Report of an Excavation in the Grounds of St. Bartholomew's Chapel, Chatham

REPORT OF AN EXCAVATION IN THE GROUNDS OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S CHAPEL, CHATHAM Dr .. J.P. HAYES, F.R.C.Path., D.E. WILLIAMS, Dip.A.D .. , and P.R. PAYNE In the summer of 1978 at the time of the 900th anniversary of the foundation of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, it was noticed that the small cypress tree outside the entrance to St. Bartholomew's Chapel was being overgrown by ivy. Further investigation during the next week showed that this was a very small part of a continuous qiat of vegetation covering the whole of the raised southern part of the enclosure; a sycamore tree in this area was also extensively overgrown. It would appear that the ivy had been present for many years and was already described by Elliston-Erwood' as a 'dense mass' covering an old wall on the south side of the building. The walls in question are marked as 'uncertain' in Elliston-Erwood's plan on page 17. Cursory examination of the ivy-covered area showed that remains of a fairly substantial wall were still present especially at the east end of the area in question where they rose to a height of about 6 ft. above the grassed way leading to the vestry entrance. Since the ivy was clearly in danger of killing two trees as well as demolishing the brick wall around the south side of the chapel grounds it was decided to remove it. This task was completed with the aid of half a dozen volunteers from the Haematology Department at All Saints' Hospital, Chatham. A considerable collection of miscellaneous objects was recovered from the ivy. The most interesting items were two heavy turned brass vases which had been stolen from the altar of the chapel in the 1960s by vandals. 1 F.C. Elliston-Erwood, 'Plans of, and brief architectural Notes on, Kent Churches', Arch. Cant., Ix (1947), 16-7. 177 J.P. HAYES, D.E. WILLIAMS AND P.R. PAYNE S. BARTHOLOMEW'S CHAPEL,CHATHAM 1979 SECTION B-D 7 Fig. 1. Trench 1: Section B-D. Scale: 1 ft. = 1 in. After the site had been cleared it became possible for the first time to see the full extent of the wall remains described in 1947. There appeared to be a continuous wall up to 2 ft. 6 in. thick running parallel to almost the whole length of the chapel nave. It stopped just short of the south-west corner of the vestry where an access pathway led round the south vestry wall to reach the part of the garden to the east of the chapel. At this point masonry could be seen extending almost down to the level of the vestry entrance. However, towards the west, the lower parts of the wall became progressively obscured by an earth bank to the extent that at the westernmost end only one course of flints was visible. At about the mid-point of the wall was a brick footing 2 ft. wide and three courses thick, projecting at right angles to it towards the chapel nave. Since from its flint and lime mortar construction the wall appeared to be medieval it was decided to carry out an excavation to date it further and to clarify its relationship. Two trenches were opened up initially. The first was situated to show the wall at its highest point in section together with the hopefully undisturbed layers on its south side. Excavation was continued 178 EXCAVATION IN ST. BARTIIOLOMEW'S CHAPEL down to the ground just outside the vestry entrance, where weathered natural chalk was reached. At this point a 3-ft. wide gravel path was discovered edged on its south side by a single course of stones held together with mortar. A fifteenth-century column base was also discovered near the north-west corner of the trench at the point marked on the plan. The section of the hole is shown in Fig. 1. Layer 1 consisted of topsoil only. Layer 2 was an outwash gully where rain-water had run between the topsoil layer and the undamaged south face of the wall. Layers 3 and 4 consisted of soil of progressively lighter colour. Layer 5 was a lens of mortar. Layer 6 was light-coloured soil with frequent chalk layers and layer 7 was weathered almost solid chalk. The topsoil contained pottery fragments of many dates from Roman to modern including some small pieces of delftware and one piece of Jackfield or Cistercian ware. In layers 3 and 4 the most modern find was a 2-in. long piece of eighteenth-century pipe stem. The largest pottery fragments were of sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury ringing ware. Pieces of Surrey ware, a Bellarmine jug and medieval grey ware were also recovered. Layer 5 did not produce any dateable finds. In layer 6 all the recovered sherds were medieval while the only find in layer 7 was a thick piece of tile datable from the thirteenth century or later. From the structure of the wall the most logical interpretation is that at the time of its building the ground surface was the junction between layers 4 and 6-. Layer 5 would then be a small area of inortar spread from its construction. The lower part of layer 2 would tpen be the fill of the partly eroded foundation trench which would then have been almost exactly 3 ft. deep. If layer S does represent spread from the building of the wall it