The eastern crypt, c.1170
/Tim Tatton-Brown reports on excavations in the eastern crypt, otherwise known as the Ithamar Chapel. Featured in The Friends of Rochester Cathedral Annual Report for 1996-1997.
During the last couple of years a great deal of cleaning and restoration work has been going on in the eastern crypt, accompanied by extensive archaeological investigations. This archaeological work has included some excavation, but it has also involved the recording of the wall-faces of St, Ithamar's chapel before they were re-rendered (the recording work here was skilfully undertaken by Jerry Sampson, using photographic techniques). At the same time a detailed study of all the building materials in the crypt has been carried out by Dr Bernard Worssam, and this too has led to new discoveries.
The excavation work was undertaken in 1995 by Alan Ward and a small team from the Canterbury Archaeological Trust, though I myself enjoyed excavating the trial trenches in the crypt in October 1994.
The archaeology (or architectural history) of the eastern crypt was first studied in detail by the Revd. Professor Robert Willis in 1863, and on Friday July 31st, during the summer meeting of Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, he lectured on the architectural history of the cathedral and its conventual buildings. Then at the close of the afternoon service, the Professor accompanied his large audience in a minute examination of the cathedral and its structural peculiarities". The crypt was then planned and studied in greater detail by W. H. (later Sir William) St John Hope, and his account was published almost exactly one hundred years ago. Since then little new work on the eastern crypt has been carried out, though the architecture of the eastern arm has been mentioned in passing in many books'. Hope suggested that the new eastern arm was built from c. 1200 to 1215, and this has been followed slavishly by virtually every writer ever since, with most commentators adding that money given at the shrine of St William of Perth (who was murdered in 1201, but not canonized until 1256) helped to pay for it. This seems to me 10 be a totally false chronology, not least because England was under an interdict from 1207 to 1213, and in 1214 the Bishop of Rochester, Gilbert de Glanville was buried in the new presbytery (on the north side of the high altar) which must have been completed by that date, as Hope himself acknowledges. In October of the following year (1215), the cathedral was desecrated, and the silver retable above the high altar was stolen during King John's epic siege of the castle.
The starting point for the new eastern arm was the great fire in 11th April 1179, which badly burnt the city, and 'reduced the church to cinders". It is highly unlikely that the church was left for over twenty years before the new eastern arm was started, and we have only to look 'down the road' to Canterbury to see how the much larger eastern arm of the cathedral there was rebuilt in less than ten years after the fire of 1174. The documentary evidence for the Rochester rebuilding is very poor, compared to Canterbury, but it seems highly likely that the new eastern arm was built within the period c. 1180-1200', and was influenced by the great Canterbury rebuilding. Rochester is clearly in the earliest 'Gothic' style, and the use of pointed porches, dog-tooth ornament, and of large quadripartite and sexpartite vaults follows Canterbury?. In other ways, however, it is still a Romanesque building with its thick walls and square -angle buttresses. As at Canterbury, but on a smaller scale, the new two-storeyed eastern arm was clearly meant to provide space for many more altars (seven at each level), and perhaps also to provide a pair of shrines on either side of the new high altar in the presbytery, again as at Canterbury where Saints Dunstan and Alphege flanked the high altar. The two saints at Rochester were Paulinus and Ithamar, and, although their translation to new shrines is not documented the destruction of the east end of the old Romanesque cathedral would have necessitated this". The most important difference from Canterbury is that there St Thomas Becket was given a new shrine in a totally new purpose-built axial chapel to the east of the high altar, while at Rochester St William's shrine was placed in a secondary position in the north-east transept. This surely suggests that the new eastern arm was built before the murder of William of Perth in 1201.
Returning to the crypt we can now look again at its fabric in the light of the above, and of our study of its newly cleaned masonry. First it is clear that the new eastern crypt had three main phases:
The demolition of the old east end of the Romanesque cathedral.
The building of the long cross-hall or transept.
The construction of the eastern chapels and presbytery basement.
In some cathedrals rebuilding work is started on the east outside an existing east end, but this cannot be the case here, and the east end of Gundulf's cathedral (the sanctuary) of the 1080s must have been demolished before any new work was started (in the 1180s), perhaps because it had been badly damaged in the fire of 1179. The difference between phases (b) and (c) above was already noticed by Willis and Hope, who point out that there are no wall-ribs in the vestibule (cross-hall), and that the chapels and eastern part of the crypt not only have vault-ribs, but also have vaults that are about six inches higher (to accommodate the step in the presbytery above). Our investigations have also shown that the marble abacus above the capitals, and the string course in the crypt changes from a Wealden marble' to Purbeck marble at about the same point, though Purbeck marble was used a little earlier on the north side, suggesting that we are dealing only with a constructional change in a continuous sequence of building. Walden marble was commonly used architecturally in the late twelfth century in south-east England", with Purbeck marble becoming ubiquitous in the thirteenth century. The 1995 excavation outside the north wall of the crypt also revealed that the foundations for the eastern part of the crypt were a little higher than those for the east wall of the transept chapel. This was probably only because of the nature rise in ground-level to the east.
