Today we went as a group to choral evensong at King's College Chapel. There I am waiting outside to enter the Chapel. In the background is the entrance to King's College. Can you guess when it was built? I will tell you at the bottom. You may be surprised.

Anyway, choral evensong is a beautiful service lasting about 45 minutes. The service is mostly conducted in song except for two readings from the Old Testament and the New Testament. The singing is down antiphonally by the choir of boys and men (tonight only men). So for example when they sang Psalm 33, they passed each verse back and forth between them so you have song first from one side of the choir and then from the other.

We were able to sit near the choir because Liz (the bursar of Westcott House) knows the King's College chapel folks well. Two of her boys were choristers. We took our seats first and then after us came at least 100 other people. Some of them could sat between the choir stalls and the alter but others sat in the nave beyond the choir stalls. Those people could not see the choir at all and maybe could not hear them very well. When I observed them sitting in the nave and craning their heads to peer inside the open arched gothic door to see the choir, I suddenly realized how hierarchical and exclusive are some aspects of the Church of England.

As I sat down, I tipped my head back to look at the magnificent fan vaulting. Where each set of fans met was either a Tudor rose or a Beaufort portcullis -- both carved in high relief.

Also as I sat, I scanned the dark wood of the choir screen to find the initials of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. I had read he had had their initials carved into the screen. I found his initials on little shields: H R for Henricus Rex. I thought I saw on the other side of the choir H A and felt satisfied. However after evensong, I took a closer look and discovered my mistake. Those initials too were H R.

The evensong service as lovely. But I did get rather tired standing through all 28 verses of Psalm 33 which was all about how the speaker was being tormented by his enemies.

After the service, I began searching the screen for those initials. I was the last one to leave and did so only reluctantly. When I stepped through the gothic arch, I turned around and saw HR carved in a circle on each door. Then I looked to the left and up. I found more H R initials. Still nothing and I felt acutely disappointed. But then I looked over on the right hand side of the screen. There they were!

Up above my head: the H and the A. Carved together. The loops of the lower limbs of the letters curved and twined -- to my eye making a heart shape.

I tried to take a picture but my hands were too shakey with excitement. So down below is a blurry version of the initials which I tried to edit and enhance to make look better.

I remember reading that when she was crowned, these two initials were on the carriage or something and everyone pointed at them and said "ha, ha!"




Oh yes, the entrance gate was built in the 19th century during a neogothic revival.