represents a sharp ten:iporal boundary between twelfth- and thirteenth-century finds below and post sixteenth-century finds above. The date of construction of the wall would, therefore, lie between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries on this evidence. The absence of garreting would also place the construction date before the sixteenth century as would the crumbly yellow nature of the mortar. ! .. · Trench 2 was sited to include and investigate the nature of the Sinall brick construction built into the flint wall about half-way along its length. Three courses were present of which the bricks in the upper two were laid at right angles to the flint wall. The bottom course consisted of four bricks laid end-to-end. Below this were four courses of flints under which was solid natural chalk sloping steeply down to the level of the path leading to the vestry door. About half-way down the slope was a small step of right angle cross-section cut about 6 in. into the chalk. It was filled with flints and fragments 179 J.P. HAYES, D.E. WILLIAMS AND P.R. PAYNE TRENCH 3 Sect I on E-F CESS PIT E:lm ....... i - M••••• .. •I ,11􀀓1 WOii 􀀌 ·•• .. ••ry Woll Fig. 2. Trench 3: Section E-F. Scale: 1 ft. = 1 in. of brick. Since the bank was everywhere close to the surface, the only excavated layer was topsoil which contained artifacts of eighteenth-century and later date. The bricks were all of eighteenthcentury type, being of the same size as modern bricks, made of red clay and lacking frogs. The simplest interpretation of this structure is that it was the end of the footing of a wall, built in the eighteenth century and heading towards the south side of the chapel. It was now realised that the main flint wall had been the outside wall of a building running parallel to almost the whole length of the chapel nave. The east end had been destroyed during previous restoration of the chapel, so the only way of getting a better idea of the structure was to excavate what was hoped to be the opposite end of the building. Accordingly a third trench (Fig. 2) was dug measuring 6 ft. from east to west and 8 ft. from north to south opposite the west end of the chapel nave and overlapping the visible position of the west end of the wall. It was also designed to cover the whole width of the chalk bank which was now expected to underlie the wall footing as 180 EXCAVATION IN ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S CHAPEL well as including a small area on the south side of the wall to demonstrate its immediate relationships. The presence of the solid chalk bank was soon confirmed as was the fact that with the steady upward slope of the ch?.lk the wallfooting was at an even higher level than in trench 2. Just to the west of the point at which the last remaining flints of the wall could be demonstrated, a robber trench was found - see plan, running in a northerly direction towards the chapel. At its southernmost end, it intersected the end of the main flint wall and the part inside the trench was 2 ft. wide at its maximum. Since it continued uninterrupted to the northern edge of the trench, it has been assumed to represent the west wall of the building. Its maximum depth was 1 ft. below the level of the path leading to the vestry door. At this stage and apart from the robber trench all the finds from this trench came from topsoil. A considerable variety of artifacts was recovered including pottery, glass, corroded iron and various small finds. The pottery included items dating from the eighteenth century to modern times. The most notable artifacts in the robber trench were building materials including roofing-slates and nineteenth- century or later tiles and bricks. Clay fragments were all of the eighteenth century and the latest pieces of pottery were of that date although a piece of Surrey ware and a fragment from a stoneware spirit bottle were also found. These items together would point towards the second half of the nineteenth century as the date of demolition of the wall. When the structures in this trench were being cleared, a layer of chalk was discovered occuping the area from the south face of the wall to the south end of the trench. Initiaily, it was thought to be natural, but cleaning showed it to be loose and a fragment of nineteenth-century stone china was discovered embedded in it. As more of this chalk was removed a line of unmortared half bricks came to view which were subsequently shown to be curved, concave to the south. Further courses could also be demonstrated below them. Since this structure could be the mouth of a well it was decided to excavate it completely. The trench was, therefore, extended to the south boundary wall of the chapel grounds. As expected the topsoil yielded the usual nineteenth-century artifacts. Immediately below the topsoil, the layer of loose chalk covered most of the newly uncovered area. When this was removed the 'well mouth' was found to be several courses lower on its south side than to the north. As clearing continued down to 18 in., a large mass of chalk could be seen bulging into the interior of the structure where its south side passed under the boundary wall. When fully cleared the structure was found to be 4 ft. 6 in. deep 181 J.P. HAYES, D.E. WILLIAMS AND P.R. PAYNE S􀀕 BARTHOLOMEWS CHAPEL CHATHAM 1979 71/111177111117111111117;,rn •"••"••· .... •. . : 2( l{//!!lzJzz/7II, 'I I///􀀇 􀀈 Grass Path -' &CAtf: •• lftt Fig. 3. Plan of Site. Scale: 4 ft. = 1 in. -"'--''" ... 