Exeter Cathedral

Saturday 26 August 2023. We decided to go into the cathedral at Exeter and have a look around.

Cathedral Close usually, I imagine, is a haven of peace and tranquility but a drumming troupe were being very successful at destroying all of that very loudly and with a great deal of repetition of rhythm, something akin to rhythm, and sometimes (most of the time) just general noisome row.

A craft market was taking place before the door of the cathedral with all sorts of home-made articles from jewellery, to soap, artwork, and beer.

Quite a large number of statues still stand in their niches on the West front of the cathedral. The cathedral was founded in 1050 CE and rebuilt by the Normans whose twin towers still exist. Apart from these and most of the external walls the cathedral was rebuilt again during the late 13th and 14th centuries.

We paid to go inside, but the chancel area and most of the south aisle were roped off due to restoration work. The price was modest but whether that was because of the works restricting access or their usual price I'm not sure. There were no signs to say one way or the other. Consequently you were left feeling a little aggrieved as the chancel with its choirstalls and (especially here in Exeter) the misericords are usually the place to find the best carvings and woodwork. From the back of the nave, though, you get a spectacular view.

Exeter has the longest uninterrupted medieval vaulted ceiling in the world. It is stunning. Moreover, it is well lit by the windows the absence of which can leave many cathedral roofs in shadowy darkness. Henrietta Anne of England, the youngest daughter of King Charles I, was baptised here in 1644.

The Martyrs' Pulpit towards the chancel end of the nave. Carved in the 1870s in sandstone, it has six panels depicting martryrs who have died for their faith. It is dedicated to Bishop John Coleridge Patteson, who only a few years prior to this pulpit being made had been killed in 1871 by the islanders of Nukapu in the Soloman Isles.

Without being judgemental, I'll just point out that being a missionary requires one to persuade a population that the god or gods they have worshipped for centuries if not longer are either worthless or are the same as yours anyway and that your way of worshipping is better than theirs. You won't be able to provide any actual proof of this. Hardly surprising that they might take a bit of umbrage really. And indeed the panel depicting him shows his body being placed into a canoe by three natives, to be returned to his ship. Not the act of a people who killed for fun...

The screen separates the nave from the chancel, where the crossing would be if the cathedral had a central tower. Above it is the organ. The keyboards are on the other side to that which we see here and there is a minstrel's gallery with carved angels playing musical instruments.

The Astronomical Clock has a bottom dial dating from 1484 whilst the upper dial showing the minutes was added in 1760.

At the bottom of the door below the clock is a small round hole dating from the early 1600s. It allowed the Bishop's cat to get behind to chase out (let's be optimistic) the rodents that were attracted to the animal fat with which the clock was lubricated!

The monument to Valentine Carey who, following a spell as Dean of St Pauls in London, was Bishop of Exeter from 1621 to his death in 1626. He had returned to London to die and was buried in St Pauls. Any monument he had there did not survive the Great Fire of London in 1666.

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Beverley Minster

Tuesday 6 June 2023. Staying for a few days in Bridlington, we caught the 121 bus service from Bridlington to Beverley to have a look at the Minster. Officially it is the Parish Church of St John and Saint Martin. It was originally a Collegiate Church - it is not a cathedral.

The journey took just over an hour and from Beverley bus station it was a short walk to the Minster, with plenty of signposts pointing the way. It has an ancient past. St John of Beverley was Archbishop of York from 706 to c714 and had founded a monastery at Beverley c700. He was canonised as a saint in 1037 - still in Saxon times - and somewhat incredibly his remains still lie beneath the nave of the present church. The Saint John of the church's name is, however, St John the Baptist - not it's own saint.

The original church was destroyed c850 perhaps, if not probably, by Vikings. It was rebuilt and re-endowed by England's first king, King Athelstan, grandson of King Alfred the Great in the first half of the 10th century. It was rebuilt again in stone following the canonisation of the saint, a high stone tower was added several years before the Norman Conquest and the Minster became a place of pilgrimage for worshippers wishing to see and pray at the shrine of St John of Beverley.

An enclosed wooden staircase. I don't know any other details I'm afraid, it may have led to the organ or to somewhere else. I've done searches for it but they all lead to a stone spiral staircase for going up the towers or to an interior staircase set into the internal wall of the North Choir Aisle which led to a now demolished Chapter House. If you know, please leave a comment.

There are some fascinating carvings, both in stone and wood. Whilst we have a look at some of these I'll just carry on with the history a bit.

Nothing remains of the Saxon churches now. A major fire in 1188 left the Minster in need of a total rebuild and the earliest work in the present church dates from this time.

