St Stephen's Chapel 1184-1363

Rebuilding the Chapel

When King Edward I began to rebuild the Chapel between 1292 and 1297, he set out to create a rival to anything built by any other monarch, particularly his cousin Louis IX's Sainte Chapelle in Paris.

The king was long dead by the time craftsmen finished St Stephen's seventy years later. The actual construction work went on for only twenty years, as it constantly had to be stopped and restarted as the royal finances ebbed and flowed.

Purbeck stone

Stone for the two-storey building came from Boulogne and Caen in France, marble from the Isle of Purbeck, and iron was brought by ship from Spain. In the end, it cost Edward I and his progeny some £9,000.

The Upper Chapel

The Upper Chapel was exclusively for the use of the Royal Family and could only be entered via the royal apartments; the door from the outside led only into the undercroft of the chapel.

Richly (and expensively) decorated, the roof of the Upper Chapel was painted sky-blue and spattered with thousands of gold stars, and below its windows were many painted biblical characters and stories.

Painting the walls

The final burst of painting the walls and glazing the windows took 15 years, from 1348 to 1363, and was designed to show the devotion of Edward III and his family to the Virgin Mary.

The vaulting of its wooden roof soared nearly a hundred feet about the tiled floor, and every inch that could be decorated was painted in scarlet, green and blue. A series of reconstructions of the paintings which were discovered in the Chapel can be now found on the Terrace Stairs.

Delicate harmony

In designing the Chapel, the King's mason, Michael of Canterbury, attempted to create a delicate harmony between its whole and component parts. This simple idea had a strong influence on the subsequent development of English architecture, and particularly the Gothic style.