Long Gallery interior Long Gallery interior
The Long Gallery is 80 feet long, 12 feet wide, and 9 feet high. The building is entirely timber framed, and is of uncertain date, probably 1595-1602 in its present form, although plans show an earlier building on the same site. As can be seen in the photograph, the walls lean to the left, and the floor slopes to the right.
The panelling is dated 1602 on the reverse side of a door at the east end. It is of unknown manufacture. It was almost certainly the gift of the then President, Dr Humphry Tyndall. Andrew Willet recorded in 1600:
Queenes Colledge, where the Masters lodging hath beene lately very much enlarged and beautified, partly at the charge of Doctor Tyndall Master there, Deane of Ely, and of the house, to the summe foure or five hundred pounds.
After Dr Tyndall died in 1614, his will included:
I give to the president and fellows of Queens college in Cambridge to my successors use all the "seeling" and wainscoting of my chambers and lodging I have, which (I take) amounteth to two hundred and fifty pounds of thereabouts more than I have received from the college or any other benefactors towards the same.
The paint was removed from the panelling in 1857. A short length of the painted panelling survives in a cupboard at the west end, dating from when Carter's new staircase of 1791 caused the gallery to be slightly truncated.
The moulded plaster ceiling was put up in 1923 to the design of C.G. Hare, and paid for by the President, Dr Fitzpatrick. Its design was inspired by the ceiling of the gallery at Haddon Hall. It was Professor Willis who pointed out in the 1860s the similarity in ground plan between Haddon Hall and Queens' College, although there is no evidence that that they are in any way connected. The1923 ceiling may be taken as life imitating (or reinforcing) the imagination.
The Long Gallery has for centuries been a picture gallery.