In the east wall, opposite the entrance to the Perpendicular Lady-Chapel, two bays were included under one arch to form a recess for the altar of the Virgin Mary, about 1320.
The south transept underwent some alteration when the Lady-Chapel was built. On the wall under the central window a monument to Richard Watts was erected in 1736. Watts, a member of Queen Elizabeth’s second Parliament, entertained her at “Satis House” in 1573. He also left provisions in his will for the poor and founded in 1579 the “House of the Six Poor Travellers,” where nightly six poor wayfarers are provided with supper, bed and breakfast and presented with fourpence when they leave.
Near the Watts monument a brass tablet to Charles Dickens, who made the House of the Six Poor Travellers famous, connects “his memory with the scenes in which his earliest and latest years were passed and with the associations of Rochester Cathedral and its neighbourhood, which extended over all his life.”
The Choir, reached by a flight of ten steps, is higher than the nave. It is entered through iron gates in the central doorway of the screen, which represent St. Andrew, King Ethelbert, St. Justus, St. Paulinus, Bishop Gundulf, William de Hoo, Bishop Walter de Merton and Cardinal John Fisher, designed by Mr. John Pearson.
The organ is on the screen beneath the choir-arch. The Choir, remodelled in 1825-1830,
“is entered by a flight of steps rendered necessary, as at Canterbury, by the height of the crypt below. It was completed sufficiently for use in 1127. It is thoroughly developed Early English, although much has evidently been borrowed, even in detail, from the Canterbury transition work. It is narrow and somewhat heavy; defects not lightened by the woodwork of the stalls, which is indifferent, or by the use of colour,—a single line of which, however, is carried along the ribs of the vaulting with very good effect.
“The brackets of Early English foliage, from which the blind wall-arches spring, should be noticed. Two large ones especially, at the angles of the eastern transept, are excellent specimens of this period, before the naturalism of the Decorated had begun to develop itself. A fragment of mural painting, apparently of the same date as the choir itself, remains on the wall, close above the pulpit. The painting, when entire, is said to have represented a subject not uncommon in early churches—the Wheel of Fortune with various figures—king, priest, husbandman and others—climbing it.”—(R. J. K.)
This painting (5 feet 10 inches high and 2 feet 2 inches wide) dates from the Thirteenth Century. Fortune dressed as a queen, and in yellow, moves the wheel with her right hand.
Passing into the North-choir-transept, still Early English and a part of William de Hoo’s work, the first point of interest is St. William’s Tomb, at the north-east corner, of Purbeck marble, with a floriated cross.
Towards the centre of the transept is a flat stone marked with six crosses, upon which St. William’s Shrine is said to have rested. The steps which descend into the north aisle of the Choir are, as at Canterbury, deeply worn by the constant ascent of pilgrims.