The sculptures of Thessaloniki: 5, the Jewish Memorial by Konstantinos Lentaris, Aristotele University of Thessaloniki

The Jewish Memorial at the Aristotele University of Thessaloniki, on the site of the city’s ancient Jewish cemetery (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I was recalling earlier this week how I have come across a collection of photographs of modern sculptures in the streets and parks of Thessaloniki and how I realised I had written little about these sculptures over the years.

Rather than leave the photographs and memories in forgotten files on my laptop or in the cloud, I have started an occasional series of blog postings on some of those modern sculptures I have rediscovered in Thessaloniki. Over the next few weeks, I am inviting you to join me in a minor odyssey of recovery and discovery as my mind wanders through Thessaloniki, looking at these sculptures again.

The sculptures I have looked at this week include the monumental statues of Aristotle, Alexander the Great and Eleftherios Venizelos.

Thessaloniki has a number of sculptures and works of public art that reflect the city’s Jewish history, including the Holocaust Memorial, ‘Menorah in Flames 2’, by the Serbian Jewish sculptor Nandor Glid in Eleftherias Square, and the ‘Stolpersteine’ or ‘stumbling stones’, 10x10 cm brass-topped cobblestones by the German artist Gunter Demnig to honour local Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

The Jewish Monument of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki honours the city’s Jewish community and is a reminder of the Jewish cemetery on the site that was destroyed by the Nazis. The monument on the campus also recognises the destruction of the old Jewish cemetery during the Nazi occupation of Greece.

The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης (ΑΠΘ, AUTh), often known as the University of Thessaloniki, is the largest university in Greece. It was founded in 1925 and was the first Greek university founded outside of Athens.

The university established a chair in Jewish Studies in 1929, but it was abolished in 1936 under the Metaxas regime. The Jewish cemetery in Thessaloniki was destroyed during the Nazi occupation of Greece, the university campus was built partly on the remains of the cemetery and uprooted gravestones were used as building materials in the university.

The campus of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki was built partly on the remains of the Jewish cemetery and uprooted gravestones were used as building materials (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Thessaloniki was once known as the ‘Mother of Israel’ and the ‘Jerusalem of the Balkans.’ For over three centuries, it was the largest Sephardic Jewish city in the world and the only major European city where Jews formed the majority. But, in the space of five months in 1943, the Nazis erased all that almost completely.

There have been Jews in Thessaloniki since the time of Alexander the Great. But the story of the city’s modern Jewish community begins in 1492, with catastrophe transformed into refuge. When Spain’s Catholic monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand expelled all Jews from Spain, between 15,000 and 20,000 Sephardic Jews fled across the Mediterranean. Many settled in Thessaloniki, then a bustling port city in the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II welcomed them. He realised that Spain’s loss could be his empire’s gain. The Jewish refugees brought skills in medicine, printing, textiles, metalwork and international trade, they spoke multiple languages and they had commercial networks spanning continents. ‘The Spanish king is a fool,’ Bayezid reportedly said, ‘impoverishing his own country to enrich mine.’

The Sephardic Jews transformed Thessaloniki. They established the city’s first printing press, making Thessaloniki a centre of Jewish scholarship and publishing. They built synagogues – eventually 42 of them – each named after the Spanish or Portuguese city their founders had fled: Catalán Yashan (Old Catalan), Aragon, Lisboa, Evora, Castile.

They created networks that made Thessaloniki one of the most important trading hubs in the Ottoman Empire. Jewish merchants shipped wool, silk and ceramics across the Mediterranean, Jewish craftsmen became the exclusive tailors for the Ottoman Janissaries, and Jewish bankers facilitated trade between east and west.

By 1519, just 27 years after the expulsion, Jews made up 56 per cent of Thessaloniki’s population. By 1613, Jews were 68 per cent of Thessaloniki's population – a percentage unmatched anywhere else in Europe, before or since. This was a living reality into the 20th century: Sabbath observance shut down commerce, rabbinical courts wielded authority, Ladino echoed through marketplaces and Jewish printing presses produced books shipped across the Mediterranean.

For over 300 years, from the 16th to the early 20th century, Jewish life defined the rhythm of life in Thessaloniki. The city effectively shut down from Friday evening until Saturday night, honouring the Jewish Sabbath alongside the Friday prayers of Muslims and the Sunday observance of Christians.

The Ottoman millet system granted religious minorities autonomy. Jewish courts handled civil disputes, rabbinical authorities oversaw education, marriage and religious life, and the community paid collective taxes but otherwise was self-governing.

Jewish entrepreneurs led Thessaloniki’s industrialisation in the mid-19th century. The Allatini brothers established the first modern flour-milling plant in 1854, followed by textile, brickmaking and tobacco factories. By the early 20th century, Jews owned 38 of the city’s 54 largest trading houses, and there was a vibrant Jewish working class too. Jewish stevedores controlled the docks, Jewish weavers supplied textiles throughout the Balkans, and Jewish printers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, and merchants filled every sector of urban life.

Thessaloniki became a Jewish intellectual powerhouse. The Alliance Israélite Universelle opened educational institutions that taught French alongside traditional Jewish subjects; a whole generation became conversant with both Jewish tradition and European modernity; and newspapers in Ladino connected the community with Sephardic Jews across the Ottoman world.

Politically, Thessaloniki’s Jews were active in Ottoman reform movements. Many supported the Young Turks revolution of 1908, which sought to modernise the empire with constitutional government. Zionist leaders who visited the city saw it as a model. David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, and Ze’ev Jabotinsky all visited Thessaloniki in the early 20th century, seeing in its Jewish majority a preview of how a Jewish state might work.

The port city closed every Saturday. Most workers – including the dockworkers – were Jewish and observed Shabbat. Street signs were in Ladino, the Judaeo-Spanish language of Sephardic Jews. There were synagogues in almost every neighbourhood, newspapers in four languages served the cosmopolitan population, but Ladino and Greek were the main languages and the dominant voice in the synagogues was Spanish-inflected Hebrew prayers.

But forces were gathering that would unravel its world. Four years before my grandfather’s arrival there, Greece took Thessaloniki in 1912 during the Balkan Wars and incorporated the city in the modern Greek state. The Jewish community – 70,000 strong at the time and the city’s largest ethnic group – faced an uncertain future.

At first, the Greek government recognised the community’s rights and traditions. But tensions simmered, Greek merchants resented Jewish commercial sway, and some people saw the Jewish presence as a remnant of Ottoman rule.

