Chapter Library volunteer Beverley Jacobs leafs through the 16th-century Sarum Missal, a remnant from the final days of the Priory Library.

The Rochester Bible is a richly decorated manuscript produced by the monks of St Andrew’s Priory, Rochester. Now part of the British Library’s Royal Collection, the manuscript is on loan to Rochester Cathedral and features in the Beauty and the Beasts exhibition in the Cathedral Crypt.

Library volunteer Myra Amor explores the stories of three successive bishops of Rochester each accused of treason.

The Cathedral architecture has featured in photographs since the mid-19th century, opening fascinating windows onto previous forms and arrangements of the building and Precinct.

Revd. Lindsay Llewellyn-MacDuff, author of Bertha’s Daughters, explores the life and work of Charlotte Boyd, one of the greatest benefactors to the Diocese of Rochester in modern times.

The fragments in this beautiful volume have been rebound and were presented to the Cathedral in 1921 as there are references to early Bishops and saints of Rochester Paulinus and Ithamar, as well as Bishop Romanus.

The care, conservation and investigation of Rochester Cathedral has been a project spanning decades. Follow links below to archive reports available on the Cathedral website, where available.

Library volunteer Myra Amor introduces John Speed and his Theatre of the empire of Great-Britain and A prospect of the most famous parts of the World published in 1676.

The archives of the Dean & Chapter include a collection of early 18th-century stock and dividend receipts and accounts evidencing an extensive financial legacy from investments in two of the largest slave-trading companies in history.

Facsimile and transcriptions of the baptism, marriage and burial registers of Rochester Cathedral.

Rochester Cathedral has featured in dozens of articles in the county archaeological journal Archaeologia Cantiana, now available on the Kent Archaeological Society website.

Bishop’s Chaplain Lindsay Llewellyn-MacDuff discusses the life and work of Isabella Gilmore and the genesis of the Deaconess Movement in the early 19th century.

Sarah Taylor has been working over the lockdown months to digitise the collection of handwritten medieval volumes in the Chapter Library.

‘Black Boy’ can be found in the names of many UK pubs, roads and pathways. Rochester’s Black Boy Alley has an origin back in the years after the English Civil War.

Beverley Jacobs leafs through the oldest volume in the Chapter Library dating to circa 1100 AD.

Randolph Jones writes about a revolutionary time when the future and soul of the country hung in the balance.

Dr Jayne Wackett explores the tiny fifteenth-century Book of Hours.

Stuart Palmer, University of Kent, shares with us a mighty message.

Suzy Micklewright hunts down the well-known but seldom-seen bookworms.

A rare misprinted bible printed by John Baskett of Oxford in 1717, also known as the Vinegar Bible, was conserved by Lara Meredith in 2015 in advance of its exhibition in the Cathedral Crypt.