How to Visit the English CathedralsSingleton, Esther
History
How to Visit the English Cathedrals
Singleton, Esther
Cathedrals -- England
“Entering from the High Street, the visitor finds himself almost in
another township. A street lined with houses conducts to the
Cathedral lawn, where from the north-eastern extremity the full
proportions of the church may be comprehended. The whole north side
of the close is thus open. On the east we find another gateway and
the entrance to the Palace; on the other side the Choristers’
Green, in itself another little close. The west is occupied by a
group of interesting and extremely handsome houses of various
dates. Here are the Deanery, standing in its own grounds opposite
the Cathedral façade; the King’s House, a long, many-gabled mansion
of the early Fifteenth Century, with mullioned windows and a
vaulted porch, the occasional resting-place of the English monarchs
on their passage through Salisbury; and the Wardrobe, distinguished
by its heavy roof, its projecting double gables, and the immense
square windows, back and front, through which the evening sun
penetrates with a curious half-ghostly gleam. These form the most
effective line of buildings of the enclosure, which at this least
trim but not the less picturesque side, terminates at the Harnham
Gate.”--(A. A.)
Raising our eyes to the =Tower= and =Spire=, we note:
“The Early English portion, however, terminates with the first
story, about eight feet above the roof; the two additional stories
and the spire above them date from the reign of Edward III. The
walls of the upper stories of the tower are covered with a blind
arcade, richly canopied, and pierced for light with double windows
on all four sides. Above each story is a parapet with
lozenge-shaped traceries, which are repeated in the three bands
encircling the spire. At each angle of the tower is an octagonal
stair-turret, crowned with a small crocketed spire. The great
spire, itself octagonal, rises from between four small
richly-decorated pinnacles. Its walls are two feet in thickness
from the bottom to a height of twenty feet; from thence to the
summit their thickness is only nine inches. The spire is filled
with a remarkable frame of timber-work, which served as a scaffold
during its erection. While making some repairs in 1762, the workmen
found a cavity on the south side of the capstone in which was a
leaden box, enclosing a second of wood which contained a piece of
much decayed silk or fine linen, no doubt a relic (possibly of the
Virgin, to whom the cathedral is dedicated) placed there in order
to avert lightning and tempest.”--(R. J. K.)
Entering by the west door we look down the =Nave=.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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