Month: April 2025

Cathedral Senior Guide, Tom Fedorek, has embarked on a number of articles about stones of historic and special significance that have come to and are incorporated into the Cathedral. The Magna Carta Pedestal is the first of those articles. – RM

If you stand before the high altar of St. John the Divine and look slightly to the right, there is a credence table for chalices and other accessories used in the Eucharist. Supporting the table is a shaft of three roundish stones. They are Caen stone, a light-colored, fine-grained limestone quarried in northwestern France since Roman times and used to build churches in southern England, including Canterbury Cathedral. 

The three stones were cut more than eight hundred years ago. How did they come to be at the cathedral, and why?

The Magna Carta

The shaft of stones is known as the Magna Carta Pedestal. The surrounding inscription reads:

The adjoining shaft was once a part of the high altar of the Abbey of Bury St. Edmund upon which on November 20, 1214 the barons swore fealty to each other in wresting the Great Charter from King John. It is placed here as a symbol of the political traditions, laws, and liberties which is the inheritance of the English-speaking commonwealths throughout the world.

The abbey church where the barons swore their oath was one of the largest in England with a length of five hundred feet, constructed between 1080 and 1200. It housed the shrine of St. Edmund, a ninth-century king of East Anglia martyred by invading Danes. In 1539, the church and other abbey buildings were systematically destroyed during Henry VIII’s dissolution of monasteries.

The account of the English barons swearing the oath upon the altar comes from the chronicle of Roger of Wendover, a monk at the abbey. In 1214, the barons gathered there to discuss their grievances against King John under the guise of a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Edmund. Roger’s chronicle states:

They all swore on the great altar that, if the king refused to grant those liberties and laws, they themselves would withdraw their allegiance to him, and make war on him, till he should, by charter under his own seal, confirm to them everything they required; and finally it was unanimously agreed that, after Christmas, they should all go together to the king and demand the confirmation of the aforesaid liberties to them.

The barons met with the tyrannical King John at Runnymede on June 15, 1215. There the king agreed to the terms of the Great Charter (Magna Carta) that had been drafted in large part by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton. The Magna Carta and its later revisions became the foundation of English law and government. Fundamental rights granted by the charter, such as consent to taxation, protection from search and seizure, and trial by peers, were later enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Eleanor Roosevelt called “the international Magna Carta for all men everywhere.” 

The Marquess of Bristol

An old cathedral guidebook says of the stones: “They were given to the Cathedral in 1922, with the consent of the Abbey authorities, by the Marquis of Bristol through Dr. Raphael Constantian of New York.”

Eight men have held the title of Marquess of Bristol over the past two centuries (“Marquess” is the British spelling of “Marquis). All have been members of the Hervey family (pronounced “Harvey”). The family has deep roots in Bury St. Edmunds and the surrounding region. As long ago as the seventeenth century, Herveys were members of Parliament for Bury St. Edmunds. The region encompassing Bury and the abbey’s vast land holdings are known as the Liberty of St. Edmund. In 1806, Frederick Hervey, the 1^st Marquess of Bristol, became Hereditary High Steward of the Liberty of St. Edmund and ever since, his successors have had this ceremonial role.

The Marquess who gifted the stones to the cathedral was Frederick William Fane Hervey (1863-1951), the 4^th Marquess, also known as Lord Bristol. We see him here in the uniform of a rear admiral in the Royal Navy, where he served from 1877 to 1911.

According to a report in the Bury Free Press (July 8, 1922): 

In July 1921 Lord Bristol’s Agent selected three small stones from the High Altar site, one of which bore traces of carving which showed it to be from a Gothic structure. These were packed into a wooden box by the Agent and sent to Liverpool and they subsequently arrived in New York and have been built into the Cathedral there.

The report explains that the stones were requested by Raphael Constantian, who visited Bury St. Edmunds in 1921 for the specific purpose of acquiring altar stones to be incorporated into the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Once the stones were received in New York, Constantian responded to the Marquess:

The observance of Magna Charter Day in this country is a very significant thing. It is part of that coming to a better understanding between the Mother Country and America which is so much desired by all lovers of peace, to say nothing about all else that such a better understanding would bring in its train. We look back upon our visit to your old city with great pleasure.

Raphael Constantian

Raphael Constantian’s main connection to the cathedral appears to have been through his business, Obelisk Waterproofing Company.

