Restoration of the Ithamar Chapel
In some ways Noah had it pretty easy. He finished his Ark just in time, floated around while the water rose and then waited for dry land to appear again. He did not have to worry about drainage - except presumably for the bilges which must have posed quite a challenge with two of everything on board.
Ithamar Chapel posed a different problem. It was damp. It was always damp, and at times it smelled like the Ark's bilges. The persistence of dampness was a touch puzzling: the windows had, after all, been put back over a hundred years ago and the earth floor replaced with a 4 inch concrete floor in about 1900, Also a small trial dig in alter 1984 had shown that the brick earth under the concrete was reasonably dry and not the bubbling bog that some had expected, A monitoring programme of the temperature and relative humidity in the crypt for two years before the planned start of work in the autumn of 1995 had kept a little computer very happy, produced reams of graphs and proved, yes you've got it, Ithamar's air was damp. Sadly the sensors had no olfactory ability,
Another piece of preliminary research was to analyse the moisture in the walls, Many salts were found to be in solution - and a good thing too: if they had crystallised they could have broken up the stonework. Of surprise to the experts was the high level of nitrates. This was a puzzle until Dr. Nigel Sealey of the National Trust uttered one word at a memorable meeting of experts in Queen Anne's gate. 'Pigeons' he said. Silence and metaphorical knocking of heads on the wall. How proud a pigeon would feel if it but knew that a particularly personal offering could still be swilling round in the Cathedral walls many generations after it was made.
Work therefore started with many theories but no practical reasons for the persistent dampness and occasional smell. However when Dave Baker and his team got to work things started to happen. First a Victorian drainage system in an advanced state of decrepitude was found linking the downpipes on the east and north east sides of the Cathedral - these had been thought to lead to individual soakaways. Secondly, bailing out a particularly noisome catchpit soon revealed a drain going in the direction of the High Street. Shortly after a second one was found a bit further west. Excitement (and the smell) mounted but the drain clearing rods could get nowhere, hitting a solid blockage after a few feet only. So the drain busters were sent for. After a couple of days hard work with high pressure air and water, and a drill on a flexible drive which can only be described as something from the very worst nightmare about dentists, the drains were cleared. This is why on a cold afternoon in early November four figures were to be seen slapping each other on the back around an open inspection pit in the High Street quite oblivious to traffic trying to get past.
Noah would have been just as delighted.
But further surprises were in store. Clearance of the muck of years from the collection pit continued (and I would recommend that work to anyone looking for a really nasty penance). Near the bottom an inlet was found which appeared to come from under the floor of Ithamar. Two drains on the south side of Ithamar, in the pigeon parlour and crypt furnace chamber, were then prodded and also seemed to go under the Chapel floor.
After much flushing and rodding and pumping these drains were made reasonably clear of the detritus of years which included the remains of a number of pigeons. And Boris was sent for.
Now Boris is a tough, street wise video camera on 4 miniature tractor wheels.
He rests in the back of a battered van stuffed full of very expensive electronic equipment to which he is attached by an umbilical cord which includes optical fibre cable costing a quite startling amount per metre. I like to think of Boris as a Star Wars ferret.
Chattering fiercely Boris set off down the drains: one, leading to the pigeon parlour he got through, but the branch from the furnace chamber defeated him
- it was just too broken. However the pictures sent back (and now preserved for posterity in the library) told enough: the drains had had it in a very big way.
Joints were broken and many of the sections of clay drain badly cracked.
Clearly the whole system had to be replaced as it was all too evident that much of the rain falling on the roofs at the eastern end of the Cathedral was pouring into a disintegrating drainage system around and under Ithamar.
In the next few weeks all the broken nineteenth century bits were broken out and the whole lot replaced with bright shiny twentieth century plastic. Hard, dirty and cold work in winter which was carried out with the usual professionalism by Dave Baker and his expert team. They were helped by archaeologists who recorded everything. I vividly recall one slip of a girl, on her first dig and in enormous boots, who spent a blissful day meticulously cleaning a length of Victorian concrete around the old drains with toothpick and tiny brush. Fortunately for her morale she was elsewhere the next day when it was all broken up unceremoniously and consigned to the skip.
Completion of the new drains allowed the rest of the work to be completed: the independent heating and ventilation system, the new floor of tiles hand-made in Kent, the re-rendering of the walls and embrasures (not without its own alarms - one is a mite suspicious of a supposed expert who tries to render a large area of wall with a pointing trowel); the new wiring and lighting; and last, but certainly not least, the expertly conserved vault paintings.
Now, when I sit in the peace and quiet of the lovely simplicity of the restored Ithamar Chapel, I recollect with pleasure the practical detective work involved in piecing together the solution to a long standing problem.
The moral of this short tale is that all work on the fabric of the building must be preserved in detail for posterity. Our nineteenth century predecessors were not very good at that.
And Boris? Well there are one or two other drains that I am very curious about.
I just need an excuse to pop him down.
Christopher Hebron
Comptroller
The Friends of Rochester Cathedral were founded to help finance the maintenance of the fabric and grounds. The Friends’ annual reports have become a trove of articles on the fabric and history of the cathedral.
Keeping the Cathedral standing, warm, lit, beautiful and ready to receive worshippers and visitors is a never-ending task.