Tag Archives: St. Peter’s-in-the-East

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St. Peter’s-in-the-East – Planning visit

A window of opportunity enabled me to return to St. Edmund Hall today, for a preliminary visit to their library (formerly St. Peter’s-in-the-East), having secured provisional permission to take photographs, thanks to the support of James Howarth, Librarian at St. Edmund Hall.

While technically a church, as it is deconsecrated and forms part of the St. Edmund Hall campus, I am happy to include reference to it within my research project.

St. Peter-in-the-East is said to be named after the church of S. Pietro in Vincoli in Rome and is named in the Domesday Book (c.1085). It was used as the student chapel for St. Edmund Hall until the chapel was built on the College grounds in 1682.  The church was closed as a place of worship in 1965 and reopened as the College library in 1970.

Once again, aided by a 3D tour of the former church prior to the visit, I was prepared for some of the surprise that was in store… photography can be difficult enough within chapels when only having to negotiate pews, however in a building now filled with bookcases, tables and computer desks, this location will prove quite demanding.  To further confound things, I will only be allowed to photograph the site outside the Oxford University term dates.  This is likely to result in the work not forming part of my Module 3 portfolio.

Notwithstanding, I set about surveying the numerous windows – all magnificently cleaned and restored in readiness for the church becoming the library of St. Edmund Hall.  The location of furniture presents quite a headache for most lines of sight.  I am most optimistic about my chances in photographing the East Window, however, this is likely to necessitate me mounting my tripod on desk – something that may be frowned upon in a library.

Detail information about and from guide book here.

Images to follow.

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St. Peter’s College Chapel

A series of unfortunate events resulted in my arrival at St. Peter’s College Chapel following no planning visit.  Consequently I was travelling with a much larger than normal selection of lenses and knew that I had been granted just ninety minutes access to the location.  Dating back to 1874, the Chapel (originally the parish church of St. Peter-le-Bailey) was pleasingly spacious and in uncluttered Gothic style, affording an open and clear line of sight to the imposing east window.

While I have permission from the College to photograph within the chapel today, I have not received permission to use the images as this has to come from the Bishop of Oxford: for every location a different and new obstacle!

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Dominic Price (2019) St. Peter’s College Chapel

However, just inside the chapel door within the south chancel, was an impressive Bossányi window.  Significantly, this was mounted only a meter or so above the floor allowing straightforward photography that would require no perspective control in post-production – this made a sensible starting point both for the photography and post-production.  Below shows one of the unedited photographs on the left and the completed image on the right, which necessitated just over ten hours of editing.  I am a little concerned about the intensity of the blues in my finished edit and wonder whether I have overdone this – perhaps I should have selected a longer exposure for those areas when piecing together the image?  Time will tell and I hope to have the chance to carry out a follow-up visit in a week or two.

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Unedited image (2019) The Head of Christ with birds – design [Ervin Bossányi, 1950 – St. Peter’s College Chapel]

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Dominic Price (2019) The Head of Christ with birds – design [Ervin Bossányi, 1950 – St. Peter’s College Chapel]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With no restriction on my distance from the window, I was able to put to use my preferred lens, the Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM, set to f/8.0.  The weather was not perfect, with light rain and rather heavier cloud cover than is ideal.  As a result, the 19 images necessitated slightly slower exposures than normal, ranging from 1/40 s to 2.0 s.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I do now wish that I had split the window in half when photographing it.  The narrow nature of this single light is such that the edited image is little more than 4.5MP in resolution, however, had I captured the bottom half and top half separately, the resulting image could have been closer to 25MP in size.  Should time allow in the later part of my research, it would seem appropriate to revisit with this in mind.

The editing of the east window images is still to come, but the chapel featured a number of related items that were of interest, being home to a number of Bossányi’s designs.  Uniquely, his design process did not involve the production of a vidimus: rather than sketches, he produced miniature transparent designs made to scale.  These exquisite designs were freely drawn on Perspex, the density of colour being achieved by gluing coloured glass fragments to the reverse.  The chapel has presented these designs within light boxes, with the collection including four designs for Canterbury Cathedral; seven separate lights for Washington Cathedral, USA, and the central panel of the Rose Window for Michaelhouse School Chapel in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.  This is a location I have passed thirty or forty times in my life, aware of the magnificent window, but never having the time to stop and visit.  The detail shows the Head of Christ and in his hand one black and one white bird: the artist’s unhesitating and unambiguous statement on racial equality.  Bossányi made a second version of this central light, because he was afraid that it might be destroyed in Apartheid South Africa.  That second light is stored in the vaults of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

St. Peter's - The Head of Christ (low res)

Dominic Price (2019) The Head of Christ with birds – design [Ervin Bossányi, 1950 – St. Peter’s College Chapel]