On 18 August 1917, a small kitchen fire in central Thessaloniki exploded into an inferno. For 32 hours, flames consumed over one-third of the city. The fire destroyed 9,500 buildings, and left 70,000 people homeless, 52,000 of them Jews, and 16 of the 33 synagogues were burned. Jewish schools, libraries, charitable institutions, and the grand rabbinate's archives, with the records of centuries of births, marriages and deaths, rabbinical decisions and community history, vanished in smoke.

The entire documented history of one of the world’s great Jewish communities went up in flames, and the fire devastated Jewish Thessaloniki. Over 20,000 Jews, unable to find shelter, left the city for Athens, France, the US and Palestine.

The Jewish Memorial at the Aristotele University of Thessaloniki was designed by the architect Konstantinos Lentaris (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The community rebuilt itself on the outskirts of the city but never recovered its former glory. The balance in the population shifted dramatically in 1923 when Greece and Turkey negotiated a population exchange. About 1.5 million Greek Orthodox Christians were moved to Greece from Turkey, with roughly 100,000 settling in Thessaloniki. For the first time in four centuries, Jews had become a minority in the city they had once defined.

By 1940, Thessaloniki had a Jewish population of about 56,000 in a city that had grown to about 250,000 residents. The community had survived fires, political upheaval, and demographic transformation, they kept open their synagogues, schools and cultural institutions, and they remained a vital part of the city’s fabric. But nothing prepared them for what came next.

On 9 April 1941, German forces occupied Thessaloniki. Within a week, Nazi authorities arrested Jewish community leaders, confiscated Jewish homes and hospitals, and began the systematic looting of Jewish cultural property. Tens of thousands of books, religious artefacts and works of art were shipped to Germany.

On 11 July 1942 – a date remembered to this day as ‘Black Saturday’ – the Nazis forcibly rounded up 9,000 Jewish men aged between 18 and 45 in Plateia Eleftherias (Πλατεία Ελευθερίας, Liberty Square). For hours in the blazing summer heat, German soldiers beat and humiliated them before the crowds of onlookers. About 2,000 were sent to forced labour. The rest were eventually ransomed by the community, which sold its ancient cemetery to raise the demanded sum.

In December 1942, the Nazis began destroying the Jewish cemetery with 300,000 Jewish graves. The Jewish cemetery, with 20 generations and over 500 years of burials, stretching from Egnatia street to Saranta Ekklisies, was destroyed. The tombstones were purloined as building materials for footpaths, university stairs, and barrack latrines. Aristotle University Thessaloniki was rebuilt where the Jewish dead had been buried.

In February 1943, Eichmann sent Dieter Wisliceny and Alois Brunner to Thessaloniki, specialists in Jewish deportation, to implemented the Nuremberg Laws. They forced people to wear yellow stars, restricted movement and confiscated property, and within days Jews were forced into three ghettos. The largest, the Baron Hirsch transit camp, was beside the railway station.

The first train left Thessaloniki on 15 March 1943. Between March and August 1943, 19 trains took as many as 46,000 Jews from Thessaloniki to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Each train held 1,000 to 4,000 people crammed into cattle cars.

When they arrived at Auschwitz, most people were sent directly to gas chambers. Of the 46,000 deported, about 1,950 or 4 per cent survived; 96 per cent of the city’s Jewish population was exterminated in 1943. In five months, the Nazis accomplished what four centuries of disasters – plagues, fires, wars and economic transformations – had failed to do: they destroyed the ‘Jerusalem of the Balkans’, the ‘Mother of Israel’.

The survivors who returned from the camps found a ghost community. Fewer than 2,000 Jews remained in Thessaloniki, their synagogues were destroyed or vandalised, their homes had become the homes of strangers, their cemetery was razed, their archives were burned, their commercial networks were shattered. Many survivors could not bear to stay and emigrated to Palestine, the US or other diaspora communities. Others rebuilt what they could, establishing small institutions to preserve their memories.

Today, about 1,000 Jews live in Thessaloniki, where they are less than 0.2 per cent of the city’s population of over 800,000. Three synagogues remain of the original 42. The Monastir Synagogue survived only because Nazis had used it as a Red Cross warehouse. The Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, which attracts about 30,000 visitors a year, documents the community’s history.

Five marble plaques in five languages, recalling, perhaps, the five books of the Torah or the Pentateuch, tell the story of the cemetery and of the monument (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Jewish Monument of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, designed by the architect Konstantinos Lentaris, honours the city’s Jewish community and is a reminder of the Jewish cemetery on the site that was destroyed by the Nazis.

The monument, unveiled in November 2014, includes a sarcophagus, a bronze menorah or seven-light lamp, scattered marble plaques with Jewish symbols, and a bronze Star of David. Five marble plaques in five languages, recalling, perhaps, the five books of the Torah or the Pentateuch, tell the story of the former cemetery and of the monument.

The university’s department of Jewish Studies, forced to close in 1936, reopened in 2015 in partnership with the local Jewish community, and now offers courses on Greek-Jewish history, the Holocaust, and Ladino language and culture. Sadly, the monument has been vandalised many times by far-right antisemites.

One of Thessaloniki’s last Holocaust survivors, Heinz Kounio, died earlier this year (16 April 2026) at 98. The Holocaust Museum of Greece (Μουσείο Ολοκαυτώματος Ελλάδος) in Thessaloniki, due to open in coming months, is the first museum dedicated specifically to telling the story of Sephardic Jews in the Holocaust.

May their memories be a blessing, זצ״ל

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום‎

In this series:

1, Introduction (21 September 2026)

2, Aristotle by Giorgos Georgiadis, Aristotelous Square (22 September 2026)

3, Alexander the Great by Evangelos Moustakas, Alexander’s Garden (23 September 2026)

4, Eleftherios Venizelos by Giannis Pappas, Plateia Dikastirion (24 September 2026)

5, The Jewish Monument by Konstantinos Lentaris, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (25 September 2026)

6, Admiral Nikolaos Votsis by Georgios Dimitriadis, at the White Tower (1 October 2026)

The Jewish Studies Centre at the Aristotelean University of Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A house on Bloomsbury Square that commemorates five leading figures in the field of education

No 2-3 Bloomsbury Square was built in 1887 for the College of Preceptors (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

Bloomsbury House at 2-3 Bloomsbury Square, on the south side of Bloomsbury Square was built in 1887 for the College of Preceptors. The building is familiar to many for its façade with the relief busts in roundels beneath the windows on the first and second floors of five pioneering figures in the field of education and teaching.

