Lower Chapel and Queen's Schools and Museum, Eton. Architect, Sir Arthur Blomfield, built 1889-91, a Grade II* listed building" described by Nikolaus Pevsner and Elizabeth Williamson as one of the best new (i.e. nineteenth-century) additions to the Eton College buildings (101). Pevsner and Williamson describe the chapel in more detail later, as: "large, Perp, of stone, with a low s aisle," and as having "no tower, but a stair-turret at the SW end" (318), as shown above. It stands on Keate's Lane, Eton.

Left to right: (a) The east end of the chapel, with the brick teaching range next to it. (b) Carved motif at the join. (c) Archway into the schools' courtyard. (d) Queen Victoria canopied over the arch, amid carved Tudor Gothic detailing.

In keeping with the chapel itself, battlements, tracery and arches continue in a modified form into the adjacent buildings, but, as elsewhere in the older pats of Eton College, these are low Tudor-Gothic structures of red brick with dark brick diapering. The schools were built to provide facilities for science teaching, and make an appealing ensemble — the listed buildings text calls it "a fine group." Eton's Natural History Museum, used for teaching purposes, especially for geology and biology, is housed here, just by the archway into the quadrangle.

In fact, Blomfield's additions, like those of his younger contemporary Henry Woodyer, are quite different in style from other later additions to Eton: "the majority of its buildings during the period of greatest expansion in the late-eighteenth, nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries were Classical...," says John Robinson. Woodyer's New Schools (1861) and Blomfield's Lower Chapel and Queen's Schools by Blomfield, all inspired by the original fifteenth and sixteenth century buildings here, are "notable exceptions," says Robinson (6).

Photographs and text by Jacqueline Banerjee. You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. Click on the images to enlarge them.

Sources

"Lower Chapel, Eton College." Historic England. Web. 7 November 2016.

"Parishes: Eton." In A History of the County of Buckingham: Volume 3, ed. William Page. London, 1925. 261-275. British History Online. Web. 7 November 2016.

Pevsner, Nikolaus, and Elizabeth Williamson, with Geoffrey K. Brandwood. Buckinghamshire. Buildings of England series. 2nd ed. London: Penguin, 1994.

Robinson, John Martin. "Eton College — Bekynton Field Development." (Windsor & Maidenhead B.C. Heritage Statement). Available online as a pdf. Web. 7 November 2016.


Created 7 November 2016