Chamber

Murray Tremellen


Architecture and Revolution at St Stephen’s and Beyond

Paul Seaward


Antiquaries, Architects, and St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster, 1790-1837

Rosemary Hill


St Stephen’s, Temporary Accommodation, and the New House of Commons

Rebekah Moore


‘Going to St Stephen’s’: The Gothic Legacy of the Chapel in the Nineteenth and

Twentieth Centuries

Mark Collins


St Mary Undercroft, 1548-1870: ‘a dull sort of ecclesiastical lumber-room’?

Elizabeth Hallam Smith


From Valhalla to New Dawn: Commemoration and Gender in the

Afterlife of St Stephen’s

Caroline Shenton and Melanie Unwin


Index

About the author

CAROLINE SHENTON was formerly Director of the Parliamentary Archives, UK.