But as I looked up recently, I wonder how many passers-by can identify these five eminent figures who stare down on the people of Bloomsbury below, or who can tell what is a preceptor.

Bloomsbury is bounded by Tottenham Court Road, New Oxford Street, Euston Road and Woburn Place and Southampton Row to the east. Bloomsbury Square was first laid out in the early 1660s for Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton. The Russell family owned extensive estates in London by the end of the 17th century, and the Bloomsbury Estate became part of the Bedford Estate in 1723. The Bloomsbury Estate was developed in several phases, from the 1660s to the 1850s.

The five figures on the façade are an eminent educationalist and the busts represent: Johann Pestalozzi, John Milton, Friedrich Froebel, John Locke and Thomas Arnold. The College of Preceptors, now called the Chartered College of Teachers, moved out a few years ago and the building has been restored as a suite of meeting rooms for the Bonnington Hotel group.

The College of Preceptors was a Victorian institution founded to improve the standard and status of teaching by providing proper qualifications. It was founded in 1846 by a group including Joseph Payne, its first professor of education, and the formidable Frances Buss, headmistress of the North London Collegiate School.

The College of Preceptors began in 1846 when a group of private schoolmasters from Brighton met to discuss the their concerns about standards in the teaching profession. A committee formed in early 1846 was chaired by Henry Stein Turrell (1815-1863), principal of the Montpelier House School in Brighton. After meetings in London and Brighton, a general meeting in London in 1846 was attended by 300 schoolmasters attended and 60 members were enrolled.

The College of Preceptors was incorporated with a royal charter from Queen Victoria in 1849. The college created a system for the formal examination and qualification of secondary school teachers. It was one of the first bodies to examine and provide certificates for secondary school pupils.

The college helped to establish education as a subject at university level in the 1870s, and Joseph Payne was appointed as the first Professor of Education in 1873. The right to appoint Professors of Education is recognised in the college’s current royal charter.

In the 1950s the college pioneered management training schemes for teachers and school administration courses. A supplemental charter in 1998 changed the name to the College of Teachers, and a further supplemental charter in 2017 changed the society to its current name, and permitted granting members the status of Chartered Teacher.

Bloomsbury House, now a Listed Grade 1, was built in 1887. It was designed in a Flemish Renaissance style by the architect Frederick Pinches (1852-1925). His other buildings in London include: Hackney Baths (1894-1897), co-designed with Edward Harnor and later known as Kings Hall Leisure Centre; the Alliance Bank (1884), Regent Street; and Parr’s Bank, Stratford (1897-1898), now Burrows House.

The three-storey, three-bay house, with a basement and attic, house was built in red brick with enriched ashlar dressings, a steeply pitched, hipped slate roof with an elaborate pedimented ashlar dormer centre piece carried up with carved escutcheons.

The deeply recessed semi-elliptical central doorway had a moulded reveal and a double panelled door approached by steps.

There are two-light mullion and transom windows. The central three-light bowed oriel window on the first floor has an enriched apron and the dado of the second floor window above is carried on a round oriel parapet. There are composite pilasters defining the window bays of each floor carried in dados with carved, foliated panels and with busts centrally in each bay.

The centre bay projects slightly between paired pilasters with a continuous arcaded frieze capped by segmental pediments. There are arcaded parapets on the outside bays, and the windows on the second floor have arched heads.

On the façade are five roundels, under the windows on the first and second floor. Each displays a relief bust of a pioneering figure in education. The five famous educators who stare down onto Bloomsbury from two rows of roundels on the façade are:

Top left: Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827), Swiss educationalist and author

Top centre: John Milton (1608-1674), poet, polemicist and ‘acrimonious and surly republican’

Top right: Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852), German pedagogue, pioneer of modern education and inventor of the kindergarten

Bottom left: John Locke (1632-1704), empiricist philosopher, known as the ‘father of liberalism’, and at one time a political refugee in the Netherlands

Bottom right: Thomas Arnold (1795-1842), headmaster of Rugby School

Inside the building, the geometrical staircase has a wrought-iron balustrade staircase and there are stained glass windows portraying the founders.

The original preceptors elected against buying land to build their college, and chose a 99-year lease because it was a cheaper option. But when the lease ran out, land in Bloomsbury was worth a premium and they had to relinquish their premises. The College of Teachers moved into the Institute of Education, part of University College London, in Bedford Way in 2003.

The original terms of the lease of 2 Bloomsbury Square insisted that the building remained a teaching establishment. The auditors Coopers & Lybrand (now PWC) adopted it as their training centre. The building was restored in 2007 and is now run by the Bonnington Hotel group and is rented out for meetings and as an events space.

The five figures depicted in the roundels on the façade: Johann Pestalozzi, John Milton, Friedrich Froebel, John Locke and Thomas Arnold (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Dr Williams’s Library leaves Bloomsbury after serving theologians and church historians for 300 years

Dr Williams’s Library first opened in 1730 and was on Gordon Square from 1890 until it closed in 2025 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

It is always sad to see a library – particularly a library with a large collection related to theology, church history and religious studies – to close or to move away and to find it is no longer be accessible.

For over a century, Dr Williams’s Library was in Bloomsbury, where it was housed in the former University Hall on the west side of Gordon Square, beside the former Catholic Apostolic Church, now the Church of Christ the King. But the library closed within the past two years, and the collection has been moved to Manchester.

From 1890 until it closed in 2025, Dr Williams’s Library was housed in University Hall, built in 1848 to designs by the architect Thomas Leverton Donaldson (1795-1885), a pioneer in architectural education, a co-founder and President of the Royal Institute of British Architects and a winner of the RIBA Royal Gold Medal.

Donaldson was born nearby at 8 Bloomsbury Square, the eldest son of the architect James Donaldson (c 1756-1843). His maternal uncle, the architect Thomas Leverton (1743-1824), is said to have designed the south range of Bedford Square.

After attending King Edward Grammar School, St Albans, Donaldson trained as an architect and travelled widely. He found a clerical job at the Cape of Good Hope before joining an expedition to attack the French-owned island of Mauritius. He visited Italy and Greece in 1818-1823 with John Lewis Wolfe and WW Jenkins. Back in London, he joined his father’s practice and designed 4 Hamilton Place for Richard Bingham (1764-1839), 2nd Earl of Lucan, who had extensive estates in Co Mayo.

