Rochester Cathedral

“ Anselm, and when he had become the bishop of Rochester he remained faithful to Anselm, then the primate of England, facing bitter troubles with the king. The saint came to attend the good bishop on his deathbed. Gundulf rebuilt Rochester Cathedral, whose crypt and western bays are of his time (1076-1108) ; Rochester Tower, too, he raised, and the chapel of St. John in London Tower. It was said of him that he was the most skilled of all men in masoncraft.
The apse of the Trinité is considered one of the best things in Caen. It stands over a crypt whose sixteen piers are in four rows. ”

“ The cathedral church of Rochester is, as has been already said, a very small one, and we must not expect to find in it the grandeur and impressiveness that great size often confers. As a whole, too, it is not remarkable for beauty, though special parts may claim to possess this attribute. ”

“ Many features of the building are indeed remarkable in other respects, but we are probably correct in saying that, as a whole, it is, to students of architecture, chiefly historically interesting.
The Ground Plan is of the double cross form, frequent in buildings of this class. The nave and choir both have aisles, but those of the choir are walled off from it. The main transept is aisleless, but the north and south choir transepts have each an aisle, or small chapel, on the eastern side. Beneath the whole eastern part of the church extends the magnificent crypt. ”

“ The cathedral still has great and pressing needs. The most crying is, perhaps, the fitting of roofs to Sir G. Scott’s gables in the eastern part, for their present isolated condition makes them unpleasantly conspicuous. This the dean is anxious to see undertaken next. A spire is also much wanted; the present tower, especially since it has been dwarfed by the raising of the transept roofs, looks scarcely worthy of a moderately important parish church, much less of a cathedral. ”

“ They seldom departed from this simple form of architecture. Their defence was rarely constructed on a series of fortifications. Local advantages and a lofty site were invariably the Norman idea of a safe stronghold.
Great interest is attached to the Cathedral of Rochester. Its see is the smallest in the kingdom and the most ancient after Canterbury. The two were established, as we have seen, within a few years of each other, under the auspices of St. Augustine and King Ethelbert of Kent.
The present cathedral dates from the commencement of the twelfth century, when it was built by Gundulph. ”

“ Those churches which contained the shrines of popular saints drew, for the repair or enlargement of the fabric, no small revenue from the offerings of pilgrims. The eastern part of Rochester Cathedral was paid for by the moneys deposited at the tomb of S. William of Perth; and the large sums given by visitors to the shrine of S. Thomas of Canterbury materially assisted in keeping the building in repair. ”

“ The canopy, with its crockets and pinnacles, and the quatrefoils of carved foliage in its gables are worthy of attention.
The tomb in the easternmost bay of the transept end is reputed to be that of St. William of Perth, the great Rochester saint. This transept formed his chapel, and his shrine is believed to have stood on a slab marked with six crosses, that lay in the centre of the floor until the present elaborate pavement was put down. Lambarde gives the following account of the saint, saying that he derives it from the “Nova Legenda” itself. ”

“ Chasteness of proportion, the degree of artistry shown alike in details and in the execution of the whole, are the sole considerations that shall weigh with those who take any sort of an intelligent interest in the architecture of cathedrals; and the admiration of a thing that “licks creation” in the matter of measurement is senseless if it is not wedded to a proper perception of the justness of the parts that go to make its bulk.
The Cathedral of Saint Andrew at Rochester is at least equally interesting with that of Canterbury ”

“ Thorpe that forms the frontispiece to his “Registrum Roffense,” agrees with it well when we take into consideration the smallness of its scale. The tower was square, without either battlements or corner pinnacles, and the spire rose directly from it. On the west side, it will be noticed, the blind arcading under a string course at the height of the ridges of the transept roofs, terminated downwards on the lines of a pointed gable, and we may hence conclude that the nave used to have a high-pitched roof before its present flat one. ”

“ Very extensive alterations were made at the beginning of the nineteenth century, under the direction of Cottingham, which were drastic, and Sir G. Scott and Mr. Pearson have both been at work on the Cathedral, whose restorations we will examine when we inspect the Cathedral. The Bishopric of Rochester since the Reformation has been occupied by several remarkable men. Bishop Fisher, a learned, brave and saintly man, was doomed to death on the scaffold by Henry VIII. (1535) , and Barlow, Buckeridge, Warner and Atterbury were all men who achieved fame in their times. ”

“ In the floor are still to be seen many Memorial slabs, but more have been either covered up or lost. In the centre of the south transept there still remains the matrix of what was once a splendid brass, representing a bishop, in his episcopal robes and with his crozier, beneath a rich canopy with a shield of arms on either side of his head. In the great recess in the north transept there is placed against the wall, lozenge-wise, the matrix of a brass of several figures. ”

“ In the painted decoration of the choir walls, with its alternate lions and fleurs-de-lis,—which Sir Gilbert Scott partly saved and partly renewed,—we have probably a contemporary allusion to and commemoration of, the victories won by our countrymen in France in Edward III.’s reign. Rochester lay on the main route to the Continent and is sure to have seen much of the soldiers who passed to and fro. ”

“ If a western porch or apse ever existed, and has left any remains, these remains must lie beneath the road, so that excavation would be necessary to get at them. It has been conjectured that the west, as well as the east end, terminated apsidally. There would then have been placed, in the one apse, the high altar of St. Andrew, with the tombs of St. Paulinus, the apostle of Northumbria, and of St. Ythamar, the first Englishman to attain the episcopal dignity. Both of these died as bishops of Rochester, and they were buried in its cathedral in 644 and 655 respectively. ”

