Faith and Fabric: A History of Rochester Cathedral 604-1991
/Tim Tatton-Brown reviews Faith and Fabric, edited by Nigel Yates and Paul Weisby and published by the Boydell Press and Friends of Rochester Cathedral. Featured in The Friends of Rochester Cathedral Annual Report for 1995-1996.
This long awaited book was published on 1st October 1996. Three articles now follow. Nigel Yates, the principal editor, tells the story of how the book came to be written. Richard Eales, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Kent at Canterbury discusses the historical aspects of the book, and Tim Tatton Brown, archaeological consultant to the Dean and Chapter discusses archaeological chapters.
Writing the history of Rochester Cathedral
When the new history of Rochester Cathedral was published, on 1 October 1996 it was the culmination of nearly fifteen vears work. To some it seemed like a very long time in the making but similar timescales are not uncommon in the production of many comparable historical studies. Indeed that for the Rochester Cathedral history was marginally shorter than that for the cathedral history at Canterbury which was published in 1995.
It was in the Spring of 1982 that the first steps were taken by the then Dean, John Arnold, and Canon Paul Welsby, to produce a history of the Cathedral.
They approached me, not just because I was County Archivist at the time but because they knew I was an active historian specialising in ecclesiastical history. When I responded positively to the idea we then planned how the new history could be produced and financed. It was agreed at an early stage that the volume should be jointly financed by the County Council and the Friends of the Cathedral though, obviously, it was impossible to put any figures to that until the volume was ready for publication. Initially the volume was conceived as a one-off publication. It was only when the County Council decided to commission a new History of Kent in 1989 that I suggested that there would be advantages in making the cathedral history one of the volumes in what was, and is, known as the Kent History project. To this the Dean and Chapter readily agreed.
From the outset the Dean and Chapter gave Paul Welsby and myself, as co-editors of the volume, complete freedom in relation to its contents and presentation. We had to decide what sort of history we wanted to produce. Was it going to be a coffee-table book with relatively little text and lots of pictures?
Was it going to be a modern version of the chronicle type of history that was produced for so many cathedrals and dioceses at the end of the nineteenth century? We were agreed that what we wanted was a high quality academic history written in such a way that it was readable by non-experts. We did not have any real models to go on as far as other cathedral histories were concerned, but we quickly found out that Rochester was only one of severe cathedrals that had either recently commissioned or were about to commission new histories. Many of these have appeared in the last two years - Canterbury Chichester, Lincoln, Norwich - and they have all followed a fairly similar format to the one we chose for Rochester, namely a series of essays by experts in the field.
The next step was to commission our contributors. However, commissioning contributors and receiving the completed essays are two very different matters, and there is always the danger that some contributions will never materialise.
In our case we have been very lucky. Only one contributor was forced to pull out, through ill-health, and it was possible to find a replacement without any significant delay to the production process being caused. The main cause for delay has been that not all contributors met the original deadline for submissions and some first drafts were significantly re-written in the light of comments from the editors, other contributors and external readers.
The first decision to be made was over how much the two editors would contribute. I had originally assumed that Paul Welsby would want, in the light of his earlier published work, to cover the immediate post-Reformation period and that I would cover my own area of expertise, which was the nineteenth century. In fact Paul decided that he would much rather do the nineteenth century. My own interests were also moving in other directions and it was clear that there was sufficient material for a useful chapter on post-Reformation worship, which might otherwise have got rather lost if it had been chopped up into smaller sections to appear in the main chronological chapters. It was therefore agreed that Paul would cover the period from 1820 until 1940 and that John Arnold would contribute a post-script on the cathedral since 1940.
When lohn moved to be dean of Durham it seemed best for Paul to extend his chapter up to the present day. Two other contributors were obvious. Anne Oakley, as an assistant archivist in the Kent Archives Office, had been responsible for cataloguing the cathedral archive in the 1960s and was also now familiar, as cathedral archivist at Canterbury, with the history of that cathedral. As her particular interest was in the later Middle Ages, this seemed the obvious section for her to take on. Patrick Mussett was well-known to me for his work on other cathedrals in the eighteenth century and he was enthusiastic about accepting the commission to write about Rochester between 1660 and 1820. We had no obvious authors for either the early medieval or, now that Paul Welsby had decided he wished to do the nineteenth century, early modern periods. We approached two distinguished academics for advice.
