FORGOTTEN TREASURES

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 151, 27 June 1914, Page 15

FORGOTTEN TREASURES

DISCOVERIES AT ROCHESTER CATHEDRAL. The new Treasury in Rochester Cathedral has just been opened. It is necessary to speak of the Treaeury as "new" (says the London Times), though there is nothing beyond the cases in which the articles are contained and some repairs to the interior construction of the chamber, which is less than some centuries old. But few people have been aware of the existence of the old room, part of the original Norman structure, or of the chief of the treasures which it contains. Only ab intervals of years, so far as is known, ha.ye human feet trod the winding staircase which leads to the apartment. No one really seems to have cared what was contained in the great 16th century chest, which must have been built inside the room, for there is not, and seemingly has never been, a door large enough to admit of its being carried through in its entirety. If there ever, was a, list of the Cathedral plate it has long been lost and forgotten, and some of the almost priceless pieces of silver which have been in use in the Ca.thedral were commonly supposed to be of brass. The old staircase had become almost unclimbable and the room itself was choked with the accumulated dust of, literally, centuries. The restoration of the room has been made possible by the generosity of Mrs. A. I. Pearman, the widow of the late csenior Canon of the Cathedral. Very few people, even among the residents of Rochester or those immediately associated with the Cathedral, ha.ye ever seen the majority of the treasures now on view. The silver alone will be a revelation, containing a magnificent service of seven pieces (1653-5). ' There is a wonderful AngloSaxon MS., the Textus Roffensis, of the early twelfth century, also a thirteenth century Dalmatic. Finally, among the interesting possessions of the Cathedral are some Cromwellian soldiers' leather jerkins, bun faced with green, and some of their muskets, which were left in the Cathedral when the troops vacated it after using it as a stable and a barracks.