Holy Sepulchre, Cambridge

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands on a corner in central Cambridge, its round nave and conical spire rising above Bridge Street. Built about 1130 by Austin canons, it was modelled on the rotunda in Jerusalem’s Holy Sepulchre. The Fraternity of the Holy Sepulchre intended it as a wayfarers’ chapel beside the old Roman road. By the 13th century it had become a parish church under Barnwell Priory, which added a north aisle and rebuilt the chancel. In the 15th century larger Gothic windows replaced the Norman ones and carved angels were placed on the roof corbels. The church survived the Civil War’s iconoclasm and later decayed until the Cambridge Camden Society commissioned Anthony Salvin to restore it in the 19th century. Salvin rebuilt the unstable east wall, relaid the floor in patterned tiles, and removed a gallery that had weakened the structure. The 1843 stone altar provoked a lawsuit, and in 1942 a bomb shattered the east window’s Victorian glass, later replaced with a Christ in Majesty design. Two bells remain: one from 1663 by Robard Gurney and a medieval priest’s bell. Visitors enter through a richly carved Norman west doorway and walk between eight massive columns into the circular nave. Above, a triforium of double Norman arches lets light fall on 19th-century carved heads set into the walls. The chancel’s floor shows royal arms and the evangelists’ symbols, while 15th-century angels play or hold instruments on the corbels. The octagonal bell-turret holds two historic bells and the communion table of 1843 stands at the east end. Exhibitions, concerts and lectures now fill the space once used for worship, while a small scriptorium offers quiet study.