Usually known as Wakefield Chantry Chapel, part of the medieval bridge over the River Calder in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England.Wikimedia Commons
A chantry chapel is a private chapel, normally attached to a parish church or chapel of ease
Church subordinate to a parish church serving an area known as a chapelry, for the convenience of those parishioners who would find it difficult to attend services at the parish church., with an altar for the celebration of mass for the souls of the founder and his or her nominees, or for the souls of the members of guilds and other local organisations who had erected such a chapel.[1] Some chantry chapels were associated with almshouses
Charitable foundation established to provide for the poor. for the elderly, poor or infirm, the residents of which were required to pray for the souls of the founders.[2]
The system of chantry chapels began in the 13th century, but became fashionable in the later Middle Ages.[1] The early Christian church taught that the souls of the deceased were generally admitted either to heaven or to hell directly upon their deaths, but from the latter half of the 12th century the idea of purgatory as a sort of temporary hell for those who had led less than blameless lives began to take root.[3]
It was believed that the more Masses that were said for someone’s soul, the quicker it would escape from purgatory and enter heaven, so those able to afford it could pay the salary of a priest to say Masses just for them. Many were said at altars set up around a church, but the really wealthy could pay for chapels – chantry chapels – to be built.[1]
The word chantry is derived from the Anglo-Norman and Middle French chanterie, meaning the action of singing or chanting.[4]
Abolition
Following the English Reformation in England initiated by King Henry VIII, Parliament passed an Act in 1545 which provided that all chantries and their properties would thenceforth belong to the King for as long as he should live. But Henry died only two years later, by which time rather few chantries had been closed or transferred to him. His son and successor, King Edward VI, signed a new Act in 1547, which ended 2,374 chantries and guild chapels and seized their assets.[5]