Professor Christopher Brooke recommended Martin Brett for the early medieval period and, after he had accepted the commission, it was agreed, in consultation with him and Anne Oakley, to make 1185 the dividing date between their chapters. Professor Patrick Collinson recommended Charles Knighton for the early modern chapter (1540-1660) and he also readily accepted, later offering to undertake the index as well
Paul and I both saw these five chronological chapters as the core of the cathedral history. We had, however, also agreed to have a supplementary chapter on liturgical issues and we felt that it would be sensible to deal with the history of the fabric separately as well. Again we were much influenced in this respect by our knowledge that two scholars were already working on the history of the fabric and we commissioned both of them, Philip McAleer and Mary Covert, to undertake the fabric chapters for our history with 1540 as the dividing date. Unfortunately Mary Covert had to bow out later because of ill-heath. The problem of the vacancy was solved by Diana Holbrook, who had already been undertaking substantial research on the fabric for Martin Caroë, offering to extend this work to take over from Mary Covert, who generously made all the work she had already done on the chapter available for use by the new author.
We had originally hoped to produce the cathedral history by about 1990 and the final text of four chapters had been written and agreed by then. Three chapters, however, required some revision, and we had the problem of Mary Covert needing to hand her chapter over to someone else. The last six years have been devoted to this process and to getting the volume through the press.
We also decided to append two small editorial contributions on the cathedral library and the archives, and we had to ensure that the volume contained a balanced selection of the extensive illustrative material that existed in addition to the photographs Philip McAleer had supplied to support his chapter. The whole editorial process was completed towards the end of 1994 and the volume delivered to Boydell and Brewer, who publish the volumes in the Kent History Project in association with the County Council, in February 1995. It then had to be costed and the financial package discussed with the Friends of the Cathedral and any grants towards offsetting the costs of publication sought.
This process took somewhat longer than we had originally envisaged and it was not completed until the summer of 1995. An application for funding to the Kent Archaeological Society produced a grant of £1,000 for which we were very grateful. Boydell and Brewer were then authorised to proceed with the publication process. There were a few more difficulties with this than there had been with the three other Kent History Project volumes that had already been produced. Two contributors did not have access to a word-processor so that their typescripts and, in the case of Charles Knighton, the index as well, had to be scanned in. Another contributor used a word-processor package with which Boydell and Brewer were unfamiliar and which again caused them some problems. The original scheduled publication date of May or June 1996 slipped by three or four months. Whilst clearly it would have been good to get the volume out a little earlier we are pleased with the final product. In the view of Paul Welsby and myself the history of Rochester Cathedral compares very favourably with all the other cathedral histories produced in recent years and considerably better than some of them.
For all the contributors the writing of their chapters involved extensive access to primary sources, particularly the original archives of the cathedral. Very little work had been done in the past on the history of Rochester Cathedral so there was very little in the way of secondary sources available. The brief we gave our contributors was a very clear one. We wanted them to produce a chronicle of events but to ensure that every aspect of the cathedral's history consisted of a balance between recording what happened and analysing its significance, looking particularly at certain key themes: the relationship between the cathedral and the city, and that between the cathedral and the diocese; ensuring that the history had a human dimension by identifying significant personnel in the past and their contribution to the cathedral; looking at the tensions which are an essential ingredient in the life of any cathedral at any period. Secondly we wanted our contributors not to see Rochester in isolation, not to be introspective or parochial in their outlook, but to place people and events at Rochester in the wider context of English church history and make comparisons, where appropriate, between Rochester and other cathedrals.
Every contributor responded positively to these challenges. Their work is scholarly but it is also readable. We hope that the volume's readers and the cathedral community in general will all feel that it had been worth the effort.
Nigel Yates
The historical chapters
This collaborative history of Rochester Cathedral appears as volume 4 in the Kent History project, a series designed to produce a new survey of Kent's past in the light of modern scholarship. Faith and Fabric is also part of a wider reappraisal of the history of English cathedrals, beginning with York (1977), and including more recently Chichester (1994) and Norwich (1996). For much of its long history, though, Rochester has been in the shadow of Canterbury, and the most telling comparison is with the 1995 History of Canterbury Cathedral. The Canterbury project was aided by the Leverhulme Trust and had the services of a full-time research assistant. Despite the essential support of the Friends for this Rochester volume since it was first planned in 1982, the process of its research and production has not been subsidised in anything like the same way. The finished books are thus different in scale and (unfortunately) in price.
