| Description | These are records which were generated by additions, works and repairs to the structure of the cathedral, from the building of the South-West tower in the 1420's up to the early twentieth century; also to other buildings owned by the Dean and Chapter, in the Precincts and the streets surrounding them. This material has great variety. It documents, to very differing extents for each particular 'work', the administration, legal contracting and funding. Thus bills and receipts of tradesmen for specific works figure prominently, as do accounts of spending by the dean and chapter. These latter range from the rolls itemising spending on the Angel Steeple works, to the analyses of costs borne by the various fabric funds during the nineteenth century restorations. The legal records consist of the contractual agreements struck between the chapter and craftsmen for the performance of works.
In addition to the above are architects' records: plans, drawings and sketches; reports to the chapter about surveys carried out, dilapidations observed and repairs recommended; and correspondence about works proposed or in progress. In the latter the architects sometimes communicate revealing insights into their approach and inspirations. But, with the exception perhaps of Caroe, the picture of the development of individual architects' works on the cathedral given by the Fabric Collection is fragmentary and incomplete. Many of the records generated by their respective commissions must survive elsewhere, in personal or practice papers. What we have here are the ideas and plans sent to the chapter for discussion and approval, together with the regulation and administration of their commissions.
Turning to the archival arrangement of the fabric records, one ought to remark on the role of previous and current cathedral archivists in determining their order, sequence and classification; in shaping what is in consequence a rather artificial collection. The basis of this arrangement is the subject matter or the different areas of the building with which records are concerned. No account is taken of the records' origins. For example, records relating to the restoration of a particular chapel, or to one of the fixtures - say the cathedral organ - are listed together, irrespective of origin. Thus one may find surveyors' measured plans next to bills for lead deliveries - as long as they are both to do with, say, St Anselm's Chapel. Investigation of the activities of a particular architect, or even a specific plumber, should therefore begin with the index, under that person's name.
The current catalogue is intended to update and complete the list in Bunce's Schedule Vol I pt II, pp228b-228i. This list, begun by C. E. Woodruff, and containing additions in the handwriting of subsequent chapter librarians W. P. Blore and W. Urry, was itself a revision and extension of the first version of a Fabric Catalogue - by Bunce himself in the early nineteenth century (Schedule II, pp19-20). Bunce's is really a preliminary arrangement, not a list at all. It contains no numbers, and the records it describes bear no numeration by him. But the categories Bunce established then (The Fabric; Plans, Surveys etc; The Church Bells and The Church Organ), laid down the basic principle of arrangement for all subsequent additions. Woodruff retained Bells and Organ (as VII and VIII respectively), while splitting up 'Fabric' and 'Plans, Surveys' into similar smaller topics. Now this latest extension of the list, from Fabric LII up to Fabric 108, retains the subject/topographical approach, for the sake of consistency and intelligibility. The new items have been added under Woodruff's old numbers where appropriate, to keep material about the same subject together; items about subjects not represented in the Woodruff list have been ascribed fresh numbers, in running sequence from the point at which that list ended. Arabic numerals replace the Roman ones he used: a change necessitated by the computer, which orders letters alphabetically rather than numerically.
The additions were drawn from several boxes of uncatalogued material designated as fabric-related, probably over a period of time as things came to light. Much of this is material that was originally collected by two cathedral canons conspicuous for their encouragement of antiquarian enquiry into fabric history: F. J. Holland and A. J. Mason. A large proportion consists of letters from antiquarians and architects in correspondence with these two men.
There are many obvious gaps. The main series of plans by architects like Blomfield and Caroe lie elsewhere. Fabric records of all kinds after the 1920's are similarly absent from this collection. Coverage of the medieval and reformation periods is inevitably sparse, though this may be supplemented by looking in other record series. For example, for the fifteenth century a handful of Priors' Account Rolls provide additonal material to that contained in the Fabric Rolls, as noticed by W. P. Blore ('Recent discoveries in the archives', Archaeologia Cantiana 58(1945), 32-4). |