Salisbury Cathedral

Salisbury is one of England's most famous cathedrals. Building commenced in 1220 - late for an English cathedral, but we must remember that Salisbury grew only once the old hillfort city of Old Sarum was abandoned. The Norman cathedral at Old Sarum was built from 1075-1092.

The famous spire is England's tallest at 404 feet or 123 metres and leans around 27 inches from the vertical.

This is the oldest working clock in Europe. It was made in 1386 and originally installed in a bell tower that was demolished in 1798. It is still ticking away and the cathedral website informs us (and I love this!) that it has ticked more than 5 million times since it first started measuring the time! Actually it is probably two and a half million ticks and two and a half million tocks...

Despite never having been an abbey it has cloisters - not sure what it is about walking around a cloister but I always have to do it when visiting somewhere with one! And this is the largest cloister in England.

The great treasure of Salisbury is the best preserved copy of the original Magna Carta, agreed by King John at Runnymede on 15 June 1215 and which laid down the beginnings of English law, since copied around the world. Thirteen copies of the Magna Carta were made, only four of which still exist. Two are in the British Library and one lies at Lincoln within the castle. The one at Salisbury was taken originally to the cathedral at Old Sarum. It is written in extremely small writing on a single piece of parchment in Medieval Latin.

At Runnymede King John was urged to sign by his half brother, William Longspeé. A sculpture of this moment can be seen in the cathedral and William was buried there between two of the Nave pillars. In another wonderful bit of gossip, the cathedral website informs us that when his tomb was opened after many centuries there was a dead rat with traces of arsenic in it found lying inside his skull. A strange way to die, poisoned by a poisoned rat eating its way into your head - you'd have thought someone would have noticed and shooed it away... One possibility to be considered is that perhaps it was William who was poisoned and that the unfortunate rat chose the wrong head to eat into...

There are some fine carvings in the cathedral and the following photographs concentrate on them.

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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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Wookey Hole and Cheddar Gorge

Friday 23 February 1996. It's the last day of our holiday and we are heading for home today.

On the way north though, we'll stop a couple of times in Somerset. Our first stop is at Wookey Hole, where there is a large cave system that you can go through and also a fine collection of old amusement penny slot machines. The guide showing us around the caves was very funny. The fairground museum had some old roundabout or carousel carved animal figures.

The carvings included this carved but unpainted horse's head.

Then it was back to childhood with a flood of nostalgic recognition as we entered a couple of rooms filled with old penny slots. We bought a handful of big old copper pennies and lost ourselves in the 1950s and 60s, playing these machines which filled every seaside arcade before electrics started to replace mechanics.

You just can't beat a good old whirring sound and then the CHUNK-CHUNK-CHUNK as the reels of a one-armed bandit came to a stop, one after the other. The Beromat was a German-made machine and a staple of arcades for many years. And look! I won tuppence for a cherry on the first reel!

Then there were the games where an eye for the movement of the ball, a bit of skill and co-ordination, and a grasp of the Laws of Physics helped you win... or otherwise... Allwins, Payramid (featured here) and other machines where your pennies dropped and bounced off a series of pins whilst you tried to get one into a winning cup or slot.

Our pennies ran out - when was it ever any different? So we got back in the car, resigned to the fact that our holiday had come to an end. Or had it? "Come on, we'll drive down Cheddar Gorge and head that way towards the motorway."

It was deserted. And it was once again well below freezing point. We stopped - the only car in sight - and looked briefly into the cave opening but without being in the slightest bit tempted to go in to explore it. Those caves run for miles and can flood too, if water manages to stay in liquid form...

I'm not sure about inside the cave, but outside it was far too cold even for water to run down the cliff face and be able to reach the ground!

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