ochester. Dr. Anthony
Wilson Thorold was appointed to the See of Rochester in the same year,
and very soon lent his full energies to the work. In 1889 a meeting of
the chief parishioners was summoned to inaugurate the scheme, and a
subscription list was at once opened, headed by his Lordship with
L1,000. An appeal to the public was immediately issued, and was
generously responded to by great and small. Among the larger donations
may be mentioned the sum of L5,000 from Lord Llangattock, L2,000 from
Messrs. Barclay, Perkins and Co., with several gifts of L1,000 each
from Sir Frederick Wigan and others. These large amounts were
supplemented by the equally acceptable offerings of humbler people,
for which collections were made at numerous churches within and
without the diocese. Perhaps the most important of these, in a money
sense, was that at a Masonic Service, held in the Collegiate Church
itself on Ascension Day, which yielded over L2,000. On 3rd November,
Bishop Thorold preached at St. Saviour's on behalf of the fund, and in
the same month Sir Arthur Blomfield was chosen as architect for the
restoration. The miserable structure of 1839 was at once swept away,
and on 24th July, 1890, King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, laid
the foundation stone of the new nave. It was completed within seven
years by Messrs. T.F. Rider and Sons after the design of Sir Arthur
Blomfield. Guided throughout by the remains of the old work, and many
existing drawings of the ancient nave, as a whole, and in its separate
details, the architect has succeeded in a practical reproduction of
the original building.[12] The erection, with other reparatory work,
was accomplished at a cost of over L40,000; but he who had initiated
it was not spared to witness its completion. Shortly after its
commencement, Bishop Thorold was transferred from Rochester to
Winchester, and died in the summer of 1895.

His successor in the See of Rochester, Dr. Randall Thomas Davidson
(appointed in 1891), did not allow the work to flag under his
administration, which came to an end with the death of Dr. Thorold in
1895. The episcopal changes then made resulted in the translation of
Dr. Davidson to the See of Winchester, and the appointment of Dr.
Edward Stuart Talbot to Rochester. By a happy coincidence, the parish
church at Leeds, from which he was transferred, bore the same
dedication as that of the Collegiate Church whose completion it was
his good fortune to celebra