Obelisk owned a technology for waterproofing stone buildings by coating the stone with paraffin wax. The technique was invented in England by Robert Caffall, who brought it to the United States.  He won renown by applying it to Cleopatra’s Needle, the ancient Egyptian obelisk in Central Park. Hence the company’s name.

Constantian was born in Armenia and trained as medical doctor in Edinburgh before emigrating to America. He became an executive at Obelisk after a chance meeting with Caffall’s son. The exact date that Obelisk began working for St. John the Divine is unclear – one source puts it in 1909 – but it was still doing so in 1925, as seen in an advertisement from that year.

His second connection to the cathedral was through William Thomas Manning and their shared concern for the welfare of Armenian Christians during the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I. As president of the Armenia-America Society, Constantian participated in drafting appeals to the U.S. government. Manning, then the rector of Trinity Church, was also outspoken on the issue. In 1920, they both spoke at a rally for a free Armenia held at the cathedral’s Synod House.

A third connection is Constantian’s professional relationship with Cornelius Wickersham, who steered Obelisk into some lucrative assignments. Cornelius was the son of George Woodward Wickersham, a prominent New York attorney who had served as Attorney General in the administration of William Howard Taft. The elder Wickersham was an active Episcopal layman – a vestryman of St. George’s Church, a friend and admirer of Manning, and a cathedral trustee involved with the fund-raising campaign for the nave. His grandson, George W. Wickersham II, would later be installed as a canon of the cathedral.

It is unclear if the idea for a Magna Carta Pedestal originated with Constantian, but he was clearly the principal actor in making the idea a reality. He is presumed to have provided the funding, as well, perhaps in gratitude for Manning’s advocacy for the cause of a free Armenia, or as a good will gesture towards a longtime customer of his company.

Magna Carta Day

During Manning’s episcopate, the cathedral conducted a special service annually on Magna Carta Day, June 15, or the Sunday following. He was an Englishman by birth, a native of Northampton. The commemoration of the document that was the foundation for so many of the liberties enjoyed by both Britons and Americans had a deep meaning for him.

When the Magna Carta Pedestal was dedicated on Sunday, June 18, 1922, George Wickersham spoke at the service of the document’s continuing relevance:

The greater freedom from oppression which the English-speaking peoples of the world have enjoyed over all other peoples has been because from the thirteenth century to the present time they have held fast to the guiding principles embodied in the charter of John. Today they are expressed in the written Constitution of the American Commonwealth as limitations imposed by the people upon their government … 

So let us be thankful for the vision of liberty which the men of 1215 possessed and rejoice in the stable institutions of our day by means of which the aspirations of Runnymede have become the accepted liberties of the free English-speaking commonwealths of the twentieth century.

The phrase “English-speaking commonwealths” also appears in the pedestal’s inscription, suggesting that Wickersham participated in drafting it.

The 1941 observance of Magna Carta Day must have been fraught with emotion for the bishop. Only a few weeks earlier, the Luftwaffe had paused the Blitz, the eight-month campaign of incessant nighttime bombing of English cities that had left more than 40,000 civilians dead and more than two million homes destroyed or damaged. More than 3,000 British aviators had died defending their country. St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and the Houses of Parliament had been bombed. Coventry Cathedral had been destroyed.

After leading a solemn procession to the Magna Carta Pedestal, the bishop read from the inscription: “It is placed here as a symbol of the community of political tradition, laws, and liberties, which is the inheritance of the English-speaking commonwealths throughout the world.” 

Placing his hand on the shaft, he continued: “In the presence of God and by this time-honored stone we swear anew our loyalty to the free gospel of Christ. With God’s assistance we will safeguard our liberties and transmit them unsullied to the generations yet unborn.”

My sincere thanks to John Saunders, Adrian Tindall, and Patricia Mackie of the Bury Past & Present Society for tracking down the information about the acquisition of the stones. 

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Sources: Giles, J.A. (translator). Roger of Wendover’s Flowers of History (London: H.G. Bohn, 1892) ● Hall, Edward H. A Guide to the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, 15^th ed., 1950 ● Jones, Dan. Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty (New York: Viking, 2014) ● Wright, Milton. “Staying the hand of time,” Scientific American, August, 1931 ● “Manning would re-open war to free Armenia,” New York Times, March 1, 1920 ● “Cathedral service for Magna Carta,” New York Times, June 19, 1922 ● “Magna Carta Day held at St. John’s,” New York Times, June 16, 1941 ● “The Marquess of Bristol” (obituary), Times of London, October 25, 1951 ● Bury Free Press, July 8, 1922.

