West Facade arcades
c. 1150

December 18, 2021

Romanesque sculpture reused in the spandrels of the Great West Window removed during Cottingham’s 1820s restoration, together with the evidence from other resued fragments in the vicinity, make it possible to piece together the form of the upper portions of the Romanesque west facade.

Cottingham sketched the spandrels before the removal of the Romanesque sculpture, providing an important early record for the provenance of many of the finest items within the Lapidarium collectio

In addition to the bulk of material within the Lapidarium collection, many spolia are recorded from the triforium passageway running across the west of the north nave aisle. In particular a number of Caen recessed shafts (type L) and bases are present, although under a heavy layer of pollution and calcite.

During the restoration work itself evidence was found of the lowest arcade replaced by the Perpendicular window. In a letter from the Dean to Irvine dated 24th June 1894 (DRc/Emf/77/106), it is recorded that ‘in the course of removing and replacing the face of the front around and above the doorway other similar shafts entire (4'6") were discovered, one was in situ in the jamb of the great window (upon the 2nd string) (sketch). It was split by the iron dowel. Its position indicated a double plinth like those of the arcade inside the W. end. There is abundance of fragments from the destroyed portion of the original front— (now occupied by great window) sufficient to restore on paper the whole within small limits of error.’ Despite the dean’s enthusiasm, such a reconstruction is limited to paper if not informed from the point of structural engineering and comparative analysis of contemporary architecture.

A series of correspondence between Rev. Grevile M. Livett to Pearson (Medway Archives DRc/Emf/137) indicates the collection was consulted in the restoration of the towers, pinnacles and the lower portions of the west façade in the 1880s and 1890s, although the decision making process appears somewhat protracted, occasionally arbitrary and many anachronistic designs were employed regardless. As such the nineteenth-century components cannot be considered direct evidence of the heavily weathered elements they replaced.

Complications in understanding the previous form of the west façade are further posed by other sculptural elements moved around during various restorations. Although there has been some confusion with the identity and provenance of a statue that was moved from another location on the west front in the seventeenth century (Arnold 1986), given its once prominent position it likely depicts either early Bishops and Ss. Paulinus or Ithamar. There is a notable Roman dress and so Paulinus (a missionary from Rome) is the forerunner. The statue originally resided in the northern niche beside the Great West Door portal, now filled with late nineteenth-century statues to Bishops Gundulf and John.

One of the Romanesque fragments taken from the West Façade during 19th-century restoration work, this exceptionally preserved grotesque features a wolf-type monster with an impressive tongue.