Ely Cathedral, Lady Chapel: altar and reredos

The Lady Chapel is one of the most beautiful buildings of the fourteenth century. Its walls, once furnished with more than a hundred richly polychromed statues, and its windows, once filled with stained glass, were purged by iconoclasts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Today it is a bleached version of its former self, a magnificent architectural framework embellished with superb foliage carving, the remains of figures in relief and delicate traces elaborate polychrome decoration. In this state it testifies both to piety and artistic genius of the medieval builders and to the origins of the Protestant version of Christianity. For Reformation radicals, medieval imagery became the enemy of the word and an impediment to the understanding of biblical truth. Images of saints on whose intercession at the Day of Judgement Christians had come to rely were either removed or defaced by reformers for whom salvation was available solely through the grace of God and his son Jesus Christ.

The introduction of David Wynn’s painted statue of the Virgin into this largely monochrome, Reformed interior in 2000 proved controversial and in the absence of other imagery created a devotional focus visually distinct from the damaged sanctuary below. The brief therefore was to devise a scheme that would integrate the statue visually and theologically into a re-ordered sanctuary in which the idea of Christ was pre-eminent. The scheme achieved this by embodying the Word in its design. The canopy is made from cyphers of the letters of Maria and in the cut-out lettering of the altar the text from the first chapter of John’s gospel alludes to the significance Christ’s mother and her son’s embodiment of the Word, Grace and Truth.

The brief also required the winning entry in this limited competition to address the ‘brokenness’ embodied in the post-Reformation damage. Rather than address ideas of oppression, failure and loss, this is achieved by the way in which the metalwork frames and gently supports visually the surviving medieval stonework behind the altar.

The excellent execution of Chris Topp’s ironwork, his knowledge of materials, and the technical skill of his craftspeople were crucial to the detailing of the scheme.