Donaldson’s first significant work was Holy Trinity Church, Brompton (1826-1829), in South Kensington. With Jacques Ignace Hittorff and Charles Robert Cockerell, he was a member of the committee formed in 1836 to determine whether the Parthenon or Elgin Marbles and other Greek statuary in the British Museum had originally been coloured.

Donaldson reworked substantial sections of the Wilkins building at University College London (UCL) and designed the Flaxman Gallery and library buildings. He also designed All Saints’ Church, Gordon Street (1842, closed 1909, destroyed by bombing 1940) and was involved in the Great Exhibition in 1851.

Donaldson pioneered the academic study of architecture and in 1841 he became the first Professor of Architecture at University College London, a post he held until 1865. He was a co-founder of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1834, was its honorary secretary until 1839, then its foreign secretary for another 20 years.

He designed the institute’s Mycenaean lions medal with the motto Usui civium, decori urbium. He was awarded the institute’s royal gold medal in 1851 and was its president in 1863-1864. He was described by the Prince of Wales in 1879 as ‘the father of the Institute and of the profession’.

Thomas Leverton Donaldson designed the former library on Gordon Square as University Hall in 1848 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Donaldson designed the one-time library on Gordon Square as a Hall of Residence for students of University College London, following an architectural competition. It was built in stone and brick in the late Gothic style in 1848-1849. It was built as University Hall to mark the passing of the Dissenters’ Chapels Act in 1844.

From 1853, University Hall was shared with Manchester New College. Henry Morley, professor of literature at University College and editor of Morley’s Universal Library was the principal of University Hall in 1882-1890.

Manchester New College acquired the lease in 1882 but moved to Oxford in 1890, the building was bought by the trustees of Dr Williams’s Charity to house their library.

The Revd Dr Daniel Williams (1643-1716), a leading nonconformist minister in Dublin and London, endowed the library in his will

The founder of the library, the Revd Dr Daniel Williams (1643-1716), was a leading nonconformist minister in both Dublin and London in the late 17th and early 18th century.

Williams was born into a Welsh family, probably in Wrexham, and his early plans to enter ministry were interrupted by the Restoration of Charles II and the Act of Uniformity (1662). After a few years preaching in England he moved to Ireland, where he was a domestic chaplain to Mary (Chambré) Brabazon, Countess of Meath in 1664-1667.

Williams was then one of the ministers of the Wood Street Chapel, near Whitefriar Street in Dublin, for 20 years, from 1667 to 1687. The chapel had its roots in early Puritans and Presbyterians and became one of the Dublin congregations that lead to the formation of the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church in Ireland and the Unitarian Church in Dublin.

As religious tensions heightened in Dublin during the reign of James II, Williams believed his life was in danger. He fled to London in 1687, and soon found an influential place amongst London Presbyterians, particularly after the death of Richard Baxter (1615-1691).

He was appointed minister to the Presbyterian congregation in Hand Alley, Bishopsgate, and despite repeated requests to return to Dublin, he remained at Hand Alley for the rest of his life. He received the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1709 from the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow in recognition of his outstanding services to nonconformity.

Williams died at the age of 72 in January 1716 and was buried in Bunhill Fields. His congregation eventually moved towards Unitarianism, but has long since disappeared.

In his will, he left instructions for his trustees to house his collection as a public library for nonconformist ministers, tutors and students in the City of London. He also left bequests to Saint Thomas’s Hospital, the University of Harvard, and to support missionaries in Scotland, Ireland, and New England.

His trustees built and equipped a library that first opened in Red Cross Street, Cripplegate, almost 300 years ago in 1730. Over the years, the collections were enlarged with gifts of books, manuscripts and portraits. His original benefaction of about 7,600 books became a small part of a library that eventually extended beyond Puritanism to include Biblical subjects, church history, Byzantine studies, philosophy, literature and more.

The library’s original home was bought by the Metropolitan Railway Company and demolished in 1865. The library moved to Bloomsbury and was housed at No 8 Queen Square from 1865 to 1873. It then moved into premises designed by the architect Thomas Chatfeild Clarke (1829-1895) in Grafton Street, now Grafton Way, off Tottenham Court Road.

Dr Daniel Williams remembered in a plaque at the entrance to the former library (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

When Manchester New College moved to Oxford, the library’s trustees acquired University Hall, Gordon Square, in 1889 and the library moved there in 1890. The library had close ties with Unitarians and several of its first directors were ministers associated with Newington Green Unitarian Church, London's oldest Nonconformist place of worship still in use.

The Revd Robert Travers Herford (1860-1950), librarian of Dr Williams’s Library from 1914 to 1925, was a scholar of rabbinical literature, and he was one of the first Christian scholars of the Pharisees to take a neutral view between Talmud and New Testament. He is commemorated by a blue plaque on the façade of the building. His brother, the Revd Ulric Vernon Herford (1866-1938), was one of the most colourful and eccentric Unitarian ministers in Oxford. He was a Unitarian minister in Oxford in the 1890s before seeking consecration by the Nestorian Church in India as Metropolitan Mar Jacobus I in 1902, and then formed the Evangelical Catholic Church.

After a V-1 flying bomb destroyed Essex Hall, the headquarters of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, the library offered rooms to displaced workers, and they stayed there for 14 years, until 1958. In 1976, the library acquired the library of New College London, which until then had trained Congregationalist ministers.

Dr Williams’s Library closed in 2025 and its copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio was sold by Sotheby’s at auction in 2006 for £2.8 million. After a prolonged discussion, the trust agreed to house its collection in the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester, and the Library moved to Manchester in 2024-2025.

Meanwhile, Manchester New College, which moved from Gordon Square to Oxford in 1889, later became Harris Manchester College and became a constituent college of the University of Oxford in 1996.

The Revd Robert Travers Herford was the librarian of Dr Williams’s Library in 1914-1925 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

As for the Wood Street congregation where Williams ministered in Dublin for 20 years, it was joined in 1762 by the Dissenters of Mary’s Abbey and together they moved to Great Strand Street where a new meeting house opened in 1764. They were joined there in 1787 by the Cook Street congregation.

