The Cathedral Church of St. Andrew, Rochester.
FROM NORTH-EAST.
FROM NORTH-EAST.
Rochester and London, next to Canterbury, are the oldest of all the English bishoprics, unless, indeed, we are prepared to accept a pre-Augustine bishopric of Hereford. St. Augustine, soon after his landing in 597, came to preach at Rochester. His reception was not encouraging; the rude people hung fish-tails to his coat. Wherefore in anger the saint prayed “that the Lord would smite themin posteriorato their everlasting ignominy. So that not only on their own but on their successors’ persons similar tails grew ever after.” The worst of it was that the story spread, and not only Rochester people but all English folk were believed on theContinent to becaudati(tailed). So that even in the sixteenth century “an Englishman now cannot travel in another land by way of merchandise or any other honest occupying, but it is most contumeliously thrown in his teeth that all Englishmen have tails.”
Among St. Augustine’s Italian missioners were St. Justus and St. Paulinus. St. Justus became first bishop of Rochester in 604. St. Paulinus, after eight years of mission work in Northumbria, became bishop of Rochester in 633. The first English bishop was St. Ythamar (644-655). These three were the chief local saints of Rochester in early days.
St. Augustine and his missioners had come from the monastery of St. Andrew, Rome. To St. Andrew, therefore, they dedicated the first Saxon cathedral. In 1542 the cathedral was re-dedicated to Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary of Rochester. Till 1077 the cathedral was served by secular canons; Gundulph replaced them by Benedictine monks.
I. In 1888 the foundations of an early church were found. It had an apse, but neither aisles nor transepts; walls only 2 feet 4 inches thick; 42 feet long, 28 feet broad. From the resemblance of its plan to that of St. Pancras, Canterbury, and the presence of Roman brick in the walls, it seems as likely to be a Romano-British as an Anglo Saxon church.
II. Between 1080 and 1089 Bishop Gundulph completed a Norman cathedral, except the western part of the nave. In plan it was entirely different from any Norman cathedral of the day: one can hardly help believing that it must have been designed by an Englishman. The plan of it is given in theBuilder. It was a long oblong aisled cathedral, with nave and aisles running on without a break from the west end of the nave to the east end of the choir. But in the choir the side-aisles were cut off from the central aisle by a solid wall, as in the contemporary choir of St. Albans and in the Premonstratensian abbey of St. Radigund, near Dover. There was probably no crossing, and therefore no central tower.There were no transepts proper; but, as in such Anglo-Saxon churches as Worth, low porch-like transepts projected north and south, with a breadth of only 14 feet. The east end, as in most Anglo-Saxon churches, was square; and there projected from it eastward a small square chapel. Beneath was a crypt, the western part of which remains. There were two towers, both abnormal in position. The southern tower was set in the angle of the choir and the south transept, and may have been the belfry. The other tower, fragments of which still remain, was set in a similar position, but entirely detached. Being detached, and having walls six feet thick, it was no doubt a military keep. Gundulph was fond of building keeps; those of the Tower of London and Malling still exist. Rochester was exposed to and had suffered from attacks of the Danes, sailing up the Medway, in 840, 884, and 999. There was a striking memento of them on the great west doors of the cathedral, which Pepys, as late as 1661, found “covered with the skins of Danes.” We may conjecture that it was as a refuge against similar attacks that Gundulph built the northern keep.
All this work of Gundulph’s is now gone except portions of the crypt, the keep, and the nave. The original monastery was built in the normal position, south of the nave. To enclose the cloister, therefore, on the north, the south side of the nave was proceeded with next. The south aisle-wall is very thin—as was customary in Anglo-Saxon architecture—and we may conjecture that English influence stopped at this point; for the piers and arches of the nave are quite Norman in character. Of Gundulph’s nave there remain on the south side five arches, together with the lower parts of the walls of both aisles. It is very doubtful whether he built any part of the triforium or clerestory. At present his work can only be seen in its original condition from the side of the aisles. The pier arches had originally two square orders, which remain unaltered on the side of the aisle (cf. Winchester transept). Gundulph’s masonry was in rough tufa.
III.Late Norman.—The works on the church were now probably suspended for a considerable time, while the monks, as at Gloucester, replaced the temporary buildings of the monastery by permanent ones. These temporary wooden buildings seem to have been situated in the usual position—viz., south of the nave. It was probably not to interfere with these that the permanent monastic buildings were placed in an abnormal position, south of the choir. Much of this work was done by Bishop Ernulph (1115-1124), who had been a great builder at Canterbury, while prior, and at Peterborough, as abbot. Parts of the cloister, refectory, and chapter-house remain.
NAVE, NORTH SIDE.
NAVE, NORTH SIDE.
When at length the builders returned to the nave of the cathedral (c.1120), fashions had changed. Gundulph’s eleventh-century design and his rough tufa masonry seemed archaic and barbaric. His tufa was therefore cased with good Caen stone, as was done later in the century at Chichester; his piers and capitals were remodelled, and on the side of the nave the outer square order of the pier-arch was covered with zigzag ornament. The aisles, as at Hereford, where a precisely similar transformation of eleventh-into twelfth-century work was taking place at the same time, were left unaltered. Gundulph had placed pilasters along the inner face of the aisle-walls, evidently intending that the aislesshould be vaulted; but his successors apparently thought the walls too thin, as at Carlisle, to support a vault; so, instead of vaulting the aisles and obtaining thus a continuous passage the whole length of the church, they constructed a passage in the thickness of the wall of the triforium. Thus Rochester, like Vignory, has the distinction of possessing a sham triforium. Waltham Abbey also has a triforium arcade, but no triforium floor; but that is because the vaults which originally covered the aisles had subsequently to be taken down.
