This many-faceted study of Westminster Abbey Chapter House, edited by our Fellows Warwick Rodwell and Richard Mortimer leading a cast including other illustrious Fellows, derives from the Society's Tercentenary Symposium, held in July 2008, which ‘brought together scholars who had been working on various aspects of Westminster and its chapter house for a decade or more’ (p xii). As a publication it provides both variety and insight into the complex history of this building, yet its scholarship was surely enriched by the coming together of a range of expertise at that moment in time. The quest for further investigation emerges from a number of these papers, including catalogue-like data inviting, for example, ‘further analysis’ of the tile inscriptions (pp 231, 233).

These days, the presentation of the chapter house at Westminster Abbey, both through its description in the official publications of the Abbey and indeed as a physical presence, is of a medieval building largely unchanged from its earliest construction, even though its description on the website alludes to changes of use which this book explores. The implications of ‘having been a repository for government records’ or being ‘lavishly adorned with sculpture and wall paintings’ (Westminster Abbey website) are fully explored here. Though now restored to a medieval appearance, the scholarship of the fourteen chapters of this book demonstrates that any idea that the chapter house had an unchanging role and a fabric undamaged over more than seven centuries is far from the truth.

Warwick Rodwell's opening overview chapter demonstrates the perilous history of the fabric, describing the morphology of the building today while revealing many instances of restoration, renewal, reconstruction and treatments which so often proved to be damaging, particularly to sculpture and painting. The significance of the chapter house undercroft, with its complex entrance passages, is helped by a series of plans and sections. Rodwell's summary, ‘the chapter house and its adjuncts have fulfilled a variety of functions and have undergone numerous alterations to accommodate these’ (p 1), provides a taste of the story of change which is told throughout the volume.

Barbara Harvey reminds us that this was not the first chapter house at Westminster, and the dismantling of Edward the Confessor's original chapter house (p 102; also p 87) is materially evoked by the inner vestibule door, which is here dated to the period of the Confessor's first building (door 1, p 255). The remarkable survival of the tiled floor was only due to the insertion of a wooden floor, part of the complete refitting of the space for its role as a repository for public records. Even the sculpture of the inner portal from the main chamber as now presented is an assemblage of original works (Gabriel, the Virgin and censing angels, uncovered by Scott, p 175) with a new (1860s) overwhelming figure of Christ (fig 142, p 153). The benefits and pitfalls of change and ‘restoration’ stand side by side.

Elizabeth Hallam Smith's absorbing account of the changes of use within the Chapter House – from chapter house treasury to a branch of the Public Record Office – opens with George Gilbert Scott's condemnation of the ‘wreck’ which resulted when ‘it was made over to the tender mercies of some barbarian, who fitted it up for the records, with studious regard to concealment or destruction of its architectural beauties’ (p 124). Yet this account demonstrates the loss of ‘all its Georgian accretions’ (p 137) which are intriguingly illustrated through plans and engravings of the elaborate carpentry of the interior. Fitted out with inner floors, stairs, bookcases and cupboards, almost all the features that we now admire of the original appearance of the chapter house were then hidden.

The ‘drastic’ Victorian restoration, however, enabled the discovery of that tiled floor and revealed the three tiers of seats and steps, the arcade and the wall paintings that marked its use as a meeting place for the monks of St Peter's Abbey: to read daily a chapter of the rule of St Benedict, to manage necessary monastic business and to undertake the correction of faults (Chapter 6, pp 102, 104). Harvey accepts David Carpenter's statement that ‘Henry iii built the chapter house for his own use as well as that of the monks’, although she notes that ‘its fundamental design reflects its monastic purpose’ (p 102). This claim is entirely borne out by architectural description, of the ‘uniquely ambitious fusion of contemporary English and French ideas’ (Christopher Wilson, Chapter 3) and the comparative analysis of near-contemporary chapter houses by Warwick Rodwell (Chapter 4). The evidence that ‘it was planned from the start as a place where king and councils might meet to discuss the business of the realm’ (Carpenter, Chapter 2) includes documented payments for the installation of lecterns at the order of the king. But the layout of the space is uncompromisingly in accordance with monastic requirements. The incorporation of the arms of England in the floor tiles of its remarkable pavement is clearly significant, even though Laurence Keen suggests that these designs ‘of the very highest quality’ are ‘tiles left over from other royal works in the Palace of Westminster’ (p 209). Keen's detailed analysis of the layout of this pavement, its inscriptions and iconography, provides new understanding of this remarkable survival: ‘the most important surviving inlaid tiled-floor in Europe’ (p 209).

This rich exposition of the chapter house, including chapters on the Scott restoration of the 1860s, the portal sculpture, the wall painting, including iconography and technical analysis, pays tribute throughout to the importance of antiquarian appreciation of this building. In addition to the text, much can be best understood by examination of the numerous fine illustrations, many of which are early drawings or plans, providing the evidence with which to reconstruct this complex history.