Work to complete the Minster took several hundreds of years. There were a few hiccups along the way. The collapse of a new lantern tower required parts of the building to be started again. The Black Death halted work around 1348 until towards the end of the century.

The Nave was completed by c1400 and the west twin towers were built. It is said that they were the inspiration for the towers of Westminster Abbey.

A bit of stone sculpture instead of wood. Again, I've no idea who this lady represents. Neither can I work out from her expression whether she is in rapt prayer or looking up at her husband and thinking "thou great numpty!"

Standing towards the western end of the southern aisle of the Nave, these two statues flank a doorway. They were cast from lead in 1781 and depict King Athelstan on the left (would he really have dressed like that in the 900s?) and Saint John of Beverley on the right.

The fabulous font of Frosterley marble is a remarkable survivor of the earliest Norman church and dates from c1170. The wooden cover or canopy is 18th century.

Looking west from the back of the Nave towards the organ which was built by John Snetzler and set up in the Minster in 1769. The screen was carved by a local, James Elwell in 1880.

The West Front of the Minster is unusual for the number of statues it still contains. Many of our cathedrals lost theirs in those mirthless Puritanical times. Originally they would all have been bright with paint and gilding.

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Bridlington Priory

Monday 5 June 2023. Staying for a few days in Bridlington, we went for a look at the Priory.

Bridlington Priory was established as a monastery of Augustinian Canons Regular in 1113. It was built over the site of a former Saxon church and nunnery.

It held the earthly remains of John Twenge, otherwise known as St John of Bridlington. Born in the nearby village of Thwing in the year 1320, he joined the monks after studying at Oxford. He held several offices during his time there, serving as Prior for 17 years before his death in 1379. Several miracles have been attributed to him. He is supposed to have changed water to wine once and on another occasion he appeared to a group of 5 fishermen from Hartlepoole whose ship was in danger of being swamped in rough seas and he brought them safely to shore, whereupon they left the ship at the harbour and rushed off to the Priory to thank him. I'm being careful not to comment... Anyway he became the last Englishman to be canonised as a saint before Henry VIII split up from the Catholic Church.

There is an appliqué of twelve panels, depicting the history of the Priory. This is an embroidery technique, but with the panels in 3D rather than a flat embroidered surface like the Bayeux Tapestry for instance. Having survived the Dissolution and the destruction of some 3/4 of its buildings, it was lucky to survive its use as an arsenal just over 100 years later. Buildings and explosives do not tend to go well together...

The organ dates from 1889 by Belgian firm Anneessens and was originally a three-manual organ. It came complete with a spectacularly large low-toned pipe for Bottom-C, the reed being 32 feet long and the pipe two feet in diameter. Rebuilds were necessary at various times during the 20 century and it was fully restored and enlarged 2004-2006.

A mind-boggling pedal board - the most I've ever played was a 25-key two octave pedalboard on a Hammond organ whilst I was learning to play in the practice rooms at Swanns shop in Manchester during the early 1970s. An octave is 12 keys but the extra one was to allow a lowest note of low C and a high note of middle C.

The Priory plays host to a few other musicians too...

All that music has soothed this savage beast by the looks of it.

We found several of these little mice - the trademarks of Robert "Mouseman" Thompson.

The great west window brings our exploration to an end.

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Shrewsbury, St Mary's

St Mary's church at Shrewsbury in Shropshire is an ancient church but now a redundant one - which means it is no longer used for Christian Worship.

We visited in early December 2022 and, as always when I visit somewhere without researching it beforehand, I probably need to return at some point as there is a lot that I missed! It sits on a small railed island of grass and gravestones in the centre of Shrewsbury town. Without a wide angle lens I found it difficult to get a decent photograph of the exterior, but you can make out here that it is built of two different colours of sandstone: red and white.

A church has stood on this site since around 960 CE, a Royal Peculiar founded by King Edgar the Peaceful who reigned from 959-975 and kept under his own jurisdiction rather than under the diocese of Lichfield. The present church was built from the mid 12th century onwards, the original walls being replaced by arched aisles to either side of the nave and new walls created making the church wider.

The roof of the nave is of oak and carved with angels, birds and animals. It was carved and installed in the 15th century and survived the fall of the spire which crashed though it in 1894. The restoration was so successful that the only evidence of damage is some slight staining from the lime cement of the spire. It is rather dark inside the church though - I wasn't able to spot any evidence of this at all. The spire is England's third tallest spire at around 500 feet (154.2 metres).

There are other examples of carving to be found inside both in wood and stone. There was a few people inside looking round and a couple of people acting as helpers, more than as guides. We spoke with a lady who told us a little of the history of the church and was proud of the fact that Queen Elizabeth I had visited the church twice during her reign (1558-1602).