In the 1850s, the Strand Street congregation decided that it needed a new church on a more prominent street. The Unitarian Church on Saint Stephen’s Green, Dublin, opened in June 1863, and it was joined by the Eustace Street congregation in 1867.

The Saint Stephen’s Green congregation in Dublin is part of Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland and also maintains links with Unitarians in England, Scotland and Wales through the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches.

The Unitarian Church on Saint Stephen’s Green … the spiritual heir to the ministry of Daniel Williams in Dublin in the late 17th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Hotel Russell has had a name change, but it is still an impressive Victorian presence on Russell Square

The former Hotel Russell on Russell Square in Bloomsbury was designed by the architect Charles Fitzroy Doll (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

I have been in London six or seven times already this year, and when I find myself in the Bloomsbury area I often stop in Russell Square to admire the former Hotel Russell, even though it has lost the name it was known by for more than a century and is now called the Kimpton Fitzroy London.

The hotel at 1-8 Russell Square is a Grade II* listed building and was designed by the architect Charles Fitzroy Doll (1850-1929), who was the surveyor of the Bedford Estate. It was built in 1892-1898 and opened in 1900.

It is built of red brick with terracotta dressings, distinctively clad in decorative thé-au-lait (‘tea with milk’) terracotta, and was modelled on the Château de Madrid near the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. Its roofs and turrets have striking green fish-scale tiles, and the tall Victorian chimney-stacks have horizontal brick and terracotta bands. The hotel originally had a central copper dome and lantern instead of its present tiled mansard roof, and once must have been a more impressive site.

The architect Charles Fitzroy Doll specialised in designing hotels. He also designed the dining room on the Titanic, basing it on his design for the dining room in the Hotel Russell, known until recently known as Fitzroy Doll’s.

Doll was educated in Germany, then trained as an architect under Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt, and he was involved with Wyatt in designing the India Office in London in 1866-1868.

The sculptor Henry Charles Fehr modelled the life-size statues on the façade of four queens who look down on Russell Square from above the main entrance (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Doll was appointed surveyor to the Bedford Estates in Bloomsbury and Covent Garden in 1885. When he designed the Hotel Russell with its distinctive cladding, Doll engaged the sculptor Henry Charles Fehr to model the four life-size statues of British queens who look down on Russell Square from above the main entrance.

Doll was a member of Holborn Borough Council, and was Mayor of Holborn in 1904-1905 and 1912-1913. He died in 1929 aged 79. His children included Christian Charles Tyler Doll (1880-1955), who was involved in the reconstruction of the grand staircase of the Palace of King Minos at Knossos in Crete, working alongside Arthur Evans. He also designed the Villa Ariadne, a residence for Evans at Knossos that now houses the Knossos Research Centre.

The style of the Hotel Russell is described in its listing as ‘flamboyant French Renaissance … derived from engravings of the Château de Madrid, with elaborate decorations.’ The architectural historians Bridget Cherry and Sir Nikolaus Pevsner call it ‘monumental’.

The hotel is known for its palatial design, and its fixtures and fittings included an ornate Pyrenean marble staircase and an interior sunken garden. Each room was fitted with an en-suite bathroom, quite an innovation at the time.

Doll’s façade also displays the coats of arms of the world’s nations as they were in 1898, incorporated in the spandrels of the first floor. At the centre of the principal façade facing Russell Square, above the main entrance, are life-size terracotta statues of four reigning queens – Elizabeth I, Mary II, Anne and Victoria – and columns decorated with putti, both surmounted with knights flanking floral decoration above the decorative foundation date ‘1898’.

The larger than life terracotta statues represent idealised versions of the four queens. Elizabeth I is readily identifiable because of her ruff,while Victoria is depicted as a very young woman. But there is some confusion over who is who when it comes to Mary II and Anne, while a fifth reigning English queen, Mary I, is noticeably absent.

The statues of the four queens are the work of the sculptor Henry Charles Fehr (1867-1940), also created the busts of four Prime Ministers – Lord Derby, Lord Salisbury, William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli – on the Guilford Street façade of the hotel.

Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary II among the four queens above the hotel entrance (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Fehr produced several notable public sculptures, war memorials and works for civic buildings, including sculptures for Middlesex Guildhall, Wakefield County Hall and Cardiff City Hall. His war memorials can be seen in for towns and cities throughout Britain and often feature detailed bronze statuary.

Doll also designed the Imperial Hotel (1905-1907) in Russell Square, described by the architectural historian Sir Niklaus Pevsner as a ‘vicious mixture of Art Nouveau Gothic and Art Nouveau Tudor’. The Imperial Hotel was demolished in 1967, and replaced by a contemporary, brutalist building designed by George Anthony Wilson Brandeth and where I stayed once when I was working with The Irish Times. Today it is known as the President Hotel.

Doll also designed the Flemish French-Gothic terrace of shops and apartments on the corner of Torrington Place and Gower Street. It was designed in 1907 and now includes the London University branch of Waterstones. The bookshop is in the heart of literary Bloomsbury and I, like many of my generation, still think of it as Dillon’s. Today, this branch of Waterstones claims it is the largest new and second-hand bookshop in Europe.

The Hotel Russell was one of the few hotels in this part of London not taken over by the War Office during World War II. It survived the war largely intact, but the magnificent dome was badly damaged in an air raid during the Blitz in 1941 and was never replaced.

The Hotel Russell continued to be known by that name for more than a century until 2018. After extensive renovations, the hotel reopened in 2018 as the Principal London. Three months later, it was bought by Covivio Hotels, which then transferred its management to InterContinental Hotels Group, and the hotel was renamed the Kimpton Fitzroy London later that year. The restaurant Doll designed was originally named after him but is now called Fitz’s.

Queen Anne and Queen Victoria among the four queens above the hotel entrance (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Russell Group of universities, which was formed in 1994, is named after Hotel Russell, where the first informal meetings took place, and thankfully it has not changed its name.

The Russell Group now brings together 24 British universities that are often seen as Britain’s best. Together, they receive over three-quarters of all university research grant and contract income in the UK, they award 60% of all doctorates gained in the UK, they account for 65% of all world-leading research conducted in the UK, and their research is judged overwhelmingly to be world-leading or internationally excellent. Their graduates hold 61% of all UK jobs that require a university degree, despite being only 17% of all higher education graduates.

The Russell Group first included 17 universities: Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Imperial College London, Leeds, Liverpool, London School of Economics, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Oxford, Sheffield, Southampton, University College London and Warwick.

