The Pilgrims' Way: Rochester

Rochester is far too large to be a detour, in hindsight. I should have treated it more like I treated Winchester at the start, and dedicated a full day to exploring each part. Alas, time was against me and I could only afford an afternoon. But what an afternoon it was.

I met Will (the pilgrim I had joined at the end of yesterday’s walk) again at breakfast, so I had the chance to say goodbye and wish him luck. I hope he finds what he needs from his walk to Canterbury. I, meanwhile, was headed back down the Medway to Halling station for the final time. I’m almost annoyed at how familiar I have become with it over the last three days and look forward to moving forward tomorrow.

Wouldham was the first town on the way, and it felt very familiar in style and presentation. The rows of Victorian terraced houses reminded me of my grandad’s house in St. Leonard’s; uniform in style but personalised in small ways to set them apart. One had two small statues of Egyptian deities on the windowsill, for example. Unfortunately for me, but somewhat predictably, the church at Wouldham was closed. However, I was able to spot Roman bricks in the walls that seemed to support my claim that the red stones I found yesterday could indeed be Roman bricks too! I was very excited, as you can imagine.

I also visited the grave of Walter Burke, purser during the Battle of Trafalgar, who is best known for holding Lord Nelson as he died. Even his tombstone suggests this was his greatest achievement: having someone more famous die in his arms. It did mean that his grave was very well maintained, despite the miner bees digging their holes in the grass around it.

The majority of the walk to Rochester was alongside reeds and grasses of the type I had seen the previous two days. They grew long and shuffled in the occasional breeze. It made me think of a gothic horror story, perhaps the ghost of a betrayed love haunting the waterside on clear nights. Charles Dickens stayed in the area while he was writing Great Expectations, so maybe the reeds are what inspired the opening scenes between Pip and the escaped convict. It feels like it should be the setting for a dramatic confrontation, for sure.

I could see the castle and cathedral spire from far away, although I could not identify them for certain at the time. You can imagine how inescapable they must have felt for their contemporaries. Passing under the massive bridges spanning the Medway, you find a few people living underneath in caravans or well-produced single room houses. Moving further on, you pass more pleasure boats, before finally arriving at what could be considered the city. I continued to walk along the water to make it to Rochester Cathedral, although that would not be my first stop – in fact, quite the opposite. I had to rush to visit Chatham Dockyard before I ran out of time, which meant running halfway across the city. Fortunately, it allowed me to walk around more than I would have, and so see parts I would not have otherwise. It becomes incredibly obvious from the design of the buildings, and especially the red brick, how sudden Rochester’s growth was. So many of the buildings in Rochester appear Georgian or Victorian that it speaks to the value of the Royal Navy and the shipyard at Chatham, as well as the industry further inland, once the investment arrived in the city.

After I was let into the dockyard (“I was waiting for you to say pilgrimage,” the security guard told me after the fact), I tried to see as much as possible. Juggling explanatory vlogging with personal appreciation was quite difficult since I had such limited time, but some of my favourite spots were the ropery and the graffiti on the walls. The dockyard was closed down in 1984, so it was interesting to see where the last generation of workers had inscribed their names (and banter) onto the bricks. Whatever the context of the space, people will try to write their names and the year on some part of it. It is inevitable. Children seemed to particularly enjoy ringing the bells on the HMS Gannet, to everyone’s supreme delight.

But before long at all, I had to rush back to Rochester Cathedral again for my tour. The cathedral is the second oldest in England after Canterbury and been modified several times in different periods. I can’t speak at length about all of it, but I can mention a few details I particularly enjoyed. In parts of the building, there is a visible transition between architectural and artistic styles. For instance, the windows above the Pilgrims’ entrance only have singular figures in the stained glass because technological limitations could only afford smaller slits between the stone. Whereas on the other side, two figures have now been introduced thanks to the advancement of fifty years. The Victorian stained glass can incorporate three or more.

At the entrance to the chapter library, far at the back of the building, the doorway is meant to be one of the finest examples of English Decorated sculpture, but it has an easily missed comparison between Christianity in the form of a beautiful and regal-looking statue of Ecclesia, and Judaism in the form of a blindfolded lady, holding a broken staff and the torah slipping from her grasp. In an age where literacy was limited, visual storytelling like the twin statues would have communicated ideas instead; in this case how Judaism is supposedly suffering without the light of Jesus Christ. It is always worth remembering that our (sometimes overly scholarly) reception of artworks can obfuscate the intended impact of the piece.

Overall, it was a good day out. I only wish I had more time to visit everything worth visiting in the city. Maybe one day I will come back, but for now, I have a pilgrimage to finish.