Rochester Cathedral - The West Front

A general view of the west front of Rochester cathedral

When I first visited Rochester more than 25 years ago, as a member of both English Heritage and the National Trust, it was principally to see Rochester Castle and the nearby Upnor Castle and, although I didn't spend much time at Rochester Cathedral, I remember being very impressed by its magnificent west door.

The west door

During my visit on the last day of October in 2016, now that I knew the whole of the west front was originally built out of Caen stone, I spent much more time looking at the various details and taking a good selection of photos that I would bring back with me to Rotherham, where I would later research its construction history and the materials used.

A detail of the west window and parapet that was restored in 1825

Looking at the west front as a whole, although I can distinguish the work of Lewis Cottingham, who rebuilt the great west window and the battlemented parapet in 1825, using Bath stone, and the general refacing and rebuilding of the north-west tower in 1889 by John Loughborough Pearson in Weldon stone – due to their sharp profiles compared to the original Norman masonry – I couldn't see any obvious differences in colour.

A detail of masonry to the west front

In his guide to the building stones of the cathedral (1995), Bernard Worssam, however, had mentioned that a coat of limewash applied around 1990 made all of the stonework look very similar. I didn't notice any signs of this and it looked like the the whole of the façade had been relatively recently cleaned.

A detail of carved stone on the west front

When devising the Triton Stone Library, I included several Jurassic oolitic limestones that I knew had been used in London – with various varieties of Bath stone and others from the Lincolnshire Limestone Formation amongst them – but I hadn't encountered Weldon stone before; however, as a building stone specialist I thought that it was a very good match.

A statue of Bishop Gundulf of Rochester

I didn't examine any of the various stones with my hand lens but, zooming in with my camera, the Caen stone is often seen to be weathered and pitted – especially the original figurative sculpture to the west door – with the restored masonry displaying well defined profiles and tooling marks.

A detail of original ashlar walling and a restored grotesque

Rochester Cathedral doesn't possess the same visual impact as Lincoln Cathedral or Worksop Priory, which is of about the same age, but its essentially unrestored west door - with its wide variety of mythological creatures – is the best that I have ever seen.

Details of the tympanum and surround of the west door