"It is bad enough to see such an erection spring up at all, but when a venerable building is demolished to make way for it, the case is quite intolerable. Will it be believed that, under the centre tower, in the transepts of this once most beauteous church, staircases on stilts have been set up, exactly resembling those by which the company ascend to a booth or race-course?... Nothing but the preaching-house system could have brought such utter desolation on a stately church; in fact, the abomination is so great that it must be seen to be credited."
Strange as it may appear, the seating accommodation under this arrangement was even greater than it is at present, and the congregations at the Sunday services were almost as large as they are to-day. It would be quite wrong, therefore, to suppose that no religious work was going on in the parish. But beyond the parishioners, and the few antiquaries who visited the church from time to time, it was scarcely known to the outside world, except when the bells rang out the old year on the 31st of December, or when a dismal light in the windows proclaimed the Christmas distribution of bread, coals, and blankets to the poor of the neighbourhood.
It was impossible, however, that an edifice with the history and associations of St. Saviour's, should escape the religious and artistic revival of which the Oxford movement was the cause or the outcome; and the restoration of this fine church to its original beauty, and more than its original usefulness, has followed almost as a matter of course. The scheme for its restoration, although in the air for some time previously, began to take a definite shape in 1877, when St. Saviour's, Southwark, with other South London parishes, was transferred from the diocese of Winchester to Rochester. Dr. Anthony Wilson Thorold was appointed to the See of Rochester in the same year, and very soon lent his full energies to the work. In 1889 a meeting of the chief parishioners was summoned to inaugurate the scheme, and a subscription list was at once opened, headed by his Lordship with £1,000. An appeal to the public was immediately issued, and was generously responded to by great and small. Among the larger donations may be mentioned the sum of £5,000 from Lord Llangattock, £2,000 from Messrs. Barclay, Perkins and Co., with several gifts of £1,000 each from Sir Frederick Wigan and others. These large amounts were supplemented by the equally acceptable offerings of humbler people, for which collections were made at numerous churches within and without the diocese. Perhaps the most important of these, in a money sense, was that at a Masonic Service, held in the Collegiate Church itself on Ascension Day, which yielded over £2,000. On 3rd November, Bishop Thorold preached at St. Saviour's on behalf of the fund, and in the same month Sir Arthur Blomfield was chosen as architect for the restoration. The miserable structure of 1839 was at once swept away, and on 24th July, 1890, King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, laid the foundation stone of the new nave. It was completed within seven years by Messrs. T.F. Rider and Sons after the design of Sir Arthur Blomfield. Guided throughout by the remains of the old work, and many existing drawings of the ancient nave, as a whole, and in its separate details, the architect has succeeded in a practical reproduction of the original building.[12] The erection, with other reparatory work, was accomplished at a cost of over £40,000; but he who had initiated it was not spared to witness its completion. Shortly after its commencement, Bishop Thorold was transferred from Rochester to Winchester, and died in the summer of 1895.
His successor in the See of Rochester, Dr. Randall Thomas Davidson (appointed in 1891), did not allow the work to flag under his administration, which came to an end with the death of Dr. Thorold in 1895. The episcopal changes then made resulted in the translation of Dr. Davidson to the See of Winchester, and the appointment of Dr. Edward Stuart Talbot to Rochester. By a happy coincidence, the parish church at Leeds, from which he was transferred, bore the same dedication as that of the Collegiate Church whose completion it was his good fortune to celebrate.
On Tuesday, 16th February, 1897, the building was reopened after restoration, and reinstated in its position as a Collegiate Church, with the added dignity of a pro-Cathedral, in anticipation of its becoming the Cathedral Church of the new diocese of Southwark already in view.
The Collegiate Chapter was formed by Statutes promulgated by the Bishop of Rochester in February, 1897. The following were the members of that body immediately before the changes consequent on the formation of the new diocese:
Dean:
The Lord Bishop of Rochester, the Rt. Rev. Edward Stuart Talbot.
Sub-Dean:
The Lord Bishop of Southwark, the Rt. Rev. Huyshe Yeatman-Biggs.