Merton College Chapel

Merton College Chapel, Oxford
Merton College Chapel viewed from Grove Walk.
Location	Merton College, Oxford, England
Country	United Kingdom
Denomination	Church of England
Website	Official website
History
Founder(s)	Walter de Merton
Architecture
Style	Gothic
Groundbreaking	c1290
Completed	1294 (choir) transepts (1424–5) tower 1448–51
Administration
Diocese	Oxford
Clergy
Chaplain(s)	Rev. Dr. Simon Jones
Laity
Director of music	Benjamin Nicholas & Peter Phillips

Merton College Chapel is the church of Merton College, Oxford, England. Dedicated to St Mary and St John the Baptist, the chapel was largely completed in its present form the end of the 13th century.

On 13 September 1266 the church of St John the Baptist was granted to the scholars of Merton College by the Abbey of Reading. However, by the late 1280s it had fallen into "a ruinous condition", and Merton college accounts show that work on a new church on the same site began in about 1290.

The present choir with its enormous east window was complete by 1294. The window is an important example (because it is so well dated) of how the strict geometrical conventions of the Early English Period of architecture were beginning to be relaxed at the end of the 13th century. The south transept was built in the 14th century, the north transept in the early years of the 15th century. The great tower was complete by 1450. The chapel replaced the parish church of St. John and continued to serve as the parish church as well as the chapel until 1891. It is for this reason that it is generally referred to as Merton Church in older documents, and that there is a north door into the street as well as doors into the college. This dual role also probably explains the enormous scale of the chapel, which in its original design was to have a nave and two aisles extending to the west.

In the early 16th century, the college appears to have abandoned plans to extend the chapel, as the land on which the nave would have been built was leased in 1517 to Richard Foxe (c1448–1528), Bishop of Winchester, founder of Corpus Christi College, next door to Merton.

The Reformation did not leave Merton Chapel untouched. During the reign of the zealously Protestant Edward VI (1547–1553), traditional forms of worship began to change, and it was most likely at this time that the medieval stained glass was removed. However, Edward died young, and during the reign of his sister Mary I (1553–1558) Catholicism was restored, enthusiastically embraced by the college. Soon afterwards, under Elizabeth I, Protestantism was once again enforced and Merton college found itself facing a siege against Elizabeth's Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker for three weeks, in defence of the old religion.