Among the most noticeable things about the newly-cleaned masonry of the eastern crypt are the large areas of burning that can be seen on many of the piers. Initially it was thought that the burning took place in the post-dissolution period when the crypt was disused, and from the seventeenth century at least, the windows had been removed and the crypt was allowed to decay. However, a recent study of the two parallel inserted walls has suggested that the burning of the masonry may have happened in the later Middle Ages, not long after these two parallel walls were probably put in. These walls were actually taken out in 1963, but records made at the time show that masonry piers had not been damaged by fire before the inserted masonry walls were built.
The two parallel walls were clearly built to support a more massive high later platform above, and the positions of the north and south steps up to this platform were revealed in 1873, when Scott was making the new high altar platform'. It is also known that Bishop Hamo de Hythe in 1344, 'caused to be made anew of marble and alabaster' the shrines of saints Paulinus and Ithamar, for which renewal he gave 200 marksI. This was a great deal of money, and it seems likely that this relates to the complete rebuilding of the whole shrine and high altar platform, and the making of two new marble and alabaster feretories (the term used for shrines) for the reliquaries of Saints Paulinus and Ithamar'. Later in the fourteenth century a fine new triple sedilia was added to the south side of this new platform (it is, of course, still there in a south wall niche), and then in 1400 a large new tomb beneath a leger slab was made for Sir William Arundel and his wife immediately to the east of the high altar platform'?. The shrines were all demolished in 1538, and then the raised high altar dais was mutilated in various eighteenth and nineteenth-century restorations. In the later Middle Ages, however, this was the most important area in the cathedral with several of the Bishops of Rochester being buried here.
Apart from Bishop Glanville's tomb of 1214, the earliest, we still have the fine Purbeck marble coffins and effigies of Bishops Laurence of St Martin (1274) on the north and Thomas of Ingoldsthorpe (1291) on the south.
From our study of the masonry of the eastern part of the crypt, it is clear that many of the columns and several of the window openings were heavily burnt in a major fire. As has already been mentioned, this may have taken place in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, once the crypt had been abandoned as a place of worship, and once it was open to the elements. However, it now seems more likely that the fires (or a series of small fires) took place earlier, in the late medieval period. No documentary evidence exists for any later medieve hires in the cathedral, and the first documented fire is in c. 1591, when a bond in the chapter records says 'Whereas a greate parte of the Chansell of the within named Cathedrall church was laterly burned and now reedified. This implies that the fire took place only in the upper level, but in could have started below and spread upwards. We know, for example, that in 1541 the Dean had a 'woodhouse' beneath the vestry (i.e. just to the south of the eastern crypt), and wood here, or in the crypt, could have caught fire and burnt the chancel (i.e. presbytery of the cathedral.
Investigations so far are, therefore, inconclusive. What is now needed is more documentary evidence, though future cleaning work in the western crypt may also throw more light on the problem.
Tim Tatton-Brown
1. Archaeol. Jour. 20 (1863), 389-90. Sadly Willis' work was not published, but a transcript of part of the lecture can be found in W.H. St John Hope, 'The architectural history of the cathedral church and monastery of St Andrew, Rochester' Arch.Cant. 23 (1878), 233-242.
There is also a contemporary engraving of the Professor and his audience in the crypt.
Hope, op.cit.supra, 242-3 and plate III, and 325-8.
Most recently by Philip McAleer in N. Yates (ed.), Faith and Fabric, a History of Rochester Cathedral 604-1994 (1996), 165-8.
Hope actually goes further and says: 'Encouraged no doubt by the offerings at the tomb of their new saint, the monks began [my italics] to construct the eastern part of their church on a new and greatly enlarged plan'.
Bishop Gilbert (1185-1214) is also known to have given two glass windows to the new cathedral.
Gervase of Canterbury, Opera Historica (Rolls Series 73), 1.292.
Hope 232 quotes several references from a Cotton Manuscript in the British Library (Vespasian A.22, folios 88-90). These include a gift of a window under prior Osbern (c.
1189-90), and a note that Prior Ralph (c. 1193-c.1203) 'caused the great church to be covered in and for the most part to be leaded'. His successor, Elias, who was earlier the sacrist, finished the job. For their dates see D. Greenway (ed.), Le Neve, Fasti Ecclesie Anglicanae 1066-1200, II Monastic Cathedrals (1971), 79.
The moulded ribs of the high vaults are very similar to those in the Canterbury eastern arm.
For the shrines see also A. Arnold, 'The Shrine of St Paulinus at Rochester', Friends' Report for 1988, 16-21. The two shrines are first documented in 1299-1300 when Edward I made offerings there, see Hope, 310.
Only the eastern part, the so-called chapel of St Ithamar, has been cleaned so far.
This is actually Large Paludina Limestone, see B. Worssam, 'A guide to the building stones of Rochester Cathedral', Report of the Friends for 1994/5, 29.
12. It can be found in the plinth of the Bell Tower of c. 1190 at the Tower of London, for example.
See correspondence and drawings in DR/DE/209/IV/K in the Strood branch of the K.C.C.
Record Office. I am most grateful to Dr Bernard Worssam for sending me copies of these.Hope, 308. Scott's high altar (the present one) is one bay east of the late medieval high altar.
Hope, 310, quoting B.L. Cotton Faustina B5, fo. 19.
These two feretories may actually have been above the two supporting walls in the crypt.
Bishop John of Bottlesham (1400-4) was also buried west of the platform, under the still existing brass indent.
Hope (note 1), 281.
22
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.
Piecing together the thousands of architectural components and evidence from excavations and other sources informing the architectural history of the site.
