Shrewsbury School Chapel

When the school moved to its present site from the town centre, the Chapel was one of the first buildings to be constructed. The architect was Sir Arthur Blomfield. The first service took place on the 4th November 1883.

At the beginning of the Michaelmas Term each year, members of the School walk down into the town and attend a service in St. Mary’s Church, where boys went on Sundays in the 19th century when the School was without its own chapel. Our historic association with the town of Shrewsbury is again affirmed, when annually in March, the Mayor and Corporation come up to attend a service in the chapel.

The present building was extended in 1912 by the addition of a gallery when school numbers increased. A plan to extend the building yet further in 1989, on the riverside, by the addition of an aisle was never realised. As a consequence, the whole school cannot fit into the building and each week, one house, has the luxury of ‘Chapel Out’ and a lie in!

The chapel is at the heart of the school – literally and metaphorically. It is floodlit by night and the interior is warm and inviting, with much use of ‘Pugin red’. It would be fair to say that as a space, it ‘does’ atmosphere, it ‘does’ mystery. Much of this is due to fairly recent developments in the interior ordering.

New choir stalls, beautifully designed by Luke Hughes and Co of Covent Garden with their array of spirit burning choir lights covered in gold leaf, give the choir an elevated position to lead our Sunday worship. A magnificent series of abstract ceramics fitted to the wood panelling of the nave walls and to the front of the gallery was commissioned from Victoria Dark. These are a celebration of light and colour and life, and as a junior boy observed ‘They are not anything, but leave you free to have your own thoughts and feelings’.

The magnificent pew runners were designed by Jane Dillon who worked for many years in textiles at the Royal College of Art in London. They capture the silver ripples of the River Severn and run through the colour chart – blue to green and yellow to orange, to deep red at the entrance of the chapel. They suggest the power and strength of a young life and the onward movement of all life. They were given, as were the ceramics, in memory of two much loved members of the school. Jane also designed the altar cloth which is also abstract and very much her own creation, yet, whose green, giving way to an emergent yellow, suggests a Turner painting. A sun will arise. It will be big.

The eye is led down the nave to the altar and to the reredos of Christ on the road to Emmaus and this late Victorian sculpture, is flanked by six saints – Francis, Caecelia, John, Chad, Winifred and Nicholas. These wonderful frescoes set against a sea of gold leaf were commissioned from Aidan Hart, Britain’s leading icon painter in June of 2007.   

Shrewsbury School is a religious foundation of King Edward VI and its services are conducted according to the rites of the Church of England. What does this mean? It means that the School Chaplain is an Anglican Priest and Sunday services are similar to those you would find (apart from the compulsory congregation!) in any Anglican parish church. We have a robed choir which sings for every service. The choir also sings evensong regularly at St Chad's Church in Shrewsbury and has recently sung at various cathedrals, including Worcester Cathedral.

The Director of Chapel Music, Alex Mason, is responsible for arranging the music for all chapel services. At the moment, the whole school, less one boarding house, attends chapel on a Sunday morning at 10am when there is an address. Occasionally there are whole school services in the evening at 9.15pm by candlelight.

Boys are prepared annually for Confirmation, which is conducted by the Bishop of Shrewsbury at the beginning of the summer term. They are invited to consider this step in their first two years at the school.

The three carol services in Advent are spectacular candlelit occasions, which attract large congregations of parents and Old Salopians.

Ash Wednesday is marked by a School Eucharist and at the end of the Summer Term a special Leavers’ Service attended by leaving pupils and their parents, celebrates all the positive benefits of five years spent in a community such as ours. 

There are about 50 Roman Catholic pupils in the School and they are welcome to attend Mass on a Sunday at the Cathedral in the town if they so wish. About 10% of pupils come from overseas and have a very different religious tradition from our own. Most are happy to attend our services and where they wish, may attend a place of worship of their own at the weekend and to observe their own great religious festivals in the year. A few boys opt out of chapel services altogether.

During the week, the first year boys attend chapel as a year group on a Friday, the Sixth Form on a Thursday and the middle two years (Fourth and Fifth Forms) on a Wednesday. These mid week services employ a great variety of formats. With respect to pupils of other faiths, we recently held a series of conversations with such pupils in the chapel when points of contact and differences were explored and illuminated. Plays and poetry feature in these mid week services, as does, live music and taped, talks from members of staff and pupils alike. As an art historian, the Chaplain often uses a reproduction of a painting or a sculpture as a talking point. At the time of writing, members of staff are talking about their heroes and what they teach us about life and living.

In the first half of the Summer term, leaving Upper Sixth form pupils are interviewed by first year pupils in chapel, about the lessons they have learned in their time here. These interviews are followed by a reflective piece of music played by pupils on a variety of instruments – saxophone, trumpet, cello and so forth. The emphasis mid week is variety, informality and strong pupil involvement. 

Pupils sometimes ask of a Sunday Service – ‘How long is the service going to last (about a lesson length – 40 minutes) and I reply, ‘How long does it take to get a life?!’ And sometimes they say – ‘Why do we have to go to chapel?’ If I am in a rush, I might say, ‘Because we are a religious foundation and it is central to our self understanding’. ‘But why do we have to go?’ And I might reply, ‘Well, why pick on chapel? There is a self imposed pattern of compulsion –we have to get up in the mornings, wear the uniform, attend lessons, do our lesson preparation and so on.’ But more positively, why do we believe that attending chapel is important? A colleague once said to me that, Chapel is the only place in the school where the whole school is facing in the same direction and not competing! Pupils who return to the school in the years after they have left, will almost certainly go to visit their boarding house and almost certainly go back into the Chapel. Why? There is a strong sense of being in something together, being alongside others and in the memory, of course, a wonder as to what has happened to all those friends alongside whom one used to sit all those years before.

The Revd. Gary Dobbie,
Chaplain