CATHEDRAL HISTORY
An opened-out lozenge on the sanctuary floor of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel
Royal Institute of British Architects that: ‘Good Cipollino is now again obtainable’. How much of it was supplied by Farmer and Brindley is unclear. They were listed as agents for the marble until 1899, when this changed to ‘Quarry Proprietors of Egyptian Porphyry, antique Greek Cipollino and Rosso Antico’. But two years earlier, in 1897, the Anglo-Greek Marble Company (Marmor), the largest in Europe with capital of £235,000, had been formed to develop quarries at Pentelikon, Paros, Tinos, Skyros, Naxos and Evia. By 1909 Marmor was advertising as sole suppliers of Cipollino ‘from the ancient Greek quarries’. Farmer and Brindley became a private limited company in 1905, when Brindley effectively retired at the age of 74, and any independent involvement by the firm in quarrying seems likely to have ended at about that time. The first recorded consignment of Cipollino from Evia reaching London was in 1898. It was of slabs for the new staircase walls at Drapers’ Hall and four columns for the Royal Academy of Arts. Shortly afterwards eight more columns arrived for Westminster Cathedral. The marble merchants were Farmer and Brindley. Two of the columns for the Cathedral cracked while being worked, but the remaining six can be seen at the transepts and at the entrance to St Patrick’s, St Paul’s and St Joseph’s Chapels. Imports continued; Norwich Union’s 1904 headquarters in Norwich received sixteen Cipollino columns and 8 more went to decorate the 1907 Old Bailey entrance hall. By SEPTEMBER 2021
Oremus
that time, according to Brindley, over one hundred large columns had been produced for Britain, Germany and the USA. Cipollino produces sound, loadbearing monolithic columns, as can be seen in the Cathedral. But it also has another quality. Consecutive slabs from a block can be opened out or ‘book-matched’ to form a continuous and attractive pattern. Cipollino used in this way can be seen in both Santa Sophia in Istanbul and St Mark’s in Venice, but the wealth of Cipollino in the Cathedral has produced probably the best examples of this technique in Britain. These can be seen all around the Cathedral, as on the piers of the nave, in the transepts and bridges above them and on the walls of St Joseph’s Chapel.
In early 1956 it was decided that the nave should be clad with marble, including Cipollino, in accordance with the original plans of the Cathedral’s Architect, John Francis Bentley. The firm of Farmer and Brindley was no more and it was Mr Whitehead of John Whitehead and Sons, accompanied by Aelred Bartlett, brother of Francis, the future Cathedral Administrator, who went to Evia to choose the marble. Whiteheads were satisfied with readily available Cipollino with straight, parallel lines. Aelred, however, wanted irregular waves and undulating patterns for opening out, and he insisted on the start of a new quarry face to achieve this. The attractive patterns provided by the Cipollino in the nave of our Cathedral today are the result.
Recent work – The gradine behind the High Altar which supports the crucifix and candlesticks
Wall cladding in St Joseph’s Chapel
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