Fragments of History: Rochester Cathedral’s Story in Stone, Glass and Thread

Throughout 2019 the crypt of Rochester Cathedral is hosting an exhibition of some of the finest sculptural fragments gathered from around the building over the last 200 years.

In 1820, work was underway to renovate the Great West Window under the architect Lewis Nockall Cottingham. Many sculptural decorations were removed from the spandrels; the areas either side of the arch of the window. Leaving the partially-weathered stones in place would have resulted in their continued decay and jeopardise the structural integrity of the sixteenth-century window below. Cottingham decided to sketch and record them as they were removed.

Other fragments were discovered throughout Cottingham’s renovations to the cathedral in the 1820s. In 1825 the tomb of Bishop John de Sheppey was discovered, blocked up with rubble including several late-medieval stone fragments that are thought to originate from Sheppey’s chantry chapel. Further architectural fragments were removed, unearthed or discovered throughout the nineteenth century.

Fig 1: Romanesque relief removed during restoration work on the Great West window in 1820

Fig 2: Over 50 stone fragments and other medieval items are on exhibition in the cathedral crypt throughout 2019

Fig 3: Enigmatic and extraordinarily fragile vesment comprising peacock and other bird feathers, its provenance and date are currently unknown though possibly medieval

Fig 4: This Romanesque has a confused history - photographed outside the west front in the nineteenth century but may have originally been part of a twelfth century shrine

These stones were gathered together in the Slype of the crypt at the turn of the last century, although would later be dispersed as the area was given over to vestries.

In the 1980s a long-term friend of the cathedral Anneliese Arnold was responsible for gathering the stones together into a room with purpose-built shelving.

The Lapidarium collection has grown over the last century to include fragments unearthed by the gardeners, discovered during various archaeological or construction works, or even found reused as garden features. Today the collection comprises over 400 stones ranging in date from the eighth to the nineteenth centuries. It includes two of only four sculptural fragments to be recovered from Anglo-Saxon Rochester and a tufa fragment with a surviving portion of a twelfth-century mural.

The exhibition also features many other medieval treasures from its collections and a presentation on recent researches at the cathedral. Regular readers will be aware of the discovery of the east range of the Early Norman cloisters in a radar survey at the beginning of 2018. The form of the east end of the late eleventh-century building was confirmed in excavations in 2014. A virtual 3D model of the locations of over 4,000 twelfth and thirteenth-century masons’ marks was completed at the beginning of this year.

This extensive sequence has been used to understand the construction history of the building in the twelfth century.

This will be the first time that these stone fragments have been made accessible to the public.

Entry to the exhibition is free and will run until the end of the year. We request that groups of 10 or more book in advance through the cathedral website.

For more information visit: www.rochestercathedral.org/fragments

Fig 5: Two fragments of an early thirteenth-century lavabo bowl, only recently discovered reused as a garden feature at a local property

Fig 6: 3D model of 4,000 visible masons’ marks in the nave, crypt and east end. This model features in upcoming KAS publications

Fig 7: Scale photograph of a mason’s mark at Rochester cathedral