ABSTRACT
The first Congress of the British Archaeological Association in 1844 provided would-be architectural historian Robert Willis with an audience for his research, whilst Canterbury cathedral offered an ideal vehicle for his nascent method. This essay takes as a case study the lost choir of Archbishop Anselm, whose appearance Willis was the first to try to reconstruct, in order to explore his evaluation and use of archaeological and literary evidence. Through re-examination of the clues offered by the fabric, it is demonstrated that Willis misinterpreted some evidence and ignored other clues. This offers the opportunity to reassess Willis’s contribution in terms of its relationship with earlier scholarship and its reception by his contemporaries, as well as suggesting the value for present-day architectural historians of continued engagement with antiquarian scholarship, in order to understand the building as both a physical and an intellectual construction.