The six contributors who cover Rochester from 604 to 1994 thus have 150 pages between them; the seven who cover Canterbury 597-1994 share 340, with another 211 devoted to the library, liturgy, music and monuments. Nor can it be argued that the surviving evidence for Rochester's history is too thin to warrant fuller treatment. The Rochester sources are not indeed of the same bulk as the Canterbury ones but they are by the standards of most dioceses extensive and for some periods (such as the early Norman age) they ars exceptional. It follows that the Faith and Fabric contributors have had to perform heroic tasks of compression and selection. In some cases they have been able to summarise research published elsewhere; in others they have had to carry out their own investigations into uncharted territory to reach provisional conclusions. Variations of treatment are inevitable, and so are omissions, a fact that should be admitted by any fair reviewer (or reader). But it is clear that the various authors have found different solutions to these problems.
Martin Brett, who is currently editing the charters of the Norman bishops of Rochester, is ideally qualified to write on the period 604-1185. He has an unrivalled knowledge of the surviving sources, now scattered in many different libraries, which also contain (as he has pointed out) an alarmingly large number of forged and rewritten texts. Much remains to be done (a proper modern edition of the Cathedral's most valuable single manuscript, the Textus Roffensis of the 1120s, would be a major advance) but this chapter is an authoritative guide to what is currently known. Anne Oakley's account of 'Rochester Priory 1184-1540', written largely from the surviving archives in Rochester (now at Strood Record Office) is interesting mostly on the internal workings of the community and its relations with particular bishops. She does not try to put that material in a wider context as Brett does, though to do so for this period would perhaps have required more space. Also, the reader is not helped by a division of the text into thematic sections, many covering the entire 350 years. At a minimum, the very different pre- and post- 1350 phases of the Cathedral's history should have been discussed separately.
C. S. Knighton gives a balanced account of 'The Reformed Chapter 1540-1660', drawing out the relationship between internal organization and the individual careers of the clergy. Many deans and senior canons passed through Rochester on career paths to higher posts elsewhere, in contrast to the still largely locally recruited and locally minded minor clergy. The analysis is consistent, but the information is noticeably fuller for 1540-1600 than for 1600 onwards. Patrick Mussett's chapter on 1660 to 1820 begins from the crisis of the Civil War, and demonstrates clearly how the cathedral community rebuilt their way of life and the means to support it. One crucial step, a piquant one given some recent experiences with ecclesiastical investments, was a fortunate speculation in the South Sea 'bubble', from which the Chapter extricated themselves before the crash, having quadrupled their initial stake of £3,000. But this is a very internalized account of clerical life; wider dramatic changes in Rochester and its surrounding area, or wider debates within the church, scarcely intrude in the narrative.
Paul Welsby begins his account of The Cathedral since 1820' with just those kind of controversies, the nineteenth-century demands for reform, whether internally evolved or externally imposed. He gives a lively impression of the impact made by such changes in Rochester, as well as the underlying continuities. But once into the twentieth century, the chapter dissolves into a series of potted obituaries and the half century since 1945 is allotted less than three pages, which is carrying selectivity (or tact) rather far. A useful short discussion by Nigel Yates on forms of worship 1540-1870 concludes the historical chapters, though notes by Welsby and Yates on the library and archives are also invaluable, if very compressed. A few more maps and plans would have helped the reader at almost every stage, in showing at a glance the location of cathedral properties and buildings referred to.
This volume will be widely welcomed in Rochester and by Kent historians, it reaffirms the special significance of Rochester's history in relation to apparently greater events in Canterbury or the wider church. It is a worthy report on the work that has been done so far and will provide a vital starting point for further research in the future.
Richard Eales
The fabric
It is now almost ten years since I was first invited to become the archaeological consultant to the Dean and Chapter, but this important new work was already
'on the stocks', even then. Now that it has at last been published, we can see that it was certainly worth waiting for.