1wt11• \ l: :t :;:::;1:;"'c .. l .... 1 co .. 1•u••••w•11 •••• i>.,ttnyM N and constructed of unmortared bricks most of which were of eighteenth-century type. The upper part was filled with rubble consisting of eighteenth-century brick, tiles, occasional slates and a few pieces of plaster some of which were covered on their smooth outer surface with pitch. Most of the pottery in these layers was from the second half of the nineteenth century. At 4 ft. down the fill suddenly changed to brown organic debris containing large quantities of thin broken window glass. Also present were many pottery fragments, nineteenth-century clay pipe fragments, nineteenth-century bottles of which one was intact and two others almost so, and many assorted iron objects, mostly nails of various sizes. Some of the bottle fragments showed the effects of partial melting as though they had been in a bonfire. The most $ignificant datable finds were aU of nineteenth-century date. The most critical is probably a small octagonal ink-bottle made of blueish green glass containing large numbers of air bubbles, typical 182 EXCAVATION IN ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S CHAPEL of the cheap products made between 1890 and the early years of this century. Since it was found at the bottom of the organic layer the structure could not have been filled earlier than 1890. The second important find was a side plate typical of Samuel Moor and Company, of the Weir Pottery, Sunderland. The date of manufacture is estimated to fall between 1861 and 1883. Ten pieces were recovered initially making up more than ninety per cent of the plate. However, the fragments bearing the mark were missing and the manufacturer could not, therefore, be confirmed. Further objects of interest were twenty-three pieces of slate pencil, three calcium carbonate chalk sticks and at least three copper thimbles. At 4 ft. 6 in. the fill became similar to topsoil to be terminated by a final ¼ in. thickness of mortar spread before the natural chalk bottom was reached at 4 ft. 9 in. From the shallowness of the structure, its construction and the stratification of the fill, the conclusion b􀁲comes inevitable that this was a cess-pit, probably constructed at some time during the eighteenth century and going out of use in the 1890s when the surrounding buildings were demolished and some of the rubble used to fill it. In the final stage in an effort to recover the fragments of the Moor's plate covering the mark, the whole of the spoil from the organic layer was sieved. As a result one fragment measuring 1 cm. x 1.5 cm. was recovered. When this was inserted the mark read 'MO- --------Co', thus confirming the evidence given by the pattern. As a further result of sieving the spoil one more thimble, fourteen slate pencil fragments, a further piece of chalk and many further small pieces of pottery and corrod􀁳d iron objects were recovered, all of nineteenth-century date. The last find of significance was a William III fathing dated 1697 lying underfoot on the edge 9f the cess-pit. INTERPRETATION The excavation described above has demonstrated a 1 ft. 9½ in. thick flint wall of medieval date, running parallel to the nave of St. Bartholomew's Chapel and situated 19 ft. from it to the south. At its east end it was set in a 3-ft. deep foundation trench cut in a gully filled with hillwash: As it passed westwards it ran progressively higher onto a natural chalk bank into which a step had been cut for the footing. The east end of the wall and any other walls connected to it had been destroyed in the rebuilding which was completed in 1896. At half-way along its length a cross-wall had been constructed on a 3 f.t.-wide footing in the eighteenth century dividing the 183 J.P. HAYES, D.E. WILLIAMS AND P.R. PAYNE building into two. At the west end the robber trench of the building's west wall was demonstrated together with a cess-pit of probable eighteenth-century date which also seems to have fallen into disuse at the time of the restoration of the chapel. Finds from the cess-pit imply that a small school was in operation in the neighbourhood. As far as interpretation of the structure is concerned there is a reasonable amount of evidence from the eighteenth century onwards but very little before that date. The earliest reference taken from F.F. Smith2 states that in 1725 a Mr. William Walter purchased the lease of two messuages and gardens standing 'on part of the ground where sometime the Chapel or part thereof formerly stood'. The 10 ft. to the mile Ordnance Survey map of 1864 shows two buildings lying adjacent to the south wall of the chapel nave. Their south wall compares in position to the medieval flint wall under discussion. In the rather smaller scale tithe map of 1849 the same buildings are shown, but the ground plan appears somewhat distorted. It would, therefore, seem