About Magdalen College Chapel, Oxford
Magdalen College Chapel is among the most active in the University, with about fourteen services a week during Full Term.
All are most welcome to attend chapel services: members of any religion or of none, members of Magdalen or the public, regardless of official college opening hours.
While the chapel is here first and foremost to offer a place of worship for our students, fellows and staff, in reality, the congregation extends far beyond these limits and includes many other people, some from other Oxford colleges, some from the local community, some from further afield.
It can feel rather like going to services in a cathedral, but the atmosphere is more domestic and intimate.
The College Choir enriches worship every day of the week in Full Term (except Mondays) at 6.00pm, and every Sunday morning in term time at 11.00am.
On Saturdays, the men of the Choir are joined by female undergraduates from a number of Oxford colleges to form the Consort of Voices.
Other services in chapel are said – without the choir – and these, like the choral services, are Anglican, bearing the imprint, as is the tradition at Magdalen, of the Oxford Movement or Catholic Revival of the nineteenth century.
The beautiful chapel (1474-80) has the traditional Oxford T-plan, with just a chancel (or choir) and an antechapel. It has been much changed since it was first built; the present interior mainly reflects the restoration by L.N. Cottingham in 1830-35.