The last two decades have seen a renaissance in cathedral studies in England, and during this period many cathedrals have published fine new histories of themselves. Among the best are those by York (who led the way in 1977), Wells, Winchester, Norwich, Chichester, and Canterbury. At the same time the British Archaeological Association has been pubishing a series of fine new studies on the art and architecture of British cathedrals, and after a gap of three-quarters of a century, the archaeological study of the fabric of many English cathedrals is once again taking place.
Rochester Cathedral was exceptionally lucky in having attracted the young
W.H. (later Sir William) St John Hope to teach at the King's School from 1881 to 1885, immediately after his graduation from Peterhouse, Cambridge. By the beginning of the First World War, Hope was the leading architectural historian in Britain, having published numerous seminal studies. Among these was his
'definitive' two-part study of Rochester Cathedral and its priory in 1900.
Despite this, many questions remained unanswered, and Professor Philip McAleer was an obvious person to ask to review the current state of our knowledge of the architectural history. Even though he lives and teaches at Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada, he has made numerous visits to the cathedral, and written about many aspects of its architectural history. Having said this, however, Philip McAleer's chapter is better seen as 'materials for a new architectural history', rather than a new architectural history in itself, since it takes the form of a new description of the existing fabric with copious footnotes. There is also a series of brief discussions of the dates of construction of the different parts of the cathedral, and these are most useful as Hope's dates have been taken as 'gospel for far too long. For example, McAleer suggests (and I agree with him) that the construction of the new eastern arm started soon after the fire of 1179, and not in c.1195-1200, as in most earlier books. He also suggests, with recent architectural evidence, that the two great transepts were both built by the 1240s i.e. half a century earlier than the 'official' date.
All this is interesting, but sadly I have to say that it is not what is needed for a new history of Rochester Cathedral. Instead there should have been a general architectural history, without all the descriptive writing (and long footnotes), and this should have tied in with earlier historical chapters. It is a shame that there is no discussion of the remains of the earlier Anglo-Saxon cathedral, and that many of Rochester's finest features do not even get a mention e.g. the wall paintings, the exquisite 14th century chapter room doorway and the timber quire-stalls, the earliest in Britain. Perhaps the biggest fault, however, is the total lack of any plans or drawings in the whole book. (The only exceptions are the useful photos of early 19th century plans of the cathedral precinct and of the quire, which illustrate an earlier chapter). At the very least there should have been a new phased plan of the cathedral itself, and another of the medieval priory. As it is, we have to make do with a rather poor collection of photographs (reproduced in very dark tones), and some not very good early 19th century engravings. There is also no discussion at all of the topography and building of the cathedral priory, or of the many fine monuments in the cathedral. Why? All in all, this part of the book is a great disappointment.
The final chapter is Diana Holbrook's account of the repair and restoration of the cathedral fabric from c. 1540 to 1983. This is based on an exhaustive survey of all the documentary material which Mrs Holbrook transcribed and summarised in a project funded by the Royal Institute of British Architects and English Heritage (a full printout of all her work can now be consulted in either the RIBA library or the chapter library). It is particularly useful for the period after the Restoration, but once again it could have done with a whole series of illustrations to illuminate the slightly dull narrative.
Perhaps this book should only have set out to be a new history of the cathedral (it is, after all, volume 4 in the 'Kent History Project'), and not an architectural history as well. It opens with an exceptionally fine chapter by Dr Martin Brett, which covers the long period from 604 to 1185, and this is followed by Anne Oakley's chapter on the priory, 1185-1540, which is marred by some major errors. It is again slightly odd that this second chapter does not get to grips with the history of the medieval cathedral, but is instead written as a series of topics such as 'relations between the Priory and other bodies', 'the management or the estates, and 'the Obedientaries'. The later chapters on the post-Reformation history are much better handled, though Nigel Yates' on worship 1540-1870 is remarkably brief.
In sum, this new 'History of Rochester Cathedral, 604-1994' as it is described in the title, is a real 'curate's egg'. Let us hope that it will stimulate the writing of a new, much more rounded history of the Cathedral that is profusely illustrated with many of Rochester's fine architectural features and 'treasures'
Tim Tatton-Brown
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.
Piecing together the thousands of architectural components and evidence from excavations and other sources informing the architectural history of the site.