that the buildings remained in use well into the second half of the nineteenth century. In Thorpe's Registrum Roffense3 there is an engraving showing the east end of the chapel as it appeared in 1782. (See Fig. 5.) A house of two storeys and an attic can be seen in the space at present occupied by the path leading to the vestry. This must be the more easterly of the two buildings shown in the maps and is likely to be one of the two 'messuages' of which the lease was purchased in 1725. However, on 87 of the Registrum it is stated that 'the Chapel was extended by forty-four feet at the sole expense of the late William Walter'. According to Hasted, 'From this chancel an additional building is continued further westward, new built in 1743, at the expense of William Walter Esq. of Chatham, who new pensed it, erected the steeple and was otherwise a considerable benefactor to this Chapel.'4 Both these quotations appear to state that the nave, or a large part of it, was built in the first half of the eighteenth century. As far as the south wall is concerned, this is clearly not the case. As for the north and west walls, it is no longer possible to obtain direct 2 F.F. Smith, A History of Rochester (1982), 460-1. 3 Thorpe, Registrum Roffense, 87. • Hasted, First Edition, Volume II, 77. 184 EXCAVATION IN ST. BAR1HOLOMEW'S CHAPEL ST BAR'THOLC')MltW\, tHAPU. , $AHPW1c;M • Fig. 4. St. Bartholomew's Chapel, Sandwich. Drawing of the south elevation of the projected restoration by Sir Gilbert Scott. evidence since the relevant structures were demolished by Sir Gilbert Scott during his restoration works to be replaced by the present building. One further l􀁉ne of inference can be started by an_ examination of the 1864 map. Here it can be seen that there are four more windows in the north wall than the south, suggesting that the two sides represented structures built at different times. For although we have been unable to find any account by Sir Gilbert Scott of his work at the chapel, a reason must be found for his choice of the north and west walls for demolition. The simplest interpretation is that these were the structures built in the eighteenth century probably of brick in line with the present chancel of the chapel, with the idea that the original shape of the chapel was being restored. Sir Gilbert Scott would, therefore, have chosen this relatively modern structure for demolition, building in its place a chapel nave which harmonised more closely with the flint south wall. Further confirmation of this hypothesis came from an investigation of the R.I.B.A. drawings collection. Here besides the fact that there was no written evidence, 185 J.P. HAYES, D.E. WILLIAMS AND P.R. PAYNE F􀀨2.􀀩Sou01Ellil Vi􀀪>'ifp}& OJapei9'".S!&rthalomcwsHalpibilnTChruhnn1,k1tq& μ. I, ,.,,il/Ji/4 tf. /"3/· yi.;') •· . Fig. 5. The south-east Aspect of St. Bartholomew's Chapel, Chatham in 1782. (Plate I, Figure 2 of Thorpe's Registrum Roffense ). not even drawings of St. Bartholomew's Chapel, Chatham, could be found. However, it is significant that earlier in the century S ir Gilbert Scott restored the Chapel of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Sandwich. (Fig. 4 is a photograph of his drawing of the restored south wall of that church.) In spite of the fact that the Sandwich chapel is considerably bigger than that at Chatham, the similarity in general appearance is striking. It is noteworthy that St. Bartholomew's Chapel in Sandwich also consists of a nave and chancel with a north aisle. It would appear that Sir Gilbert Scott, thinking that the two buildings had originally had a similar structwe used the chapel at Sandwich as a model for the 'restoration' of that in Chatham. If all structures built from the eighteenth century onwards are discounted, a very different building makes its appearance. This consists of the present chapel and apse, the north transept, _the south wall of the present nave and the walls demonstrated by this excavation. The plan is shown in Plate V. The south wall of the pesent nave now becomes the north wall of a medieval building lying to the south, interchanging its inner and outer walls in the process. What is now seen, is an L-shaped structure, the northsouth arm of which consists of the present chapel and north transept, the east-west arm comprising the south nave wall and the 186 EXCAVATION JN ST. BARTI-IOLOMEW'S CHAPEL excavated ruins. The structure of the angle of the L is not known since the east end of the ruined well was cleared away by Sir Gilbert Scott to below the foundation level and the east end of the building itself according to the engraving in Custumale Roffense would have lain under Sir Gilbert Scott's vestry. The final points to be made concern the significance of L-shaped buildings on medieval hospital sites. Table I tabulates the lengths and widths of the chapels and halls of three medieval Kent hospitals whose plans have been published in Archaeologia Cantiana. These are compared in the last line with the measurements of the chancel of St. Bartholomew's Chapel and the recently demonstrated medieval remains. Of the three previously documented buildings the closest