Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester: A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal SeePalmer, G. H. (George Henry)
History
Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester: A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See
Palmer, G. H. (George Henry)
Rochester Cathedral (Rochester, Kent, England)
#The South Side of the Choir# presents no very remarkable features. A
brief history of the efforts to save it during the latter part of last
century, and in 1825 and the following years, has been given in our
opening chapter. The wall of the choir aisle is supported by a flying
buttress as well as by the small room in the corner between it and the
south main transept. In the wall are three lancet windows, the
easternmost with dog-tooth ornament, and a fine doorway, which used to
open into the western range of the cloisters. The ends of the outer
mouldings of the doorway arch, which also have the dog-tooth, bend round
and upwards in an unusual way that is worthy of notice. All that can be
seen of the transept end is by Cottingham. He gave it a new ashlar
facing, which, as the wall was considerably out of the perpendicular,
constituted an invisible buttress. His destruction of the old brick
buttresses was a great improvement. The same architect found no gable,
and built the present rather flat one containing a circle ornamented
with zigzag mouldings. In the south wall of the transept aisle is a
Decorated window with beautiful tracery. This window was of course an
insertion. Remains of recesses on each side of it, like those still in
the transept end, made this evident until 1825, when they were hidden
beneath the smooth modern surface. The southern wall of the presbytery
is almost entirely concealed by the eighteenth century chapter room,
with its plain, square-headed, sashed windows. The clerestory, however,
which is like that on the north side, appears over the red-tiled roof of
that modern structure. In the basement on this side some windows have
quite recently been inserted, to light the new vestries in the crypt,
and a door opens into the cellar beneath the chapter room.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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