The north side of the nave shows two-lighted Perpendicular windows with irregular quatrefoils in their heads; the north transept (Early English) a high gable with three circular windows and pinnacles. And on the north side of the choir Gundulf’s Tower to which there are two entrances,—one through an opening in the north wall, the other through a doorway in the south-west corner. In the angle between the south aisle and transept we note the Lady-Chapel (Perpendicular) with three-lighted windows three bays long from east to west and well-buttressed; the south side of the choir contains three lancet windows and a fine doorway that used to open into the cloisters. The south transept (Early Decorated) is well buttressed and its gable adorned with pinnacles and gargoyles. The lowest row of windows belongs to the crypt.
The West Front has been restored. The great central window, and the flat gable above, are Perpendicular (restored), but all the rest is either original Norman work, or as accurate a reproduction of this as possible.
The great West Doorway (late Norman) dates from the first half of the Twelfth Century.
“It is formed by five receding arches and every stone of each of these is carved with varying ornamental designs. Between the second and third of them runs a line of cable moulding, an ornament which occurs also inside the door. Each arch has its own shaft and the groups of five on each side are elaborately banded. The shafts have richly sculptured capitals, and in those on the south side, as well as in the tympanum, the signs of the Evangelists appear. The shafts second from the door on either side are carved with statues, two of the oldest in England. These are much mutilated, but they were thought worthy of great praise by Flaxman. That on the spectator’s left is said to represent King Henry I. and the other his wife, the ‘good Queen Maud.’ This attribution is probably correct, as these sovereigns were both great benefactors to the Cathedral and were living when the front was being built. The figure of the Queen has suffered the more; it is recorded to have been especially ill-used by the Parliamentarians in the days of the great Civil War. The tympanum contains a figure of Our Lord, seated in Glory, within an aureole supported by two angels. His right hand is raised in benediction and his left hand holds a book. Outside the aureole are the symbols of the four Evangelists: the Angel of St. Matthew and the Eagle of St. John, one on each side above the Winged Lion of St. Mark and the Ox of St. Luke similarly placed below. A straight band of masonry crosses beneath the lunette, and has carved on it twelve figures, now much mutilated, but supposed to have represented the twelve Apostles. All the sculptured work of the portal has suffered greatly from age and exposure and from the hand of man. In the recent restoration the coping has been renewed, the shafts have been given separate bases once more and many of the most worn stones have been replaced by new ones carved in facsimile.”—(G. H. P.)
This doorway resembles those on the Continent and shows the influence of the East. Freeman says: “The superb western portal at Rochester Cathedral is by far the finest example of this kind, if not the finest of all Norman doorways.”
The Mayor and Corporation of Rochester still have the right of entry in their robes by this door, through which we now pass. Immediately we descend four steps into the Nave:
“The nave, 150 feet long to the cross of the lantern, is Norman, as far as the last two bays eastward. If, as is most probable, it is a part of Gundulf’s work, it was, no doubt, a copy of the Norman nave at Canterbury; and we are thus enabled to judge fairly what the appearance of the metropolitan cathedral was in this part of it. Its architecture is plainer than that of the contemporary examples in France, though owing to its having been always destined for a wooden roof, the piers and the design generally are lighter than where preparation was made for a stone vault. The triforium is richly ornamented; and the arches open to the space above the side-aisles as well as to the nave, a peculiarity which both Rochester and Canterbury may have received from the church of St. Stephen’s at Caen, where the same arrangement may still be seen. Lanfranc, the builder of the Norman church at Canterbury, had been Abbot of St. Stephen’s. The clerestory windows above, like those of the aisles, are Perpendicular; and the roof seems to have been raised at the time of their insertion. This is of timber and quite plain.
“In passing beyond the Norman portion of the nave to the Early English, of which nearly all the rest of the Cathedral consists, the strong influence of Canterbury is at once apparent. The double transepts, the numberless shafts of Petworth marble, and perhaps the flights of stairs ascending from either side of the crypt, recall immediately the works of the two Williams in the metropolitan church, which always maintained the closest connection with Rochester, her earliest daughter.”—(R. J. K.)
At the end of the northern aisle we note the early Fourteenth Century doorway for the use of the parishioners of St. Nicholas’s altar. The lower end of the southern aisle terminates in a blind arcade of three arches. Each aisle end has also a round-headed Norman window. The great West Window is divided into eight lights separated into