For over a decade, I documented the crew at the Stoneyard at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine. I always stayed behind the camera, capturing the work done by the skilled apprentices, artisans and laborers who created extraordinary works in stone and started to build a tower.

As I began digitizing my slides and negatives 12 years ago, I realized I had scant few images of myself to show – a self-portrait, the back of my head while I was photographing on the tower and a single photo of me photographing a stone carver and his work.

Recently, while also editing and digitizing a few boxes of slides and prints from the Cathedral archives, I came across a treasure trove of images capturing me working on the tower and photographing daily events during the building phase of the 1980s and early 1990s. I found these images in folders organized by Barbara C. Timken, an architectural historian, who was the Stoneyard Institute coordinator and Director of Educational Programs from 1986 – 1988.

Perhaps this is a good time to reflect on my time documenting such a magical era at the Cathedral.

The Beginning

I first read about the Stoneyard Institute from a Daily News article, and I was attracted to the idea of the medieval traditions of stonecutting coming to life in the City. In the pre-email days, I wrote to Dean James Parks Morton who invited me to come by for a meeting. Sitting in his huge cluttered office, its every surface covered with artwork and papers, I was in awe. I explained that I wanted to make a record of this project and he essentially told me “it’s yours.”

It’s Yours

– James Parks Morton

At the time, I worked full time as a photographer for Gannett Newspapers,  but a crazy schedule of days, nights and weekends allowed me to stop by the Stoneyard for an hour or two before going in for a night shift, or spend most of the weekday if I was working the weekend. It also helped that I lived on Cathedral Parkway, so I was only a few blocks away from the Stoneyard.

My responsibility on this project, as I saw it, was to record the work in the most objective way. Stay behind the camera and let the work unfold. In a very short time Jose Tapía, James Jamerson, Arlene “Poni” Baptiste and Tim Smith, among others, would totally forget I was there and I could capture true candid moments while they worked.  I also learned more about them since I started coming by regularly with many friendships developing, and many remaining to this day. I remember lunch at Tom’s Restaurant with Cynie Linton, Halloween parties at The Deanery, summer barbeques featuring Sylvia’s fried chicken and crying at Ruben Gibson’s funeral.

Dedication of the South Tower

Most of the time, I could visit the Stoneyard, shoot a few rolls of film and move on. However, other times I had to come up with a plan to photograph a special event.

The first major occasion was the tower dedication on Sept. 29, 1982, when the cornerstone of St. Paul’s tower was set and blessed by Bishop Paul Moore. I had to assess the logistics of photographing from one of two vantage points – Amsterdam House that faced the Cathedral or from the Cathedral tower. Where would I get the best shots of Philippe Petit walking across Amsterdam Avenue on a high wire since I couldn’t be in two places at once…or could I?

I checked the roof of Amsterdam House and saw that Philippe’s wire was set and there would be a dramatic view of him walking with the Cathedral in the background. I also realized the more important images – the actual blessing of the cornerstone and capturing the expressions on Philippe’s face — could only be done from the tower side. Time was tight so I left a camera on a tripod with an external shutter on the roof of Amsterdam House and asked a photographer next to me if she would hit the button a few times when Philippe started his walk. A chance I had to take, I felt, as I raced across the street and to the top of the St. Paul’s tower before the ceremony began. 

Clearly, I was at the right spot to capture a jubilant Philippe kneeling on the wire and raising his hand in a dramatic moment. From there I could easily turn around and record the setting and blessing of the first stone on the narrow space in front of the cornerstone. At one point, while Philippe was crossing Amsterdam Avenue, I must have blocked a photo Master Mason Stephen Boyle was trying to take. Instead of a nice pic of Philippe walking across on the wire, Stephen wound up with a photo of the back of my head with Philippe seemingly off in the distance. Stephen kindly gave me his photo as a souvenir, which I have added to my digital archive.

