A short history of LSM
There has been a place of worship on the current site, originally outside
the town boundary, since at least the early twelfth century. According
to the earliest known records, the first church here, called
St Peter-without-Trumpington Gate, was controlled by three successive
generations of the same family until 1207. Then it was given to the
Hospital of St John the Evangelist, now St
John's College, and served by chaplains from that foundation.
In the 1280s the Bishop of Ely lodged
some scholars in the hospital but quickly discovered that the students
and sick people did not get on very well together. He moved the students
to a more congenial site in 1284, two houses south of St Peter's,
allowing them the use of the church as their chapel. This was the origin
of Peterhouse, the first Cambridge College.
By the 1340s the church was in poor condition, and Peterhouse decided
to rebuild. In 1352 the new building, still a dual purpose structure
of college chapel and parish church, was rededicated to the Blessed
Virgin Mary. To distinguish it from the other St Mary's in the centre
of Cambridge, it became known as St Mary the Less.
When a separate chapel was consecrated in Peterhouse in 1632, St Mary
the Less reverted to being a parish church. The College remains the
Patron of the church to this day.
Richard Crashaw, the metaphysical poet, was associated with this church
while he was a Fellow of Peterhouse (1638-43). Less than ten years later,
the church's decoration and ornaments were badly damaged by the Puritan
extremist William Dowsing.
The church was refitted in 1741 with wooden panelling, box-pews, choir
gallery and central pulpit (the present pulpit). It was restored by Sir
George Gilbert Scott in 1856-7, when the eighteenth-century woodwork
was removed and again in 1876; further restoration work occurred in 1876
and 1891, but by 1880 the church's appearance was much as it is now.
The south chapel was added in 1931, designed by Thomas Lyon, architect
of Sidney Sussex College Chapel, and the Parish Room at the west end
was built in 1892 and enlarged in 1990.
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