Salisbury Cathedral

The Cathedral completely dominates the town of Salisbury. It's hard to imagine how a town so small could support a cathedral so huge, but I suppose without it the tourism industry would be a lot smaller, since there are plenty of other towns in the area to use as a base for moving on to Stonehenge. And anyway, without the cathedral, the history of the area would have been a lot different.

When the cathedral was originally built over 700 years ago (I think it just celebrated its 750th anniversary?) it did not have the gigantic spire on the top, but that was added in almost as soon as cathedral construction finished. The plan is not the usual cross shape but a Lorraine cross (has two transecting parts), which was interesting to see.

When first laying the foundations, they dug some four feet into the ground, hit the watertable, and laid foundations right on top. Of course in modern times they would have been able to get around the watertable, but not in the 13th century. The roof was originally a very rounded shape, but it was discovered later that the distribution of weight was pushing the tops of the walls outwards, and so the roof was reshaped from the inside to make a taller, pointier shape. On the Tower Tour I took, we actually went inside the roof, and saw the supporting beams. All were wood, but required wood of such thickness as cannot be bent, so the supports are cut out of massive branches--some a lot curvier than others. Also in the space above the arches lies the pipes for the sprinker system, in case a fire should hit the cathedral. Another English cathedral had a fire and the water became trapped in each dip between the arches, and the resulting weight brought the roof down. To avoid a similar fate, valves were installed at the bottom of the ones in the Salisbury Cathedral, which open if the sprinkler system turns on.

The spire itself was added on after the rest of the cathedral was finished. It actually lies off-center, as we saw inside the spire: the supporting cross beams met several feet along a diagonal in the square "tower" section, and of the balconies at the halfway-point up on the spire, one was extremely narrow and its opposite was much wider. The weight of the spire lies more heavily on the columns on the nave side of the tower, and down there one can see the half a foot or so that this side has shifted into the foundations.
Construction of the cathedral and the spire primarily relied on windlasses... and there was one actually inside the spire, original. It was so well-balanced that a nudge with one finger set the wheel moving, no need to act as a human hamster.

Going up into the spire was amazing. We saw the clock that operates the bells... I could have watched that thing run all day! there is no face to the clock, just a system of gears that lifts levers every quarter-hour to the same chimes as recognised from Big Ben. When the lever is lifted, it pulls down on the rope attached to the bell above. We watched the clock when it rang the hour, then watched the bells on the quarter-hour and the half-hour, then the clock again when the bells rang for evening prayer service.

The climb up into the spire involved a lot of narrow spiral staircases, so small I couldn't get half of my foot on them, most without handrails and made of stone. Up and up we climbed, and we could only actually go halfway--about 200 ft of the 400 ft spire. Above that only two can go at once, attached by harnesses to ropes and climbing a series of ladders connecting small platforms.

As mentioned before, the tour took us onto each of the four balconies, affording views of the cardinal directions. On a warmer day it would have been beautiful to behold. This day was below freezing, and the winds were 25-30 mph (they don't allow tours into the spire when the winds get over 80 mph).

The rest of the Salisbury Cathedral was of course fascinating. There was the original clock which rang the bells, dating no later than 1360, and is the oldest working clock in Britain--or anywhere, or something. A set of flags flown by the Wiltshire army regiments, the first two of which were about 200 years old and almost nonexistant, just a vague outline of a crown on what could have been fishing nets under other circumstances. The center of the nave had a Christmas Nativity scene, featuring the creepiest Holy Family and angels I have ever seen. The back stained glass window was dedicated to "Prisoners of Conscience", done in dark blue with scenes like the betrayal of Jesus by Judas.

But this was one of the most fascinating things I have ever seen..
Of the original Magna Carta copies, only four remain, and one of them is housed in Chapter House! Somehow the entire Magna Carta was squeezed onto a single piece of velium, about 18 in wide and 24 in long (my estimates). Of course it was completely unreadable... not because of poor condition (the condition was excellent) but because of the shorthand used to get it all onto that size. The document could have been almost anything.

Also while I was there an archaeological team was just beginning work excavating an area in the center of the nave, where a new fountain was to go. It's the sort of thing we learned about in Archaeology. Just before new construction can begin somewhere, they send in an arch team to excavate it and make sure that the building project won't destroy unknown evidence, and so rescue any artefacts before the work begins. Amazing to see that kind of work in progress.