Later monuments, 13th-20th century

Dr John Physick explores the later medieval and early modern monuments and their sculptors. Featured in The Friends of Rochester Cathedral Annual Report for 1988.

The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to some of the monuments and memorials in the Cathedral that were erected after the Reformation, that is from the 16th century onwards. Firstly, however, there are points concerning a few of the medieval monuments on which work was carried out during 19th century restoration, and on one of them only during the past year.

Against the north wall of the north-east transept is the splendid Gothic canopy of the monument to Bishop Walter de Merton, who died in 1277.

Beneath the canopy lies the bishop's effigy, and this is certainly not contemporary, as it was placed there only in about 1852. Who carved it seems not to have been recorded, but the figure was designed by R. C. Hussey, a mid-19th century architect who was much employed in the county on church restoration. For instance, he added the chancel to St. Margaret's Rochester, rebuilt Frittenden, but is notable for his careful rebuilding and restoration of the little Norman church of Barfreston.

Between the Chapel of St. John the Baptist and the Presbytery lies the painted stone effigy of Bishop John of Sheppey (d. 1360). Until the early 19th century, this was entirely unknown, or suspected. It was hidden behind the memorial to Archdeacon Lee Warner (then on the south side of the chapel) and, perhaps even a century earlier, the effigy had been deliberately concealed. One can now only conjecture what the reason had been for such action. During alterations in the Cathedral in 1825, carried out by the then Surveyor Lewis Cottingham, the Archdeacon's monument was moved, and walls were opened up. As a result this remarkable effigy was discovered - remarkable because it had escaped iconoclastic attention and still retained most of its colouring, one of the few medieval works of sculpture to do so, and this excited much antiquarian interest.

In the Gentleman's Magazine of 1825 is a letter which informed readers that Cottingham had commissioned two drawings, one showing the effigy as it had been found, and the other to show what it might have once looked like when all the colours and decoration were complete and bright. Contrary to the practice of today, the effigy was repainted but by someone who had what was described as 'an unskilful hand' or as the Surveyor himself recorded, by 'a drunken artist'. Cottingham ordered all the new paint to be removed and later stated that the effigy had been brought back nearly to the state in which it had been found. A niggling doubt must remain, though, and it is to be hoped that one day a trained conservator will investigate in order to determine how much of the colour is, in fact, of the 14th century. Towards the end of the 19th century, Edwin J. Lambert made careful water-colours of the effigy and also of details of the surviving painted decoration of the chasuble, dalmatic, cushion and so on. These paintings are now in the Print Room of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and were during the winter of 1987/88 exhibited in the Royal Academy exhibition. 'The Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200-1400'. For those who forked out nearly £17 on the massive exhibition catalogue, Lambert's paintings are reproduced in colour on page 375.

Much more recent is the conservation of the wall-painting above the tomb of an unidentified cleric on the north wall of the north-east transept, east of that to Bishop Walter de Merton. This work was carried out during 1986/7 by the Courtauld Institute of Art, London University. Now clearly revealed against a red background is a pattern of trailing foliage in which sit more than a dozen white popinjays, a decorative bird well-known to the gothic world.

William Streaton (d.1609)

The monuments of the later periods in the Cathedral form a rather miscellaneous collection. Few are grand, and there is none to any notable person of the time of Elizabeth I, James I or Charles I, such as are found in other cathedrals or innumerable parish churches. There seems to be only one, a minor work, commemorating William Streaton (d. 1609), who was Mayor of Rochester on no fewer than nine occasions.

He kneels beneath a double arched canopy, facing his wife, with a prayer-desk between them, in the fashionable style of his time. Unfortunately, both figures have had the head knocked off, and the monument is generally in an advanced stage of decay.

Sir Richard Head (d. 1689)

It is not until towards the end of the 17th century that we find any noteworthy monuments, three of them in the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, and another on the east wall of the South Transept. The last is the most important, and is to Sir Richard Head (d. 1689). There is no colour, for this had become unfashionable, particularly after the almost exclusive use of black and white marble popularised in the 1620s and 1630s by the sculptor Nicholas Stone (Canterbury Cathedral, Eastwell (now removed to the Victoria and Albert Museum), and Chilham).

The Head monument is almost certainly by a sculptor more famous for his wood carving, Grinling Gibbons. It is not signed, but has been ascribed to Gibbons since the 18th century, which gives the attribution the respectability of being more than two hundred years old. Sir Richard Head is portrayed in a portrait relief, framed by sprays of fruit and flowers, above a strongly-gadrooned base, favourite motifs of Gibbons's and used in his other monuments. Although the sculptor does not always appear to be comfortable when working in marble (e.g., Sir Cloudesley Shovell in Westminster Abbey), or perhaps was unfortunate in his assistants, here he can be seen at his best.

