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Lawrence OP
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St Stephen's House chapel
St Stephen's House chapel

This chapel in Cowley was built for the Cowley Fathers by Bodley as their Mission House chapel. It is now home to the St Stephen's House Anglican ordinands.

The ciborium and altar is by Sir Ninian Comper in an unusually understated style.

Some notes on this by Fr Anthony Symondson SJ:

"This is a late work by Comper, commissioned by an austere Anglican Order, the Society of St John the Evangelist, with which he had had long associatians. It was designed as a memorial to the founder, Fr R. M. Benson SSJE. The Superior insisted on a plain, severe altar with no polychromatic decoration, hence the white ciborium. Its beauty lies in scale and the play of shadow on the mouldings. The present altar is a later addition. Comper originally designed a wider, solid altar for Mass celebrated ad orientum. When St Stephen's House, an Anglo-Catholic theological college, acquired the former monastic buildings this was removed after a few years and the present one installed. I think it is unsuitable and disfigures the chapel by creating a void and spoils the scale of the ciborium... the original altar did not need to be circled, its dimensions fitted within the back pillars of the ciborium, like the one at Pusey House.

The only colour was provided by altar frontals (antependia in Catholic terminology) and a rose-red carpet...

One of the reasons why Comper liked lime-washed interiors was because white not only unified a church but provided an ideal foil for colour. In its original form the severity of the Cowley chapel was ameliorated by the colour of the alar frontals as well as the carpet. They emphasised the primacy of the altar. In its present form the new altar is entirely subordinate to the ciborium and looks incidental.

There was a cross and four simple candlestick of dark-stained wood. Comper would have liked a hanging pyx. He, by the way, extended the chapel, hence the purity of the vault; there were simple altars in the transepts decorated with hangings made of his Lily tapestry. The stalls are not by Comper but were designed by Cecil Hare, Bodley's last partner, and they ante-date Comper's work. As far as I remember it was done c1937."

Attribution Noncommercial Some rights reserved
Taken on: March 13, 2007
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Camera: Canon PowerShot S2 IS, f/2.7, 1/6 sec, 6mm (more info) (hide info)
Camera: Canon PowerShot S2 IS
Aperture: f/2.7
Exposure Time: 0.167 sec (1/6)
Focal Length: 6mm
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Off, Did not fire
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St Stephen's House chapel

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