With the exception of Warwick, which was established in the 1960s, the founder members of the Russell Group were all universities or university colleges prior to World War I, and they included most of Britain’s ancient universities and ‘redbrick universities’. Cardiff University and King’s College London joined the Russell Group in 1998.

Queen’s University Belfast became the 20th member in 2006, and four more universities – Durham, Exeter, Queen Mary University of London, and York – joined the Russell Group in 2012.

The hotel may have changed its name in recent years, but the Russell and Bedford names continue in the streets and squares of Bloomsbury, and in some places there are memories too of the philosopher Bertrand Russell. But, perhaps, more about that in the days to come.

The Russell Group of universities is named after Hotel Russell, where the first informal meetings of the group took place in 1994 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Downing College is the oldest of the new colleges and the newest of the old colleges in Cambridge

The Porter’s Lodge and First Court at Downing College, Cambridge, facing onto Regent Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

There are posters all over Cambridge this week and last for the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival, which began on 13 July and continues until 29 August. The festival is celebrating 39 years, and this year’s programme includes The Tempest and The Merchant of Venice in Downing College Gardens; Much Ado About Nothing and Romeo and Juliet in Saint John’s College Gardens; and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Trinity College Gardens.

The festival was founded in 1987, and runs for eight weeks in July and August. In the past, when the festival coincided with IOCS summer schools in Sidney Sussex College, I have been were invited to a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Saint John’s College Gardens.

While I was walking around in Cambridge last week with a friend from Ireland, there were posters for the festival everywhere, and at the end of the day I decided to call into Downing College, where The Tempest (13 July to 1 August) and The Merchant of Venice (3 to 29 August ) are being staged.

The Maitland Robinson Library was designed by Quinlan Terry and opened in 1993 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Downing College was founded in 1800 and is often described as the oldest of the new colleges and the newest of the old colleges in Cambridge. It is on Regent Street, in the heart of Cambridge, and the entrance is opposite the front of the University Arms Hotel and the entrance to Parker’s Piece.

It was the only college to be added to the university between 1596 and 1869, and was formed ‘for the encouragement of the study of Law and Medicine and of the cognate subjects of Moral and Natural Science’. Downing has been named as one of the two most eco-friendly colleges in Cambridge and it has developed a reputation in both law and medicine.

It almost goes without saying that the names of Downing Street and Downing College share a common origin. Sir George Downing (1623-1684) was born in Dublin and was a Parliamentarian turned Royalist, who had been a Puritan chaplain and a Cromwellian diplomat, and later the ambassador at the Hague during the reign of Charles II.

Samuel Pepys once said Downing’s conduct was odious if useful to the king, called him a ‘perfidious rogue’ and reported that ‘all the world took notice of him for a most ungrateful villain for his pains’.

Trees lining one side of the Quadrangle at Downing College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

George Downing built Downing Street in Whitehall in the 1680s, including 10 Downing Street, later the official residence of the Prime Minister. When his grandson Sir George Downing (1685-1749) died, the family fortune and title passed to his cousin, Sir Jacob Downing (1717-1764). But the estates were to be used to found a college at Cambridge and when Sir Jacob died Downing College was supposed to come into existence.

However, Jacob’s widow Margaret refused to give up the estates and lengthy court cases followed. When she died in 1778 both her second husband, Admiral Sir George Bowyer (1740-1800), and her sister’s son continued to resist the terms of the original will until 1800, when the court decided in favour of Sir George Downing’s will. George III then granted Downing a royal charter, marking the official foundation of the college.

The trustees of the Downing estate included the Master of Clare College and Saint John’s College and the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. In 1806, they commissioned the architect William Wilkins (1778-1839) to design their new college.

Wilkins, who worked in the neo-classical architectural style, designed the first wholly campus-based college plan in the world, based on a magnificent entrance on Downing Street reaching back to form the largest court in Cambridge, extending to Lensfield Road. But this was not to be: the court cases greatly reduced the estate and the grand plans failed.

The Dining Hall and the Paddock at Downing College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Much of the north side of what was then the Pembroke Leys was sold to the university and is now home to scientific buildings at the Downing Site. Initially, only limited east and west ranges were built, and the plans for a library and a chapel on the south face of the college were shelved.

The third side of the square was only completed in 1951 when the college chapel was built. Where the fourth side would have been is now a large paddock known simply as ‘The Paddock’, with many trees. Although not fully enclosed, the court formed before Downing College is perhaps the largest in Cambridge or Oxford – a boast that is contested by Trinity College’s Great Court.

The most recent building additions are the Howard Lodge, the Howard Building and the Howard Theatre which opened in 2010. The Heong Gallery, a modern art gallery, opened in 2016, is named after Alwyn Heong, an alumnus who is a supporter of the visual arts. The conversion of a stables building by Caruso St John won an RIBA award.

The college fields teams in a range of sports, including men’s football, men’s and women’s rugby and tennis, and Downing College Boat Club is successful too.

Downing students remain prominent in the academic world and Downing has a particular reputation as the ‘Law College’. The college is renowned for its strong legal tradition, being built up by Clive Parry, his pupil and successor John Hopkins and Graham Virgo.

Legal notables associated with Downing College include the late Sir John Smith, the pre-eminent criminal lawyer of his generation; Lord Collins of Mapesbury, the first solicitor to be appointed to the Court of Appeal and House of Lords; and Sir Robert Jennings, former president of the International Court of Justice.

Downing College Chapel, behind the portico, was built in 1951 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Dean of Chapel and chaplain, the Revd Dr Keith Eyeons, is a Fellow of Downing College and the Director of Studies for Theology, Religion and Philosophy of Religion. He was a teacher in Buckinghamshire before training for ordination.

He returned to Cambridge to work part-time as chaplain at Downing College, while also working part-time on a PhD on Karl Barth and Saint John’s Gospel, supervised by Professor David Ford. He is the author of The Theology of Everything and The View from the Centre.

His current research is on the potential interactions between physics and theology, especially the ontological significance of quantum field theory and general relativity, and the fine-tuning of the cosmos.

Downing College chapel is a focus for spirituality, prayer, worship, preaching, hospitality and friendship. The services include choral services on Sundays at 6 pm and on occasional Thursdays at 9 pm, daily prayers, compline and occasional talks and discussions.