To compare the Head monument with the three in the Chapel of St. John the Baptist is instructive. These are very typical late 17th century memorials of an architectural form without effigies that can be found in churches all over the country, and are the work of mason-sculptors. Although the death-dates range from 1666 to 1698, they are all similar in style and, if cleaned, the splendours of the contrast between the black and white marble, or alabaster, would be considerably enhanced.

Warner memorials

The earliest of them is to Bishop John Warner, and is by a leading mason-sculptor, Joshua Marshall, Master-Mason to the Crown, Marshall worked on the Monument to the Great Fire of London, many of the Wren churches, and at Greenwich Palace. Somewhat weatherworn nowadays is his pedestal for the statue of Charles I in Whitehall, and in Westminster Abbey is the monument to the two Princes in the Tower, ordered by Charles I to contain the bones believed to be those of the two unfortunate boys. Marshall signs the Warner monument, and the only other in Kent, unsigned, but which has been attributed to him on stylistic grounds, is at Birchington.

Another construction by a mason-sculptor is to the nephew of the bishop, Archdeacon Lee Warner (d. 1679), and is from the workshop of the splendidly named John Shorthose, who like Marshall, was much employed on the Wren churches, among them the bombed Christ Church, Newgate.

The monument to the Archdeacon is the only one so far identified as the work of Shorthose, and this is due to the fortunate survival of some letters of 1681 among the Chapter's archives. In January 1681, John Carr, Shorthose's servant arrived with a letter (dated 1680, Old Style) to the Dean inditie brennona/lace forthwhenverts. and orsett up in the filap whereed same is begunne'.

In the absence of these records, the monument would have remained without an identified sculptor, as has been the case of the third in the trio in the chapel, to the Archdeacon's eldest son, Lee Warner, who died in 1698. Who carved it? Shorthose, perhaps, as he did not die unti about 1704, but it is undoubtedly the work of a London mason-sculptor. Slightly more baroque than the others, there is, above the inscription tablet, a coat of arms beneath a tented canopy, or baldacchino, the curtains of which are pulled aside by two little naked boys.

Richard Somer (d. 1682)

The Cathedral houses two other monuments by a mason-sculptor of the same period. These are, though, not so grand, but are two simple wall memorials with inscription tablets flanked by columns, in black and white marble. One is at the west end of the north aisle to Richard Somer (d. 1682), and the other to the imperially named Augustine Caesar (d. 1677) on the south side of the steps in the north choir aisle. Both are so similar to his other works that, although unsigned, the greatest of all the mason-sculptors of the 17th century, William Stanton, springs immediately to mind.

Augustine Caesar (d. 1677)

Returning to the south transept, against the south wall is the monument to the Rochester philanthropist, Richard Watts, who died in 1579, but whose memory had to wait until the 1730s before the mayor commissioned the memorial. This is splendidly carved in marble and derives from a design based on the work of the architect James Gibbs (St Martin-in-the-Fields, and St Mary-le-Strand, London), who published several engraved monumental designs in his A Book of Architecture in 1728. The Watts Charity archives record that yet another London mason, Charles Easton, was paid £50 for the work. This was to include a copy of an earlier bust of Watts; but for quite a long time there has been controversy as to whether the coloured bust there now, is a copy, or is the 16th century original which had been provided by Joseph Brook whose family had bought Watts's house. Once again, a conservation investigation can provide the conclusive answer.

Richard Watts (1736)

Two other monuments of the 18th century are of note. In the north aisle is the large architectural mural work to the memory of Francis Barrell (d. 1724), by Robert Taylor (others by him are in Sutton-at-Hone and West Farleigh). Taylor was a successful statuary and decorative carver, but was surpassed by his son, Sir Robert Taylor, who amassed the considerable fortune of £180.000 from his sculptural and architectural practice, which eventually was bequeathed to the University of Oxford. An example of the younger Taylor's work is to be found in the neighbouring church of St. Nicholas, where the monument to George Gordon is in the south aisle. As the aisle has been converted into two floors of offices, the lower portion of the monument is on the ground floor, it disappears through the ceiling, and the upper part emerges into a first floor office.

Lord and Lady Henniker

In the Cathedral's south nave aisle is the large monument to Lady Henniker (d. 1792), wife of Sir John Henniker. Beneath a Gothic arch, there is, apart from the sarcophagus, no hint of the craze for the classical revival that had been fashionable for some years. On either side are free-standing figures representing on the left, Truth, and on the right, Time with his scythe. Both figures are cast from moulds in an artificial material, Coade Stone, from the manufactury established in 1769 on the South Bank in London (not far from today's Royal Festival Hall), by a lady from Dorset, Mrs. Eleanor Coade.

Her very durable product was particularly suited to outdoor architectural mass-produced decorative sculpture, and is frequently found unweathered and undamaged by pollution. The Coade firm flourished until the mid-19th century, when the 'secret' of this almost indestructible artificial stone seems been taken to indicate that they had been modelled by Thomas Banks, R.A.

