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Cathedral reveals its secrets
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The North Nave Roof Space
North-West Transept Roof Space
Bell Harry Wheel Room
Canterbury Cathedral is a well-known British landmark receiving millions of visitors every year, but few get to see its upper rooms and passageways with their hidden secrets.

In this feature we explore the unseen cathedral – inside the roof-spaces and towers which reveal the true structure and extraordinary genius of our most famous historic building.

 

The North Nave Roof Space

After walking through an inconspicuous door in the Martyrdom, where St Thomas Becket was murdered, and climbing a spiral staircase walled with tufa limestone roughly hewn with axes, we turned down a narrow passageway. At the end is a tiny opening and, after squeezing through, we come to this glorious yet neglected space.

Above the north aisle in the Cathedral, the lumps in the dusty floor are the arches which hold up the stone vaults so magnificent from below. They are entirely self-supporting, with only a 15th Century beamed roof to keep the rain out. In some parts of the cathedral this is failing, causing leaks into the roof space.

The North West Transept Staircase and Roof

Back up the spiral staircase, the higher we go the more holes appear between the Kentish ragstone steps. Less public bits of the cathedral are bearing the brunt of weathering and wear.

Stonemason Darren McCulloch-Smith, my guide on this unusual tour, tells me this is normal.

He said: “Bits are popping off the Cathedral all the time. We had to put a canopy over the north-west door because of falling masonry, which was possibly due to the extremely hot weather we have had.”

But bad repairs have a big part to play too.

He said: “Most of what we replace is Victorian because of poor quality Caen stone and hard mortar, which doesn’t let the stone expand and contract.”

North-West Transept Roof Space

At the top of the increasingly decrepit spiral staircase we come to the roof space above the Martyrdom. This room was built in the late 14th Century on existing Norman walls. The timbers date from the 14th Century and seem to have lasted remarkably well. But then, Chris McWilliams from the Save Canterbury Cathedral Appeal (left) tells me, a timber was recently found in another part of the cathedral dating from 1080.

The back wall of this room still shows some of the original Norman decoration. All the stone below knee-height is from about 1077, everything above from the 14th Century.

Bell Harry Wheel Room

We go through a metal door and out into the Square – the gallery which runs inside the central Bell Harry tower with vertiginous views down into the nave steps. Through another door and up another staircase is the huge, magnificent centre of the tower.

Bell Harry was built in the mid-1400s, mainly out of brick – apparently one of the earliest uses of brickwork in the country.

Although many think brick was used as it was lighter, my stonemason guide suspects that price and fashion may have come into the equation.

The gigantic wheel, used to bring stone up the tower, is probably not original.

The Lower Bell Harry Room

Down a trapdoor and a narrow ladder we come to much brighter space. We have to watch where we stand as rotten floorboards give way to stone vaulting. We are immediately above the splendidly ornate roof in the middle of the cathedral.

A circular plug in the middle of the floor turns out to be the beautifully painted boss in the middle of the ceiling. Several storeys up it seems best not to stand on it. Behind it is the heaver original now left stuck in this space as it is too big to remove. It is still attached to the 1470s beam that took it out.
POSTED: 16/07/2009 12:00:00

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