Reredos – The superstructure at the back of an altar containing images. Reredoses – plural in case you were wondering. A reredos is a decorative screen above and behind the high altar. The reredos was structurally separate from the altar ( as compared to retables, a similar paneled, decorative screen attached to the altar back). Highly carved stone or wood panels provide niches for statues and the religious iconography.
Listening to a Cathedral presentation recently, an audience member asked what happened to the reredos. The answer given was that the statues were retained and kept (they are now in the crypt), but the reredos was plaster and was removed.
It was indeed not plaster but of a very fine stone called Pierre de Lens, a French limestone from the quarry in Mouleon, France. This creamy white Oolitic limestone has a compact grain structure very suitable for carving and sculpture. We even have the names of the architectural stone cutters that did the work. The firm of Barr, Thaw & Fraser employed Charles Jensen, J.G. H. Hamilton, C. Price, W. T. Scott, L.Lentelli and O. Burdett on the Cathedral’s ornamental stonework during this period. The reredos was underway in 1909.
After the entire length of the Cathedral was opened in 1941, the scale of the reredos was considered inappropriate. If Heins and Lafarge’s plan for the Cathedral would have been realized it may not have been considered so. Cram’s nave was extended 100 feet longer than Heins and LaFarge’s design. Around 1945, Canon Edward West led a movement to remove the reredos and Bishop Manning agreed.
The statues were moved to the crypt and the stone screen was demolished.
Now an interesting story emerges. During the early 1980s, when the Stoneyard Institute was at work on the southwest tower, St. Paul’s tower, a young apprentice stonecarver was taken with a pile of stone at the east end of the field adjacent to the north transept. This pile was the remains of the reredos. How they stayed on the Cathedral grounds for almost 40 years is a mystery. Joseph Kincannon took a piece to carve. He researched and began to carve a misericord. These have been used since the 11th century. It is a small wooden ledge, often intricately carved, on the underside of a hinged church stall seat. It acts as a subtle support for monks or clergy to lean against while standing during long liturgical services.
Joseph Kincannon presented this misericord to his good friend and colleague, Master Mason Stephen Boyle. While still an apprentice carver, Kincannon considered it a breakthrough carving. He went on to be head carver and is now Chair of Stone Carving, teaching the next generation at the American College of Building Arts.
The misericord may be all that is left of the early reredos.
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- Previous Divine Stone story “Where Did The Reredos Go”