Eton College Chapel

Henry VI attached the greatest importance to the religious aspects of his new foundation and he planned that the services would be conducted on a magnificent scale by providing an establishment of 10 fellow priests, 10 chaplains, 10 clerks and 16 choristers.

This last custom is consistent with the Catholic practice of praying for a dead person's soul in order to hasten its progress from Purgatory to Paradise.

[2] This was befitting for a church that was to become a great place of pilgrimage in Europe: for about a decade pilgrims attracted by the relics and the available Indulgences flocked to Eton on the Feast of the Assumption in August, when there was a fair lasting six days on the fields.

For around forty years before the chapel was completed, services were held in the parish church, which was dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin.

The chapel is unique[citation needed] amongst its comparably-sized peers in that it eschews sound boards (a common feature of English churches and chapels in which medium-to-large-scale services and concerts are heard) in favour of what the former Precentor, Ralph Allwood, calls a more "organic" sound produced without the use of equipment (apart from microphones in the pulpit and lectern).

These paintings were whitewashed over in 1560 as a result of an order from the new Protestant church authorities which banned depictions of mythical miracles.

They were left obscured and forgotten for around 300 years, until they were rediscovered in 1847; in 1923 they were cleaned, restored and revealed by the removal of the stall canopies.

[1] In World War II, all of the chapel glass, except a window above the organ, was shattered by a bomb that fell on the nearby Upper School.