Showing posts with label salisbury. Show all posts
Showing posts with label salisbury. Show all posts
Sunday, 26 October 2014
That is All You Need to Know
That is All You Need to Know trailer
We were in Salisbury again last week, to see That is All You Need to Know, a production by Idle Motion at Salisbury Arts Centre telling the story of the Bletchley Park codebreakers.
Tuesday, 7 October 2014
Salisbury tower explained
Sunday, 22 July 2012
The Spire (part 3)
Continuation of The Spire (part 2) concerning the Salisbury Cathedral Tower Tour.
And so, from the highest visitable level at the top of the tower, the base of the spire, there are doors that take you out to balconies on the faces of the tower.
It's a spectacular view in itself, but with also the meanderings through the innards of the cathedral to get to it, this is the best £10 I've spent for a long time. I cannot recommend it enough. The link again as it's strongly advisable to book in advance: Salisbury Cathedral Tower Tours.
- Ray
And so, from the highest visitable level at the top of the tower, the base of the spire, there are doors that take you out to balconies on the faces of the tower.
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| Looking up the spire |
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| West view, looking down on nave roof |
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| North view, looking over cathedral green |
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| South view - Chapter House, which stores a Magna Carta copy |
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| South view over Cloister |
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| East view: over Bishop Wordsworth School to New Forest in the distance |
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| South view - Salisbury Cathedral School |
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| North view - cathedral close and Salisbury centre |
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| North view - looking north-west |
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| West view - looking south-west |
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| East view - looking down |
- Ray
The Spire (part 2)
Continuation of The Spire (part 1) concerning the Salisbury Cathedral Tower Tour.
From the 'first floor' level of the gallery above the nave, you go up another stone spiral staircase and along a passageway (which has a peek out of an east-facing door toward the tower where you're heading).
You then come out among the timbered supports of the main roof space of the western nave.
You're above the vaulted roof of the nave: pits like this one correspond to the columns supporting the vaults.
A walkway then takes you eastward ...
... and through a door to the base of the tower, which supports the spire (both bolt-ons added in the 1300s).
At this point, it starts getting scary. The weight of the whole structure (6500 tonnes) was at the edge of the envelope of design feasibility, and the whole of the box-shaped tower is braced by a spidery mess of internal metal beams and ties added over the centuries. At this level, you're on top of the false ceiling that hides these necessary but unaesthetic ties from being seen from the cathedral floor below.
This level also contains the timing mechanism for the bells above.
At this level, there's a caged wooden spiral staircase ...
... which takes you up to a mezzanine gallery level with interesting graffiti, both ancient and modern (at one time the cathedral authorities, as a fundraising angle, allowed visitors to make their own graffiti and memorial inscriptions on the window panes).
From this level, you can also see down, and up to the belfry floor.
From this level, an ancient and rather narrow stone spiral staircase takes you up to the belfry.
The tours are timed to arrive here a few minutes before the bells strike the hour. I had a very weird experience here. The bells are not terribly loud - it's not like the Hunchback of Notre Dame - but there was something about the large bell striking that had for me a powerful emotional effect. The sound decays for over 30 seconds - a rich mix of overtones - and I found myself feeling unaccountably a bit tearful. I noticed a couple of others in the party seemed affected. I've read the theory that cathedrals evoked religious feelings through subsonic resonances. I wonder if this was what I experienced?
From the belfry, a second caged wooden spiral staircase takes you to the highest level accessible by visitors: the base of the spire. Here there's an ancient treadmill winch ...
... and the view upwards inside the spire, which is criss-crossed with partially mediaeval scaffolding. It's not as bright as this: it needed long exposures to get a decent image.
Continued in The Spire (part 3).
- Ray
From the 'first floor' level of the gallery above the nave, you go up another stone spiral staircase and along a passageway (which has a peek out of an east-facing door toward the tower where you're heading).
You then come out among the timbered supports of the main roof space of the western nave.
You're above the vaulted roof of the nave: pits like this one correspond to the columns supporting the vaults.
A walkway then takes you eastward ...
 |
| Looking back to western windows |
At this point, it starts getting scary. The weight of the whole structure (6500 tonnes) was at the edge of the envelope of design feasibility, and the whole of the box-shaped tower is braced by a spidery mess of internal metal beams and ties added over the centuries. At this level, you're on top of the false ceiling that hides these necessary but unaesthetic ties from being seen from the cathedral floor below.
This level also contains the timing mechanism for the bells above.
At this level, there's a caged wooden spiral staircase ...
... which takes you up to a mezzanine gallery level with interesting graffiti, both ancient and modern (at one time the cathedral authorities, as a fundraising angle, allowed visitors to make their own graffiti and memorial inscriptions on the window panes).
From this level, you can also see down, and up to the belfry floor.
From this level, an ancient and rather narrow stone spiral staircase takes you up to the belfry.
The tours are timed to arrive here a few minutes before the bells strike the hour. I had a very weird experience here. The bells are not terribly loud - it's not like the Hunchback of Notre Dame - but there was something about the large bell striking that had for me a powerful emotional effect. The sound decays for over 30 seconds - a rich mix of overtones - and I found myself feeling unaccountably a bit tearful. I noticed a couple of others in the party seemed affected. I've read the theory that cathedrals evoked religious feelings through subsonic resonances. I wonder if this was what I experienced?
From the belfry, a second caged wooden spiral staircase takes you to the highest level accessible by visitors: the base of the spire. Here there's an ancient treadmill winch ...
... and the view upwards inside the spire, which is criss-crossed with partially mediaeval scaffolding. It's not as bright as this: it needed long exposures to get a decent image.
Continued in The Spire (part 3).
- Ray
The Spire (part 1)
Yesterday (Saturday 22nd July) we went to Salisbury for the day. Clare had a playwriting course at the Arts Centre, and we made of a day it; we do our separate things, then meet up for a meal before coming home. This time, I'd pre-booked for the Salisbury Cathedral Tower Tour.
I always like Salisbury; it's a busy city with a comfortably small centre that combines good shopping with a strongly historic character. High Street (below) takes you through the mediaeval gate to the Cathedral Close.
The tour, which consists of a group of 12, starts inside the cathedral at the western end of the nave. After a brief historical intro and the chance to handle samples of the construction materials, you go up a first spiral staircase inside the frontage of the cathedral (above) to the level of the gallery that runs above the ground arches of the nave.
The gallery is close up to the stained glass windows of the west frontage of the cathedral. They have a kind of 'double-glazed' arrangement to protect the older windows from the weather; these you don't normally see, and they have some very characterful designs such as the heraldic lions and the demon below.
Continued in The Spire (part 2).
- Ray
I always like Salisbury; it's a busy city with a comfortably small centre that combines good shopping with a strongly historic character. High Street (below) takes you through the mediaeval gate to the Cathedral Close.
The tour, which consists of a group of 12, starts inside the cathedral at the western end of the nave. After a brief historical intro and the chance to handle samples of the construction materials, you go up a first spiral staircase inside the frontage of the cathedral (above) to the level of the gallery that runs above the ground arches of the nave.
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| A pleasant fox inside the roof - a carving by one of the restorers |
After seeing the timbering of the roof at this level, you come out a gallery overlooking the nave from its western end. A notable feature is William Pye's cruciform font, that I looked at on my previous visit in February (see In Salisbury Cathedral).
The gallery is close up to the stained glass windows of the west frontage of the cathedral. They have a kind of 'double-glazed' arrangement to protect the older windows from the weather; these you don't normally see, and they have some very characterful designs such as the heraldic lions and the demon below.
Continued in The Spire (part 2).
- Ray
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