"Have you heard of Benbow?" she asked. "The Admiral?" I asked in return, a little surprised. I had assumed he came from somewhere down south for some reason, probably because of the pub in Penzance which featured in Treasure Island. However whilst Long John Silver may have been a fictional character, Vice Admiral John Benbow was a real officer of His Britannic Majesty's Royal Navy. He was born in Shrewsbury in 1653, joined the Navy at the age of 25 and had a distinguished career fighting against the French and pirates variously.

In August 1702 he was stationed in Jamaica and was involved in a battle with the French Admiral du Casse. This is a complicated tale - Benbow was deserted by some of his ships and their captains subsequently came to trial by court martial, but during the battle Benbow was struck in the leg by a chain shot. This would not just "break his leg" as some reports have it; it would absolutely shatter all of the bones in his leg and whilst he was able to attend the court martial of his rebellious captains, he died of his wounds at Port Royal, Jamaica on 4 November 1702.

There is another monument here which has a strange story behind it. Robert Cadman was a steeplejack, stuntsman and daredevil of the early 18th century. His favourite trick was to attach a rope to the top of a church tower and slide down it for vast distances, across rivers or castle courtyards wearing a wooden breastplate that had a groove for the rope. He did this successfully at Lincoln flying from a tower of the cathedral down to Castle Hill, at Dover, flying from the castle to the harbour, and at Newark from the church tower.

In 1739 he planned at Shrewsbury to slide from the spire of St Mary's down to Gay Meadow across the River Severn. Attaching one end of the rope to the spire, he then attached the other end to an anchor in the meadow. Then he climbed up the rope from the meadow all the way up to the top of the spire, performing tricks and feats of balancing as he went. Here he put on his wooden vest and lay down along the rope which nestled in the groove in his breastplate. On the way down the rope broke. He is buried here at St Mary's and a placque memorial can be found on the tower by the west door.

The real treasure of St Mary's is its glass. It has a collection of medieval glass from all over northern Europe. Sadly this is subject to more than its share of vandalism. One of the helpers told us this magnificent window had only recently had damage repaired when it was broken again to allow someone access to the church and who then broke another window from within to get out again...

When the sun is shining, as it was when we visited, the stained glass casts patterns of colour all over the lower levels of the church interior. This being December, there was a sale of Christmas cards for charities in the aisle of the church.

The organ has four manuals and dates from 1912. It is built into the crossing and under the organ we can see through the north transcept to St Nicholas' chapel which contains the church's only remaining plasterwork from the 13th century. Until the Puritans came along all the interior walls would have been plastered and painted. There is a balcony at the back of the church where a Puritan minister apparently cursed and harangued his congregation from behind so that they would face forward and concentrate on their prayers!

I spotted a face high up in the dim corner of the Trinity chapel above the grave of a Crusader. This was testing my camera to its limits. The photograph has been enhanced greatly in terms of brightness! There's a Green Man somewhere up in the roof, but I'm not exactly sure that this is it...

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Whalley St Mary and All Saints

Back in the 1980s I was writing regularly for a Lancashire-based magazine and had a series of articles called "John Burke's Curious Lancashire" that featured half a dozen or so images from around the county with a bit of text covering the sort of antiquities and rarities that most people would pass by without a thought.

This is the church of St Mary and All Saints at Whalley in the Ribble Valley. Already mentioned for its abbey ruins on these pages, Whalley also has an interesting church, built on the site of or as an enlargement of a Norman church of the 11th century which itself was built on the site of an even earlier Anglo-Saxon church mentioned in the Domesday Book. Remnants of both earlier churches stand in its churchyard and fragments that are built into its walls.

This is one of three Saxon crosses to be found in the sunshine close by the church door. You can also find them in rain, snow and fog (not as easily in fog...) but they do look better in sunshine and I was lucky on this visit!

Equally so on an earlier visit, this photograph dating from 1983 and one of several taken for the magazine work. It was rare for magazines to use colour photos in those days apart from on the cover. The Saxon crosses have lost the actual arms of the cross, but the surviving shafts have carvings placed there by stonemasons in the 10th or 11th century.

The current church was built mostly in the 13th century, the tower added in the 15th century and the south porch in 1844. Subsequent restorations and additions took place in the 1860s and in 1909. Inside, the stalls were carved in 1430 and came from the Abbey after the Dissolution. They have the name of the carver, Mr Eatough.

The octagonal chunky font of gritstone dates from the 15th century and has marks suggesting that a lock was fitted in the 16th century, quite possibly to stop the local witches from trying to steal the Holy Water. We are in Pendle country here...

Coming back out of the church I found this old stone coffin.

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