The Cambridge Shakespeare Festival began on 13 July and continues until 29 August … a poster in Downing College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Jesus College Chapel is the oldest in Cambridge and was once part of a Benedictine convent

Jesus College Chapel in Cambridge was originally a church that served the 12th century Benedictine Convent of Saint Mary and Saint Radegund (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

When I was introducing a friends from Ireland to the Cambridge I have known for almost 20 years, one of the places we received a warm welcome earlier this week was the chapel in Jesus College, where I found myself once again on what I have come to call the ‘Pugin Trail’.

Jesus College Chapel was restored by Pugin in the 1840s, and has a number of Pre-Raphaelite and Arts and Crafts treasures, including works by William Morris, Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Ford Madox Brown. It is the oldest college chapel in Cambridge, and its is unique in that it was not originally designed as a college chapel. It dates back to a time 350 years before the foundation of the college, and to half a century before the creation of the university.

The chapel was originally a large Norman church dedicated to Saint Mary and that served the 12th century Benedictine Convent of Saint Mary and Saint Radegund.

The church took about a century to build. It was begun in 1157 and was completed around 1245. At that time it was the largest church in Cambridge, about 58 metres in length and with proportions similar to those of a cathedral. It was built in the form of a cross, with aisles to the north and south of chancel and nave, and it had a high pitched roof with a belfry or steeple which was visible for miles around.

It served as the church of the parish of Saint Radegund which grew up around the convent, then a semi-rural area just outside the city of Cambridge. The belfry collapsed in 1277, and again in 1313. A fire destroyed much of the surrounding convent in 1376 but largely spared the church itself, causing only some light damage to the tower.

Jesus College, Cambridge, was founded by Bishop John Alcock in 1496 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

John Alcock, Bishop of Ely, founded Jesus College in 1496, with the formal name of the College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist and the glorious Virgin Saint Radegund, near Cambridge. He carried out extensive building work to adapt the former convent church. Parts of the church were demolished, the rest was drastically modified, and it was then reconsecrated in the Name of Jesus. The church was previously dedicated to Saint Mary, but there may have been an altar dedicated to the Name of Jesus in the people's part of the church.

Alcock was an architect as well as a bishop and he designed many of the alterations. The changes were intended to create a chapel that was a more suitable size for a small community of scholars.

The first stages were overseen by his friend and a fellow of the college, William Plombe, in 1497-1498. After Alcock died in 1500, his work was continued by Dr William Chubbes, the first master of Jesus College, and the architects Sir John Rysley and Sir Reginald Bray.

Inside the chapel at Jesus College, Cambridge, facing the chancel and the east end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The chancel chapels and the aisles of the nave of the church were pulled down and the cloisters were enlarged. The new cloisters were enclosed by walls that had four windows in the Perpendicular Gothic style. The dilapidated belfry was taken down and the high pitched roof was replaced by a flat roof with an oak ceiling. The lancet windows in the east wall were replaced by a plain Perpendicular style window.

Two-thirds of what had been the nave of the church was replaced by college rooms that later became part of the Master’s Lodge. The chapels on the north and south sides of the choir were pulled down and the north aisles became part of the cloister, with the original columns still embedded in the wall. The screen that once divided the congregation at the west end of the crossing was replaced by a more open screen at the east side.

The 13th century arches that divided the aisles from the nave were pulled down to make way for college rooms or were blocked off with stone and hidden behind plaster. Four arches in the chancel and two in the north transept were all filled in and covered over, and Perpendicular windows were placed in the new walls. The east arch in the south transept was also filled in and covered over, two Perpendicular windows were inserted in the east and west walls, and a large Perpendicular window was inserted in the south wall.

The south transept of the chapel, with the marble and alabaster memorial to Thomas Cranmer beneath the great window (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Thomas Cranmer was the first of four members of Jesus College to become Archbishop of Canterbury. Jesus College was his home for more than a decade, from 1517 to 1528, and as Rysley Reader in Divinity he taught theology. His connection with Jesus College is marked by a white marble and alabaster memorial in the south transept, designed by the architects Richardson and Gill and sculpted by A Bruce-Joy in 1912.

During the reign of Edward VI, six altars in the chapel and some images in the Master’s Lodge were destroyed in 1549. During the Catholic restoration in the reign of Mary I, John Fuller was appointed Master of Jesus College in 1557 and he restored the old ritual and ornaments in the chapel.

Jesus College returned to a more Protestant ethos in the reign of Elizabeth I, and the chapel services were simplified, although the college did not become Puritan. When James I visited Cambridge frequently, he often worshipped in the chapel in Jesus College.

In the chancel of the chapel in Jesus College, looking towards the screen and the west end beyond (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

When Dr Richard Sterne was the master, a new organ was bought in 1634. Two years later new furniture, plate, and candlesticks for the altar were bought in line with the High Church reforms of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. At this time, the college was known as a High Church stronghold in Cambridge and chapel services were renowned for ‘good music, elaborate solemnity and attractive decency’.

During the Civil War, the Parliamentarians ordered all colleges in 1641 ‘to displace the Communion table from the east end of their chapels, to take away the rails and level the chancel, and to remove crucifixes, tapers, and basins from the Communion table’.

Charles I called on the fellows to raise a loan of £100 and to send pieces of the college plate to his camp in York. Part of the plate was seized by the Cromwellians before it could be sent from Cambridge, but most of it was taken to York. The Cromwellians arrested the master and the former master, Richard Sterne and William Beale, during a service in the chapel and they were taken to the Tower of London. The fellows took apart the organ and hid the pieces, and what was left of the plate is said to have been buried in the orchard.

The Puritan William Dowsing arrived at Jesus College at Christmas 1643 and ‘digg’d up the Steps there and brake down Superstitions of Saints and Angels, 120 at the least’. All but two of the fellows were ejected from Jesus College and Richard Sterne was deposed as master.

All the chapel windows were filled with stained glass in the first decades of the 16th century, but every one of them was smashed by the Parliamentarians on 23 December 1643. For the next 200 years there was nothing but clear glass, apart from a few coats of arms.

The choir, chancel and High Altar in the chapel of Jesus College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

At the Restoration, the chapel was repaired and restored in 1660-1663 by successive new masters, John Pearson and Joseph Beaumont, and the organ was rebuilt and reinstated. In the decades that followed, the chapel was paved with black and white marble, a gallery was built in the chancel, facing towards the altar, and a classical entrance was added in the south wall.

