Rochester Cathedral - a personal experience

My home town is Rochester in Kent, England.  It is small and for most visitors is merely a pretty and convenient stopping place on the way to Canterbury, much as medieval pilgrims would have viewed it - a quick pray at the shrine of William of Perth before hitting the big time with Thomas Becket.  To see Rochester as some kind of a historical service area would be to miss out.  To think it is inferior because it is smaller than Canterbury ignores that Rochester's fabric is far older.  If Bishop Gundulf, a trusted castle builder of the Norman kings Williams I and II, wandered through it he would recognise enough of his 1080 church of the priory of St Andrew to know where he was, particularly his tower, the earliest part of the above ground structure, a defensive tower, square with tiny windows and walls in excess of a metre thick.  No other cathedral in the country has such a structure.  It was built entirely separately from the cathedral building but is now a part of the fabric.

And what was I doing there?  How did I come to spend much of my life in that wonderful place?

The quire
Copyright Alan Bourne 2010
 www.alanbournephotography.co.uk 

My mother sang in a choir at Rochester which deputised for the main boys choir and sang the services that the boys didn't, midnight mass at Christmas for instance.  Later I would join and sing in carol services, weddings, even the inauguration of a new bishop.  Back then though, every Sunday evening was spent hanging around while she practised and then attend the service of Evensong, or Vespers.  That was always in the quire which at Rochester is richly decorated in bright red and blues, lions and fleur de lys, which I subsequently learned, was symbolic of Edward III's claim on the crown of France.  What I did know was that the face of every lion was unique - some look to the left, some to the right, some smile, others growl.  I also studied the mural of the Wheel of Fortune that again I did not realise was so special having survived Henry VIII and Cromwell by being hidden behind a pulpit and revealed only in 1840.

Then my brother joined the cathedral choir as a chorister and that doubled or tripled the time I spent there.  And being the daughter and sister of choir members meant I was known and I had unprecedented access to the cathedral: all the places that were out of bounds to everyone else, I could go.  I could slip past any barrier, go through (almost) any door, and if I chose to go through the window that served as a fire escape and onto the roof of the Gundulf tower, well, who was going to stop me?  My only concern was that the window would be closed and locked again and I'd be stuck out there!

Even the spire has been explored.  That may not have been quite so legitimate, but when it is a son of the headmaster of adjoining King's School, well, you're pretty safe.  I will not mention his name, but he was one of two people who took me to the spiral steps and upwards to the top where they open onto a narrow walkway along the inside of the quire transept roof then turns to walk along the length of the quire to the crossing, and there, through a small door, is the bell tower.  The bell ringers practice their art here, but to go to the spire one has to ascend further up, past the ropes and then past the bells themselves and out into the wind of the exterior of the spire. 

Rochester cathedral north side
including Gundulf Tower, foreground, right

When I ascended the bell tower the herring bone patterned lead covering on the spire had been there for many years and it was scratched with the signatures of choristers going back, well, who can say?  Probably, if I know choristers, the day following the previous replacing of the lead.  There was some caché in being the highest up the spire. The area where you stand is not wide and the retaining wall low and it is always breezy up there.  I felt a sense of danger that is experienced as exhilaration in your youth that would terrify you now.

The first time you experience the bells tolling just inches from you makes you laugh out loud but of course no one can hear you.  Fingers in ears and scrunched up faces greet this mis-timing.  I was, I admit, up there at noon one day and suffered in hysterics the full peal.  Wonderful stuff.

There are other places in the cathedral that proved fascinating for a young girl in love with history and utterly indulged by the vergers.  I saw inside the vault in the crypt where the altar furniture is kept, the crosses, the candlesticks, the salvers and goblets, gilded silver, glittering and perfect and very Holy.  There is a strange recess in the floor of the crypt, under a trapdoor, a stone bowl but I have no idea what it was for.  I was allowed to go through the passageway to the chorister's vestry and then on to the end of the corridor and through a door that looks like it can't open, leading into what is now a garden inside the old chapter house.  I climbed around the cloister ruins, exploring them, wondering what they would have been used for, wondering at the vast difference between the old ground level and the modern, some five feet judging by the gate that is left leading into a wall and not a roadway.

And still in the crypt there was a room that was never open to the public.  It is now, the organ blower that used to occupy the very oldest part of the cathedral structure, under the tower, has gone and been replaced by something the size of a shoe box.  But it used to be behind a locked door.  And my dad had the key. 

I spent many, many hours down there, helping my dad fix the notoriously temperamental organ blower.  It was haunted, there was no other explanation.  Some past organist playing games on his successors, making them tear their hair out in frustration and sending them running into the night, terrified out of their wits. 

Next time - a Rochester Cathedral ghost story.


I would like to say a big thank you to local photographer Alan Bourne who has kindly allowed me to use his stunning image of the quire.  You can see all the way to the west door through the arch in the quire screen.  Fabulous.  Have a look at his site for more photos. www.alanbournephotography.co.uk 

One last word, on a word - I use the archaic word 'quire' instead of the more usual 'choir' because, well, that was what I was brought up with.