After the ceremony, I returned to Amsterdam House to retrieve my camera. Once the slide film was processed, I saw that the photographer had indeed pushed the shutter a few times and I had a spectacular image of Philippe walking toward the Cathedral, suspended over 100 feet above Amsterdam Avenue. I was equally surprised (and delighted) to get a call the next day from Newsweek magazine which published my photo. I also had a front-page photo and a few others in the Gannett newspaper, The Journal News.

The Bell Tower

Another scheduled event that required careful planning was the bell frame installation, which occurred over the weekend of September 3-4, 1988. I had scoped out a few nearby buildings where I could access the roofs to get different angles as the steel I-beams were hoisted from a street level crane to the top of the tower. I spent the better part of the weekend on the street, up on the tower and on nearby rooftops to record the moment. 

Once again, Stephen Boyle was on the tower that weekend with his camera and he managed to grab a photo of me walking around the limestone blocks as the steelworkers bolted the I-beams into place. Another photo for my collection.

My battered Domke bag was crammed with the usual array of Nikon equipment but on occasion, I had to add some special tools to get the job done – ultra wide-angle lenses and cameras and perceptive control (PC) lenses. 

Light and Shadow

I loved working with light and shadows to capture progress photos of the Cathedral façade as the tower began to rise. To keep the lines straight and undistorted I used a PC lens that enabled me to shift the axis of the lens to keep architectural lines straight and not tilting at awkward angles. The result was beautiful images as the setting sun cast moody shadows on the West front with the tower rising into a deep blue sky. 

Photographing on the tower was a challenge mainly because there was so little room to back up, and I certainly did not want to take one step too many off the wooden planks surrounding the stonework. I sometimes needed the help of ultra-wide and full-frame fisheye lenses to get sufficient distance between the subjects – the stone setters — and me as they were setting the stones. This was especially true while I photographed the tower crew working on the string course. I literally had to crouch low on a wooden plank off the side of the tower to show the bizarre yet beautiful faces and elaborately carved foliage as the masons set the stones into place. 

As I mentioned, until recently I had one photo of me photographing at the Stoneyard. It was a small Kodak print and I could not recall who gave it to me. While scanning a folder from Barbara C. Timken marked “People,” I found the original slide and a few others. Her image shows me photographing D’Ellis “Jeep” Kincannon’s St. Phoebe apex gablet finial, with Jeep also photographing his stone from a different angle.

Barbara also recorded images tracing the carving as it was delivered to the tower and then set into place. Along the way, Barbara turned her camera in my direction a few times, so now I had some new photographs of my working on the tower. 

Barbara was on the scene with her camera another time, when I was setting up a group photo of the Stoneyard crew and the summer architectural program on the tower. I had to climb over the scaffolding and out onto the edge of the planks, to get the angle I needed. That memory came back in a jolt when I found another of Barbara’s many folders with images she had captured that day. Not only did she have photos of me holding onto the scaffold with one hand as I directed people to get closer, but the photo also showed the very short shorts I was wearing that day.

Work on the Tower Slowed

Gradually, things changed. Work slowed down on the tower as funding dried up and Dean Morton tried to keep things afloat with Cathedral Stoneworks. In addition, for me, a new job (Monday through Friday) and the birth of my son Evan left little time to photograph at the Stoneyard.

Within a few years, all work had stopped and the rusting hulk of the scaffold enveloped the stump of a tower. Many years later, the scaffold and upright bell frame beams came down — a clear indication there would be no more work on the tower in my lifetime. My dream of photographing the last pinnacle set in place would never happen.

My body of work – several hundred rolls of films and slides (in the pre-digital age) – languished on a bookshelf until I found myself out of work in 2013. The down time gave me the opportunity to put my collection in order and complete the job I had started decades earlier by putting everything in digital form. As a photojournalist, I knew the job was more than gathering a series of photographs together – I had to tell a complete story with each image. Clear captions with accurate details were my mantra, and I give special thanks to Stephen Boyle for his never-ending patience as I bombarded him with questions on technical terms, types of stone and crewmembers’ names. With his help, my collection comes close to 2,000 images.

Things are coming full circle since I took my first photos at the Stoneyard 45 years ago. With my images, I have contributed numerous stories to Divine Stone and I have done a number of presentations on the magnificent carvings on the tower. (I even hope to turn that project into a children’s version.) Perhaps a book in the future?

Recalling my first meeting with Dean Morton, when I explained I wanted to make a record of this project, I see that I am still working on this task. Only now, I am pushing it forward for future generations.  

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