“ To dread of such attacks or fear of the crowds of strangers constantly passing through the town, which stood on the main road to Canterbury and the Continent, we must attribute the erection of the screens and strong doors of this time, which shut off the choir from the rest of the cathedral, and also the almost contemporaneous walling off of the priory from the town. Among these screens is included the west side of the pulpitum, which still contains its original central doorway, as well as the screens in the choir aisles. ”

“ Since the close of the Napoleonic wars the cathedral has passed through four busy periods of restoration. The first of these lasted from the beginning of 1825 until about 1830. Mr. L. N. Cottingham was in charge, Messrs. Bayfere, Smirke, Savage, and Twopeny being also consulted at various times. The roofs of the choir and its transept, though they had been thoroughly repaired only fourteen years before, were soon found to be quite unsafe and so eaten up with dry-rot, that it was necessary to renew them. ”

“ On the transept side we see the mouldings of an arch like, and on the same level as, its neighbours to the north. The western half of the whole thickness of the wall is, however, continued lower, exhibiting a plain surface to the east, but terminating on the aisle side, at the height of the eastern arches of the nave, in mouldings that we should have expected to find higher up. ”

“ In the window heads, the dog-tooth moulding, the characteristic ornament of the Early English style, constantly occurs, and the openings often have side shafts. In the lower tier of the presbytery windows Decorated tracery has been inserted; elsewhere we have Early English work, or, frequently, a modern copy of it. The lowest row of windows lights the crypt. The gable at the end of the north choir transept, that above the east wall of its aisle and that at the east end of the church, are all by Sir G. Scott; they still require roofs of corresponding pitch, a need both great and conspicuous. ”

“ The Mayor and Corporation of Rochester still have the right of entry in their robes and with their insignia of office by the great west door. We find the privilege of having their insignia borne in the cathedral on record as early as 1448 in indentures between Bishop Lowe on the one part, and the bailiff and townspeople of Rochester on the other. The titles “mayor” and “citizens” were only granted later by Edward IV., in a charter dated December 14th, 1461. ”

“ Proceeding down the Medway, it flows past the city of Rochester, the river being crowded with vessels and crossed here by a bridge with a swinging draw. Rochester has a fine old cathedral, rather dilapidated, and in part restored, but its chief attraction is the castle towering above the river, its Norman keep forming a tower over seventy feet square and rising one hundred feet high, its masonry disclosing vast strength and impressive massiveness. Cobham Hall, the residence of Earl Darnley, is near Rochester, standing in a nobly wooded [Pg 480] park seven miles in circumference. ”

“ He is recorded to have built the refectory, [Pg 10] dormitory, and chapter house. Portions of these still remain, and one feature, in the ornamentation of the chapter house, especially marks it as his work. This is a peculiar lattice-like diaper, which occurs elsewhere at Rochester,—in fragments that belonged probably to a beginning by him of the renovation of the choir,—but has only been noticed at one other place: by the entrance to the crypt at Canterbury, where also it is due to him. ”

“ The royal city of Canterbury continued to be the centre of St. Augustine’s labours, but only seven years passed, Bede tells us, ere he deemed it necessary to found other sees at Rochester and at London. Rochester therefore claims to be the second, or at most the third oldest of English bishoprics.
Justus, one of the band sent by St. Gregory to help the mission in 601, was consecrated as its first bishop in 604. A church was built for him by the king and dedicated to St. Andrew, the patron saint of the monastery on the Cælian Hill in Rome, from which St. Augustine and his companions had come. ”

“ In the same way the choir was finished, while the nave, or parochial portion, in which the monastic establishment had less interest, was possibly left to the townsmen, and remained longer incomplete. All that the monks most wanted,—enough of the nave to secure the stability of the choir and transepts, and the south wall that supported their cloister,—was built under Gundulf’s direction. It has been thought likely that the nave was completed by the parishioners before the later Norman period. ”

“ The beautiful Norman west front was built about 1125–30, and in 1130 the new cathedral was consecrated. About 1201 a baker, William of Perth, while on a pilgrimage was murdered near Rochester by robbers. He was buried in the cathedral and was canonized, his shrine becoming a famous resort of pilgrims, who brought much wealth to the monastery. The edifice suffered from fire in 1137 and in 1171. During the whole of the 13th and a part of the 14th century a gradual rebuilding, or sometimes mere recasing, of the church was effected from east to west. ”

“ The five graduated windows of the upper range have double shafts on each side, and the connected dripstone over the lower range ends in carved heads. The clerestory of the west wall looking out over the aisle and Lady Chapel roofs is similar to that on the east side and the quatrefoil heads of the two-light windows help to mark the entry into the Decorated period. The little [Pg 52] room in the angle between the transept and the choir aisle is used as a vestry and will have to be mentioned again.
The North Side of the Choir can, as has been said, be well seen from the High Street. ”

“ Nicholas, who passed out again by the west door. It is contained within a rectangular framework, and has quatrefoils in the spandrels.
In the corner between the south aisle and the transept is the Perpendicular Lady Chapel, three bays long from east to west, and two in width towards the south. Its windows are three-lighted. They terminate in the obtuse arches of their time and have their heads filled with tracery. At about half its height each is divided by a transom or horizontal mullion, beneath which the lights have cusped heads. ”

“ In the same chapel, in a recess beside Bishop Warner’s monument, is an old and weather-worn statue traditionally said to represent the great architect-bishop Gundulf. This was brought hither by Mr. Pearson, when he rebuilt the north-west tower, in the lower arcade of which it had been carefully replaced in the changes of about 1770. The mitre is almost lost, the face has suffered greatly, and the hands, feet and parts of the crosier are quite gone. The chasuble hangs in curious, close, U-like folds and the crosier staff passes diagonally across the body. ”