4.16.3 Church of the Holy Sepulchre (the Round Church), Cambridge


Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Cambridge
Round Church

We were asked to analyse and assess the liturgical furnishings which were placed in this medieval structure during a restoration of 1841-3. The scheme was undertaken as a practical demonstration of the principles of the influential Cambridge Camden (later Ecclesiological) Society, which, unusually, acted as the client. The architect was Anthony Salvin, a favourite of the group. Ecclesiological schemes from the early 1840s are rare, and in its day this one attracted considerable notoriety, in part because it was included in all the standard tourist itineraries of Cambridge, but mainly because one feature of the Camdenian scheme, a stone altar slab, led to a judgement in consistory court. In the ritualist debates of subsequent decades, the Round Church dispute was a common point of reference. EH is resisting proposals to remove Salvin's Victorian furnishings, and the dispute seems likely to lead, once more, to consistory court.


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