new chapter room and ruins of the old
(from a photograph by j. l. allen).
On the south side of the cloisters was the refectory; the lower part of its massive north wall still remains, and in it a fine doorway, with a groined lavatory and towel recess, the work of Prior Helias about 1215. The great thickness of the wall is, as will be explained shortly, probably due to the fact that it was originally a part of the old fortifications of the city on this side. The cellarer’s and other storerooms were, apparently, on the west side, and there seems to have been a smaller guesten-hall to the south-east. Some corbels that helped to support the cloister roofs are still to be seen, projecting from the south wall of the church, and from Ernulf’s buildings. The doorway opening from the church into the western range has been already described. Of this range itself nothing remains, but at its southern end there is yet to be seen, half buried, a late Perpendicular porch. This stands beside the road between the north main transept and the Prior’s Gate, and opens towards the episcopal precinct.
Of the old Episcopal Palace, famous for having been the home, during his later years, of Cardinal Fisher, a considerable part still exists to the south-west of the cathedral, between it and Boley Hill. The palace was perhaps originally erected by Gundulf himself. It is said to have been rebuilt, after a fire, by Bishop Gilbert de Glanvill (1185-1215), though he may have found it sufficient to repair the shell then left, using Caen stone for the purpose. Another definite notice of the palace is found when we see Bishop Lowe, in 1459, dating an instrument from his “new palace at Rochester.” Here, again, it is probably a re-modelling and not a complete reconstruction that is referred to, but the re-modelling was certainly thorough, for many fifteenth century features are to be seen in the part that is left.
The main framework of the whole rectangular structure probably dates from Gundulf’s or, at the latest, from Bishop Ralph’s time; the simple plan and the walls, 3 feet in thickness, being such as might be expected in early Norman work. The building, which has a total length of 70 feet, is of stone, with a tiled roof, and now forms dwelling-houses. It has a massive buttress in the centre of the southern face, and the outlines of old windows can be traced in various parts. The western gable end, which can be seen from Boley Hill, is also interesting and worthy of attention. The cellars and vaulted passages extend even beyond the building to the eastward, and are very massive in their construction. Fragments of wrought masonry that probably once belonged to the chapel have been dug up; they were mostly portions of capitals, with beautiful foliated ornaments, or of column shafts.
Cardinal Fisher was the last Bishop of Rochester to reside here. He received a visit from Erasmus in 1516, and this great scholar gave a very bad account of the residence and its situation. Fisher himself complained of its dilapidated state and of the rats that infested it. Cardinal Wolsey stayed at the house with the bishop on the 4th of July, 1527, and wrote to the king on the next day: “I was right loveingly and kindely by him entertained.” After his cook’s attempt, in 1531, to poison him and his family at his London house, on Lambeth Marsh, Fisher stayed continuously at Rochester, until, in 1534, he was peremptorily summoned to the capital—never to return. The palace was continued to the bishops by the charter constituting the new establishment, but they neither inhabited it nor, in fact, lived much at Rochester at all. On the spot where its old prison used to stand within the palace precincts, the diocesan Register Office was erected in 1760.
The building at present known as the palace, in St. Margaret’s Street, has often been thought to be the old mansion with all these historical associations; it did not, however, become the property of the bishops until after 1674. In that year it was bequeathed by Francis Head, Esq., to his wife, with the arrangement that, after her death, “in case the Church of England does continue so governed by Bishops of the true Protestant faith,” it should be settled on the Lord Bishop of Rochester and his successors for the maintenance of hospitality near the cathedral church, and as an invitation to him to preach once a year each at the churches of St. Margaret and St. Nicholas in his cathedral city. This building has been little used by the bishops, and has generally been leased by them, like other residences of theirs, of which mention will be made in the chapter on the see and its history. The small episcopal revenue has usually only allowed of the maintenance of a single palace, though more may have been desired and even necessary.