Great St Mary, Cambridge
Great St Mary, Cambridge
Great St Mary's is a Grade I Perpendicular parish and university church on St Mary's Street and Market Hill, Cambridge, in the Diocese of Ely. It is the University Church of the University of Cambridge.
- Location
- Cambridge, Cambridgeshire
- Country
- England
- County
- Cambridgeshire
- City / town
- Cambridge
- Address
- Senate House Hill, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, CB2 3PQ
- Postcode
- CB2 3PQ
- Built
- Early 14th-century chancel; nave and aisles 1478-c.1520; west tower 1491-1608
- Consecrated
- 1351 (chancel)
- Architect
- Masons William Burdon, John Bell and William Rotherham; carpenter William Buxton; restorations by James Essex (1766), Gilbert Scott (1850-51) and Anthony Salvin (1857)
- Denomination
- Church of England
- Dedication
- Mary
- Diocese
- Ely
- Parish
- Cambridge St Mary the Great with St Michael
- Grade
- I
- Style
- Perpendicular
- Materials
- Rubble with some ashlar and oolitic limestone dressings; interior largely clunch; lead roofs
- Grid reference
- TL 448 584
- Opening hours
- Open 10am to 5pm Monday to Saturday and 12pm to 5pm Sunday.
- Access
- Accessible toilets in church. Level access to the main areas
Overview
Historic England records an early fourteenth-century chancel, consecrated in 1351, with nave and aisles begun in 1478 and finished about 1520, and a west tower begun in 1491 and completed in 1608. The fabric is rubble with some ashlar and oolitic limestone dressings; the interior is largely faced in clunch, and some stone came from the ruins of Ramsey and Thorney abbeys. Roofs are lead. The exterior is wholly Perpendicular, embattled throughout, with a tall four-stage west tower, clerestoried nave, aisles extending alongside the tower and the western part of the chancel, and a south porch rebuilt in 1888. The chancel was refaced externally in 1857 by Anthony Salvin.
The lofty interior is notable for richly panelled arcade spandrels and the survival of eighteenth-century aisle galleries, added in 1735. Late medieval roofs in the nave, aisles and chapels have carved bosses and openwork tracery; James Essex added a further roof above the medieval nave roof in 1766. Principal fittings include a polygonal font of 1632 with strapwork cartouches, an organ of 1698 in a late seventeenth-century case, and a pulpit of 1872 mounted on rails so that it can slide to the centre of the church. The church was used by scholars of the university from their arrival in 1209. Restorations include work by Gilbert Scott in 1850-51. The university clock on the tower chimes the Cambridge Quarters.