Relhan Collection : 82 Cambridge King’s College. W doorway of Chapel

Relhan, Richard, 1782-1844

Relhan Collection

<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>The W doorway is similar to the more famous E gateway but is a little less dramatic. It too is decorated with crowned Tudor roses, foliage and an achievement of the arms of Henry VI. Niches were built to hold life-size figures of royalty, but these were not executed. The ornate pinnacles were also decorated with huge crowned roses. Fortuitously, this emphasis on symbols of royal power rather than Christianity protected the Chapel in the mid-C17 from the iconoclasm of William Dowsing and others. Unusually (and extravagantly) creamy acid-resistant Yorkshire magnesian limestone was used, and deliveries of it in 1508 and 1509 suggest work had begun. The craftsman responsible for the wooden door was Henry Man, in 1614. His tympanum is elaborately carved with roses, lilies, palm trees and cherubs, with a flaming sun inscribed Jahveh in Hebrew characters. Henry VIII’s initials, HR, appear below, apparently to pick up a motif of the earliest woodwork in the Chapel.Since Relhan’s time the surround has been renewed by GG Scott, 1875, and in 1991 the doorway was refurbished by Freeland Rees Roberts.</p><p>RCHME 1959; Saltmarsh 1967</p></p>