However, following the publication of his magisterial Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660-1851, Rupert Gunnis (chairman of both the Rochester and Canterbury Diocesan Advisory Committees) was told that the reference was to Henry Bankes, son-in-law of a Revd James Upton, of the Blackfriars Road, London (which is only a stone's-throw from the Coade works).

The adjacent monument to her widowed husband Lord Henniker (he was not created a baron until 1800) is equally large but entirely of polished white marble and is described by John Newman as 'pompous'. Älthough Lord Henniker died in 1803, the monument was not completed until 1806, and is signed by the younger John Bacon, son of a more famous and ana is signed by the younger jonn bacon, son or a more ramous and accomplished father John Bacon, R.A.

The work displays in life-size form, the Bacons love of the emblematical lady, of which there are two here; one, who is being wreathed by the other, holds another much-over-used emblem of the Pelican in Her Piety (wounding herself to succour her young).

It was the two Bacons who between them for about forty years popularised all the marble ladies swooning upon coffins, prostrate beneath weeping-willow trees, clinging to broken columns, or simply having the vapours, who were copied over and over again by lesser hands, and are to be found in practically every parish church in the country, and even in that 19th century innovation, the cemetery.

Francis Barrell (d. 1772)

Almost opposite, in the north aisle is the large mural marble heart memorial to Francis Barrell (d. 1772), which is an early example of just that type of artefact that diocesan chancellors nowadays are striving to prevent from appearing in churchyards. Other work by important sculptors is in the south transept. John Flaxman, R.A. provided the severe Grecian tablet to Sir Edmund Head, 1798; and the bust on its classical pedestal against a pointed marble background, to Sir William Franklin (d. 1833), is by Samuel Joseph. Flaxman surely needs no introduction, but Joseph, one of the founder members of the Royal Scottish Academy specialised in portrait busts; his masterpiece is, however, the seated figure of William Wilberforce in Westminster Abbey.

As the nineteenth century went past, a decline in monumental sculpture became apparent, and this is seen to advantage in the Cathedral. Instead firms among them Gaffin of Regent's Street, or Bedford of Oxford Street (north nave aisle), and even one called the Westminster Marble Works.

Gradually, however, alternative forms of memorial became the fashion, and other firms were established to provide the ubiquitous Victorian stained glass window. These, like the flamboyant Albert Memorial in Kensington ardens, have for long been the target for ridicule and it must be admitted that the simpering stare of an androgynous angel can cause a shudder. As a result glass has been removed, destroyed or sold, at an alarming rate. There is the danger that in the future we of the later 20th century will be condemned as destroyers, as much as the iconoclasts of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Dean Hole, Dean Lane and Joseph Maas

There are three late monuments which are well worth pointing out. In the south transept is the recumbent effigy of Dean Hole, by F. W. Pomeroy, R.A., 1905.

Pomeroy who had trained at the South London Art School at Ketogether diverenths the guile car example br fountin ending selvars, the monumental brass, to Dean Lane (c. 1913) in the south choir aisle, and as a contrast, the unmistakable Victorian gent, Joseph Maas, who died in Temple Moore (St. Augustine's, Gillingham) and it was executed by the barely memorable Currie of Oxford Street, London.

In the north transept is the Hardman memorial to Major Lambert (d. 1880) of the School of Military Engineering.

It is to be hoped that this short summary of the Cathedral's later sculpture will have whetted some appetites to explore our parish churches, which collectively form the national gallery of British sculpture - for no museum or gallery can, or does contain, such a variety of work of all periods.

Within a short radius of Rochester one has only to think of the parish churches of Rainham, Hollingbourne, Northfleet, Southfleet, Aylesford, Addington, Sutton-at-Hone, Wateringbury, Otford, Shoreham, Lullingstone and Ightham, to name but a few, and there is a splendid group of seventeenth century monuments at Lynsted, Otterden, Throwley and Boughton-under-Blean. These are all very rewarding and worth a visit.

Addendum

My doubt about the date of the pigment on Bishop John of Sheppey's effigy was well-tounded. A report by the Conservation Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum was received during December 1987. In November, nine small samples of paint had been taken for analysis and these revealed that 'the present coloration was not original'. The paint had been applied to a ground of red and white lead applied directly on to the stone, and the conservators considered that this ground was probably original. However, they thought that the decorative diamond motifs on the maniple were of considerable interest: with delicate painted decoration in a dark paint (unknown), also in diamond motifs which mirror the border. Certain of the gilded diamond motifs have a green border painted on the inner edge of the diamond shaped border store coannen didanond incess" tihey ate sad withal cred' flamend shaped borders. The retention of such sculptural decorations as these is rare. They constitute an important decorative element on medieval sculpture which is little known in this country.

John Physick