On Monday the nice weather continued so we drove up to Gloucester, which I've long been wanting to see. The drive from Oxford took about an hour and a half and we found a great parking spot near the cathedral. After a quick utilitarian lunch of McDonald's cheeseburgers, we set our cameras loose on one of the nicer cathedrals of England.
Gloucester Cathedral began life as an abbey church built over Roman walls. St Peter's Abbey, as it used to be known, was founded by the Saxon king Osric in 681 AD. The church was originally made of wood, but this was replaced with a stone church in 1058.
It was here in 1085 that William the Conqueror ordered the famous Domesday Book, an account of all the lands and properties of the land he just conquered (so he could start taxing them). A few years later the church burned down, and in 1087 construction began on the large Norman church that still stands today.
"Norman" refers to a style of architecture used in England from about 1080 to 1200. It is the northern French and English version of Romanesque, an early medieval style of architecture found throughout Europe and most beautifully in France. It was brought to England by William the Conqueror and the many immigrants who followed him from Normandy after he did his conquering in 1066.
The Normans were wealthy and they liked to build churches and castles, so a lot of English architecture dates from this period. However, after Gothic architecture was invented the simple old Norman stuff seemed outdated, so most churches were given major Gothic makeovers in the 13th to 15th centuries. Gloucester Cathedral is no exception, so it's now a mish-mash of Norman and Gothic.
The Norman-ness of Gloucester Cathedral is best seen in the nave, with its giant pillars (6 feet in diameter!) and round arches carved with zigzags. The pointed arches, slimmer pillars, big windows and flying buttresses that are so prevalent in Gothic architecture hadn't been invented yet. At this point, it was simply about having big strong pillars to carry the weight of the heavy walls and roof.
The ceiling of the nave is not Norman - it is gracefully Gothic, added in 1242. It has some golden roof bosses that you can barely see from the ground, but have some interesting details for those with a zoom lens (yay, that's us!):
More Norman goodness can be seen in the crypt, which is the oldest part of the cathedral (1087). In order to see it you have to find a cathedral guide with a red sash and ask them to unlock it and take you down. We had an excellent guide and this was one of the highlights of our visit.
There are two interesting carvings in the crypt: a rope-like design that our guide said represents the keys to Valhalla and a man's face with big eyes and a super-long mustache. His identity isn't known, but our guide's favorite theory is one that was suggested by some Danish visitors. They had seen a similar face in Denmark and France, and believe it is the Viking god Odin, carved into early churches to hedge bets in case the Christians turned out to be wrong.
Back upstairs, there are a couple royal monuments in the ambulatory around the east end. The first we came to is an effigy of Robert of Normandy, the oldest son of William the Conqueror.
This unfortunate knight was imprisoned by his younger brother (King Henry I) and died in Cardiff Castle (nearby in Wales) in 1134. He was buried in Gloucester Cathedral and this effigy of him was carved about a century later. The crossed legs indicate he had been on a crusade, I believe, but I'm not sure what the odd arm position means.
The other one is the tomb of King Edward II, which was the closest thing this church ever had to a holy relic. (It was always good to have relics, because relics brought pilgrims and pilgrims brought money.) Edward was murdered in 1327 and this fancy alabaster tomb was ordered by his son, Edward III, shortly after.
The shrine of the slain king brought many pilgrims over the next 70 years, which funded a major rebuild of the choir and east end of the church (1331 to 1350). The two best features of the choir (pictured below) date from about 1350: the misericords and the Great East Window.
Misericords are little "mercy seats" in the choir that gave the monks something to lean on while still appearing to stand throughout long services. Because they weren't usually visible, medieval artists had virtually free reign to depict scenes of everyday life. The carvings are often symbolic, humorous or even vulgar, and rarely religious. Gloucester Cathedral has a set of 46 medieval misericords, which are in excellent condition. But part of the choir was roped off so that only eight of them were accessible, unfortunately.
Overlooking the choir is the Great East Window, which also dates from 1350. It has miraculously preserved most of its original medieval glass, and it's pretty spectacular.
And finally, the last bragging point of Gloucester Cathedral are its cloisters. They are fully intact and fully enclosed, and have the earliest example of fan vaulting in England (which I remember being very impressed with at Bath Abbey even before I knew what fan vaulting was). More importantly to some, the cloisters were used in the filming of at least two Harry Potter movies.
After the big cathedral in the big city, we headed nine miles north to visit two tiny churches in a tiny village and relax on the grass by a river. It was wonderful. More on that in the next post.
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