Rochester Cathedral, Rochester

Rochester is a thriving hub of pilgrimage, on the Pilgrims Way and Augustine Camino, with shorter routes named after local saints Justus, Gundulf, Paulinus and Ithamar

Highlights

• Shrines of St Paulinus, St Ithamar and St William of Perth
• Modern Orthodox fresco

Shades of Saxon saintliness can be found in Rochester’s surprising cathedral. This was the second cathedral built in England, a few years after Canterbury. The site of the Saxon foundation just overlaps with the current building. Lines have been marked on the floor at the back of the nave, on the left as you enter, showing where the apse of the Saxon cathedral lay.

At the other end of the cathedral’s long history, an Orthodox wall painting has been added to the building in recent years, in the northwest transept. This shows the baptism of Christ at the top and the baptism of Kent beneath. On the bottom left St Augustine baptises St Ethelbert in a font, while on the right his subjects receive baptism in the River Medway followed by their first communion from St Justus, founder of Rochester’s cathedral in the 7th century. The fresco was painted by Sergei Fyodorov, a Russian icon painter, in 2004 – apparently the first true fresco painted in an English cathedral in over 800 years. The iconographic style provides an interesting contrast to a fragment of medieval wall painting on the north wall of the choir, preserved only because it was hidden behind a pulpit. This shows a section of the Wheel of Fortune, a 13th-century allegory of the ups and downs of earthly life. About half the wheel survives, including the central figure of Fortuna herself, by whose whim an individual fate is sealed. Such a concept would test the boundaries of modern Christian thinking but was well accepted at the time.

There are several canonised bishops connected to the Saxon cathedral, starting with St Justus himself, who arrived here in 604. He went on to become Archbishop of Canterbury, where the site of his Saxon grave can be seen in St Augustine’s Abbey. His successor was an even more illustrious missionary, St Paulinus, who spent 10 years in northern England before retreating to Kent in 633. After his death in 644, he was buried in the cathedral and soon venerated, the first of Rochester’s medieval shrines.

St Ithamar succeeded him as the third Bishop of Rochester – the first native Saxon to achieve high church office. He too was venerated at his grave in the cathedral. Both sets of relics were translated into the new Norman cathedral built in 1080 under Bishop Gundulf, and remained here until the Reformation, on display near the high altar. Both saints are commemorated by new shrines installed in September 2023. The nave and the western front of the current building date from Gundulf’s time.

A third local saint has a more humble background, but his shrine became one of the most popular in England, a stopping point on the way to Canterbury. St William of Perth was a pilgrim, murdered here in 1201 by a treacherous travel companion. Though his shrine was destroyed along with the others, much of the surviving building could be considered his monument, since donations from pilgrims paid for the choir and the central tower. For a more democratic reminder of his popularity, notice the Pilgrim Steps leading up to the northeast transept, which housed the saint’s shrine. These were worn smooth by the passage of so many hopeful medieval feet, and have a wooden staircase over them.

St William had travelled all the way from Perth in Scotland and was murdered on the outskirts of Rochester by his adopted son, while on his way to the Holy Land. A chapel was built to his memory on the site of his death, somewhere near the Wisdom Hospice on St William’s Way, 1½ miles south of the cathedral. There are no visible remains of the chapel. He is sometimes called St William of Rochester. His canonisation was apparently confirmed by Pope Innocent IV later in the 13th century, though the records are unclear. There is no trace of the cathedral’s shrine structure, which was probably positioned so that visitors ascending the Pilgrim Steps would see it in front of them. A wall painting showing St William standing was discovered in a window recess at All Saints Church Frindsbury in the late 19th century. Frindsbury is on the north side of the River Medway, 1 mile from the cathedral.

Rochester’s final saint is St John Fisher, who served here as bishop until his execution by Henry VIII in 1535. He was beheaded at Tower Hill in London for refusing to accept the king’s authority as head of the Church of England. St John was an elderly man of 66 when he was killed, a devout churchman who stuck fast to his beliefs whatever the penalty. He was canonised along with St Thomas More in 1935. Both saints had been involved in suppressing reformers themselves, including Thomas Hitton, who burned at the stake in 1530 after being condemned by St John Fisher.

Directions

Rochester Cathedral is directly opposite the historic Rochester Castle, another impressive Norman building with views over the cathedral.

Rochester Cathedral, Boley Hill, Rochester ME1 1SX

www.rochestercathedral.org

W3W: values.loaded.hills

GPS: 51.3892N 0.5027E.

Rochester railway station 600m to cathedral

The cathedral is in the centre of town near Rochester Bridge. It is open weekdays from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Entrance is free, and donations are welcomed. The Wisdom Hospice, where St William’s Chapel once stood, is beside St William’s Way, postcode ME1 2NU.