Still later—about the middle of the twelfth century—is the west front, with its magnificent doorway, and the diaper of the triforium.
IV. In 1179 the cathedral was greatly damaged by fire. Either because of this, or because the eastern half of the cathedral had been planned so inconveniently, or because the plan was not the fashionable one of Norman times, the monks set to work to rebuild the whole cathedral. As usual, they arranged their building operations so as to avoid interfering with the services in the choir as long as possible. First, they rebuilt the north aisle of the choir, but not so high as it is at present. The aisle remained narrow, because Gundulph’s tower was in the way. But the south aisle of the choir they doubled in width. Next, they set to work at the east end, planning it, as at Hereford, as an eastern transept with an eastern aisle, and projecting eastward an oblong sanctuary (cf. Southwell). The new transept was lofty and broad; and it is quite possible that it was built over the top of Gundulph’s east end without disturbing daily services within it. Then, when all was finished, Gundulph’s east end was pulled down. Unlike the Worcester monks they preserved the level of the eleventh-century choir, and consequently had to continue Gundulph’s crypt eastward. In the new presbytery is seen the same curious mixture of quadripartite and sexpartite vaulting as in St. Hugh’s eastern transept at Lincoln. All this work was finished in 1227.
Next they pulled down Gundulph’s narrow north transept and rebuilt it as broad as the central aisle of the nave. The new transept has a sexpartite vault with a longitudinal ridge rib, as in the great transept of Lincoln (c.1245).
Then came the rebuilding of the south transept (c.1280). They resolved also to have a central tower and to rebuild the nave. Of the nave they rebuilt the two easternmost bays, and then completed the piers and arches of the crossing; but not yet the tower.
Up to this point the works had gone on continuously for a century. What enabled the monks to undertake such a great work as the rebuilding of the whole cathedral, and why, after doing so much, they suddenly stopped, has now to be explained. The secret of the flush of money at Rochester was that in 1201 the monks acquired a new saint, St. William. “He was by birth a Scot, of Perth; by trade, a baker; in charity so abundant that he gave to the poor the tenth loaf of his workmanship; in zeal so fervent that in vow he promised, and in deed attempted, to visit the places where Christ was conversant on earth; in which journey, he made Rochester his way, where, after that he had rested two or three days, he departed toward Canterbury. But ere he had gone far from the city, his servant—a foundling who had been brought up by him out of charity—led him of purpose out of the highway, and spoiled him both of his money and his life. The servant escaped, but his master (because he died in so holy a purpose of mind) was by the monks conveyed to St. Andrew’s and laid in the choir. And soon he wrought miracles plentifully.” It was, then, from offerings at the shrine of St. Thomas of Perth, left by countless pilgrims on their way to the shrine of a yet greater Thomas at Canterbury, that the expenses of the new choir were paid. And it was simply because in the course of eighty years the repute of the murdered baker had paled and waned before the ever-growing fame of the murdered archbishop, that the monks had to renounce, once for all, their ambitious project of rebuildingthe whole of the nave. It seems, however, that they were for a considerable time unwilling to give up hope; for one bay of the Norman triforium was pulled down, leaving a gap, which was not filled up till the fourteenth century; when, oddly enough, it was rebuilt in the same Norman style as before, but in greensand—a rare mediæval example of “architectural forgery” (cf. Durham Galilee).
CHOIR.
CHOIR.
V. But though the rebuilding of the nave was definitely abandoned, a good deal of work was done in the Curvilinear period (1315-1360). The central tower was at length erected; it was removed in 1749. A solid stone screen was built between the piers, as at Ripon; the south aisle of the choir was brought into its present form by the absorption of Gundulph’s southern tower; a grand doorway to the chapter-house was built, and monuments were erected to Bishop Hamo de Hythe (d. 1352), and Bishop John de Sheppey (d. 1360).
The monks now also provided a Lady chapel. This they got in a very inexpensive way—a proof that their resources had greatly fallen off—by appropriating for the purpose the southern transept, the two eastern bays of which they threw into one to form a recess for the altar of the Virgin.
VI. After this little was done at Rochester, except to buildout a chapel of three bays westward from the south transept, giving a sort of nave to the Lady chapel.
VII. The windows, however, were, as usual, in the builders’ hands throughout the whole of the fourteenth century—especially those of the dark Norman nave.
In the Curvilinear period flowing tracery was inserted in the lower range of lights in the sanctuary, and improvements were made in the clerestory of the south transept, now that it was to be used as a Lady chapel.
In the Perpendicular period the narrow north aisle of the choir, darkened by Gundulph’s tower on one side and on the other by the solid wall of the choir, was raised, lighted, and vaulted. Then the nave was taken in hand; Perpendicular windows were inserted in the aisles, and a great window in the west end; the whole of the Norman clerestory was taken off, a new clerestory and a new wooden roof were put up. Thus the nave got plenty of light.
VIII. In 1664 the south aisle of the nave was recased; and in 1670 the third, fourth and fifth bays, counting from the west, in the north aisle of the choir, were rebuilt.
IX. In 1830 Cottingham put up the present central tower. In 1871 the cathedral was restored by Scott.