Between 1762 and 1765 the piers and arches of the cloisters were demolished and rebuilt to designs by James Essex, and the organ was dismantled and given to the parish of All Saints.

The Perpendicular east window in the chancel was rebuilt in the 1780s and a major restoration of the chapel was carried out in 1789-1792 to bring it into accord with the popular Classical ideal in architecture.

Major restoration work in the chapel in 1846-1849 was supervised by AWN Pugin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Major restoration work in the chapel in 1846-1849 was inspired by the Gothic revival and largely reversed earlier repairs. The leaders of this new restoration were the Revd John Gibson, then dean of the college, and the Revd Osmond Fisher. Their aims were to restore the architecture and the ritual of the chapel, to restore music to chapel services and to reinstate the choir. A new organ was designed and bought in 1849 by John Sutton, who formed a choir.

These repairs were supervised by AWN Pugin, the towering figure in the Gothic revival in church architecture and a close friend of John Sutton. On Sutton’s recommendation, the college employed Pugin to direct the chapel restoration.

Under the direction of Anthony Salvin, an 18th century partition wall in the chancel arch was removed, along with the gallery on its east side, a new organ chamber and vestry were built on the east side of the north transept, two arches were unblocked, and two arches were opened unto the north transept below the gallery.

The nave and west end of the chapel in Jesus College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Pugin removed both the 18th century plaster ceiling and Alcock’s low-pitched roof, which he replaced with a high pitched roof in a 13th century style. He rebuilt the choir stalls and the east wall. The reconstruction of the windows in 1846-1849 was based on good archaeological evidence and was guided by Robert Willis, working with Anthony Salvin and then with Pugin.

Pugin began in the lancets above the altar and replaced Alcock’s Perpendicular east window with three tall lancet windows in 1850 with scenes of Christ’s passion in the style of Chartres and Canterbury cathedrals, working with Hardman of Birmingham. The other windows were later glazed in the same style in 1850-1858.

The Norman windows in the north wall of the north transept were rediscovered and were preserved as recessed arches, and the whole wall was restored. New stalls and a new pavement were also supplied for the chancel, and a new organ was installed in the organ chamber. The chapel reopened with a full choral service on All Saints’ Day 1849.

Two windows by Edward Burne-Jones depicting the Incarnation (above) and Christ debating with the Doctors in the Temple (below) in the south wall of the choir (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Further repairs were carried out in 1864-1867 by George F Bodley, who was working at the time on All Saints’ Church in Jesus Lane, facing the entrance to the college, and the tower was refaced and restored.

William Morris designed decorations for the panelled ceilings of the nave and the tower and they were painted under his direction in 1867. The windows in the outer chapel were glazed in 1867-1878 with glass designed by William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and Ford Madox Brown. The windows in the nave and transepts were glazed in 1873-1877 by Morris and Company to designs by Burne-Jones and Ford Madox Brown.

The glass in the two Perpendicular windows on the south wall of the chancel had weathered badly and were replaced in 1912 with designs by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, one depicting the Nativity and the other Christ debating with the Doctors in the Temple. Although their colour is brilliant, they broke a rule of both Pugin and Morris that the subject of each light should be complete in itself.

Two windows by Edward Burne-Jones depicting Faith (centre), Hope and Charity (above) and Patience, Obedience and Gentleness (below) in the north transept (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The windows in the north wall’s lancets depict scenes from the New Testament and Saint Radegund’s life, and those on the south show scenes from the life of Saint John.

Two windows in the north transept have figures representing the three theological virtues, Faith (standing on unbelief), Hope (standing on despair) and Charity (standing on envy); and the social virtues: Patience (standing on impatience); Obedience (standing on disobedience); and Gentleness (standing on ferocity).

The adjoining nave window symbolise the natural virtues and their corresponding vices. The other three nave windows have figures and scenes from the Old Testament.

In the four smaller south transept windows are the four evangelists and scenes from their Gospels, while the Great South window represents the Church in Heaven and on Earth.

The chapel has one of the finest collections of windows by Burne-Jones. But shortly after completing these windows he announced that he would no longer make stained glass for mediaeval churches.

The mid 19th century organ, given to Jesus College by Sir John Sutton, with panels designed by AWN Pugin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

A larger organ was bought in 1887 to complement Sutton’s organ and was installed in a new gallery at the west end of the nave. But the organ and gallery were removed from the west end in the early 20th century and the gallery may now be seen across the street at Westcott House.

Several restorations in the 20th century have revealed more of the building. A new organ by Orgelbau Kuhn of Switzerland was installed in 2006 to replace the organ by Noel Mander installed in 1971.

The chapel has a number of works of art and fine carvings. ‘The Presentation of the Christ child in the Temple’, by Jean Baptiste Jouvenet (ca 1700) in the North Transept was once used as the chapel altar-piece from 1796 to1846. In the inner chapel a large depiction of ‘The Last Supper’ is an example of the work of the Venetian School in the late 16th century and is attributed to Leandro Bassano.

The majority of the richly carved choir stalls and screen are 19th century reconstructions of the 16th century chapel furnishings, although three carved figures have survived from the 1500s. Another remnant of the chapel’s woodwork can be seen at the end of the master's stall in the inner chapel, showing Bishop Alcock at prayer.

The bronze Pietà in the north transept is by the sculptor Gillian Kaufman and was added to the chapel in 2014.

The bronze Pietà in the north transept is by Gillian Kaufman (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The chapel, Cloister Court, and the names of some rooms, such as the Prioress’s Room, are reminders of the links between Jesus College and the 12th century Benedictine Convent of Saint Mary and Saint Radegund.

As we emerged from Cloister Court to First Court it seemed like Barry Flangan’s ‘Bronze Horse’ was waiting in the late afternoon sunshine to greet us.

Some years ago, one of my photographs of the boathouse of Jesus College Boat Club was used in a funraising appeal brochure launched by the club in 2014. It was good to reacquaint myself with Jesus College once again on a summer afternoon.

Barry Flangan’s ‘Bronze Horse’ in First Court seen from Cloister Court (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

• The Revd Dr James Crockford has been the Dean of Chapel since 2019. During term time the Sunday services are: 10 am, Choral Eucharist, 6 pm, Choral Evensong with address from a guest speaker; Saturday services, 6 pm, Choral Evensong; weekday services, 9 am, Morning Prayer, Monday to Friday, 6:30 pm, Choral Evensong, Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Cloister Court in Jesus College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)