correspondence in size is with St. Mary's Hospital, Strood, which in all dimensions is rather less than 1 ½ times as big. Although the chapel at St. Mary's Hospital, Ospringe, is very similar in size to that of St. Mary's, Strood, the hall is much longer. St. John's, Canterbury, is a considerably larger structure in which most dimensions are about twice those of St. Bartholomew's, while the estimated length of the hall is more than three times as great. In general, it can be seen that the relative sizes of St. Bartholomew's Chapel and the adjacent ruined buildings are very similar to those of the chapels and halls of the three other foundations and that in particular the closest similarity is with the geographically nearest of the three - St. Mary's, Strood. It can, therefore, be proposed that the ruins to the south of St. Bartholomew's Chapel together with the south wall of the present nave are the remains of the hall of the medieval St. Bartholomew's Hospital. The strongest argument against this hypothesis is the fact that in the other three hospitals in the area, the hall is always placed at right angles to the chapel while at St. Bartholomew's their long axes are parallel. In the case of St. Mary's, Strood, and St. John's, Canterbury, the aim of this design was to enable the inmates in separate accommodation for men and women to watch simultaneously services taking place in the chapel. In the case of St. Mary's, Ospringe, this would not have been possible since the hall and chapel appear to have been separated from each other by an intervening building. Furthermore, since the chapel was in the region of one end of the hall simultaneous viewing of the services by separate male and female inmates would not in any case have been possible. The situation at St. Bartholomew's is in some ways more typical than at St. Mary's, Ospringe, and in others less so. In that the probable hall and chapel are adjacent to each other they resemble the findings both at St. Mary's, Strood, and St. John's, Canterbury. However, as stated above, St. Bartholomew's is the only foundation 187 J.P. HAYES,D.E. WILLIAMS AND P.R. PAYNE of the four where both hall and chapel run approximately east-west. The only explanation available to us for this difference lies in the topography of the site itself. In the three previously described foundations the sites are all relatively flat and would not have been hemmed in by large immovable buildings at the time of construction. St. Bartholomew's Hospital was, however, wedged between Chatham High Street and the steeply rising ground which at present leads to the New Road. A long building running north-south would have required extensive earth-moving works in order to prepare a level foundation. Indeed, a promontory of natural chalk was used to support much of the south wall of the hall itself. It seems, therefore, that the builders took a relatively easy way out and constructed the hall parallel to the hillside rather than at right angles to it, with the added advantage that the natural chalk would have made an especially firm foundation for the south wall. POSTSCRIPT There is a further view of St. Bartholomew's Chapel in the halfbound first edition of Hasted's History of Kent in Rochester Public Library. This view is a water-colour, bound opposite p. 76 in volume II, and shows the apse and adjoining part of the transept, viewed from the north-east, as it would have appeared during the nineteenth century. In this view the upper two-thirds of the transept are shown as brick-built; the transept window is oblong in shape, has a wooden frame and is glazed with diamond panes. This paiflting would confirm the hypothesis that the parts of the chapel, which were demolished and rebuilt by Sir Gilbert Scott, had been built in brick early in the eighteenth century. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Our thanks are due to Mrs. B. Williams for assisting with the excavation and the survey of the site. Fig. 4 is reproduced from a photograph of a drawing by Sir Gilbert Scott in the architectural drawings collection of the R.I.B.A. Plate Vis from a photocopy of a plan in the Kent County Archives, Maidstone. We would further like to thank the administration of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Rochester, for permission and encouragement to clear and dig the site. We are very grateful to Mr. A.C. Harrison, for advice regarding the manuscript, and to Mr. W. Magness, Mrs. B. Green, Mr. P. 188 EXCAVATION IN ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S CHAPEL Green, Mr. and Mrs. T. Rogers, Miss J. Lake, Miss J. Hill and Mr. P.G. Hodge, for their assistance in the hard labour of 'Ivy Stripping'. Finally, our sincere thanks must be given to Miss J. Hill and Miss C. Willis for converting a notably illegible manuscript into an acceptable typescript. TABLE I Dimensions of medieval Hospitals and their Chapels in Kent Name of Foundation St. John's, Canterbury St. Mary's, Ospringe St. Mary's, Strood St. Bartholomew's, Chatham Chapel L.ength Width 64 ft. 42 ft. 49 ft. 26 ft. 41 ft. 24 ft. 30 ft. 17 ft. 189 Length 148 ft. 124 ft. 58 ft. 41 ft. Hall Width 34 ft. 44 ft. 28 ft. 17 ft.