“QUEEN’S CHAPEL”

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 256, 25 July 1936, Page 20

“QUEEN’S CHAPEL”

London is once again to have a “Queen’s Chapel.” A little-known Palace chapel will be restored to its historic use as a place of worship for English queens when Marlborough House is reopened this autumn. The chapel, states the “Daily Telegraph,” adjoins Marlborough House and -the Queen Alexandra memorial, and faces St. James’s Palace, to which it belongs. It was built by Inigo Jones for a queen—Henrietta Maria —at the order of her husband, Charles I, so that she could hear Mass, as she was a Roman Catholic. Charles H’s wife, Katherine of Braganza, worshipped there, and her arms are still to be seen on the wall. Special services were held there in more recent years for the princess who came to this country to become ultimately Queen Alexandra. , These services were in Danish. Queen Alexandra used the Chapel again during her widowhood at Marlborough House. The chapel has' been closed since her death, apart from services held there on Sunday afternoons for the Danish colony. No English marriages have taken place there for a great number of years, although Danish weddings are occasionally solemnised at the chapel.

The chapel will regain its real and original name, “Queen’s Chapel,” .when Queen Mary goes there to worship from Marlborough House. At present it is called by any name but the correct one. People refer to it erroneously as the Danish Chapel, the German Chapel— it reference to services held in German for the Hanoverian sovereigns—and Marlborough House Chapel. Although appearing to be in the grounds of Marlborough House, it -was in those of St. James’s Palace until a road was cut through to the park. Queen Mary, however, will be able to go to the chapel through a private door connecting it with her new home.