Gloucester Cathedral: Extras

Family burial: note children at lower left and right

Window depicting the coronation of Edward II

Tomb of Edward II; a long story...he was
murdered, perhaps gruesomely, after abdicating,
by henchmen of his wife, the Queen, and Roger
Mortimer (who paid for his crime, gruesomely);
Gloucester was the only cathedral that would
accept Edward's body; later it became a major
pilgrimage site: the power of revisionist
historiography?

Baptismal font, 1190, in the Lady Hall

Interesting burial of Robert, Duke of Normandy, a major
benefactor of Gloucester, and eldest son of William the
Conqueror; William had interesting ideas about his sons
and succession, preferring his youngest, who became
Henry I; Henry had the middle brother mysteriously die in
New Forest and incarcerated Robert for 34 years in Cardiff
Castle; the pose, we were told, was that of a crusader,
always ready to spring into action to save Jerusalem or
plunder Constantinople or whatever

We seldom like contemporary sculpture, but did like this
Holy Family

Some of the better stained light on the floor we have seen

In the apse, some beautiful non-perpendicular
buttressing as well as a glimpse of the
Decorated vaulting there

And finally, that which is irresistible at
Gloucester, the fan vaulting in the cloister,
said to be its earliest example

More; it is largely decorative and not
structural, I understand

Closer up

While the organ was filling the cathedral
with glorious music inside, the great tower
bells peeled outside for more than an hour;
we sat and listened for quite a while

Last look at one of the great sights

Gloucester Cathedral: Basics

Gloucester Cathedral is famous for a number of reasons, its Perpendicular style (although everything else is there, too), its several important monuments and tombs, and particularly the fan vaulting in the cloister (it was originally an abbey church), the oldest fan vaulting in a country known for its fan vaulting. Churchill and the Beatles, I have read, were just nuts about fan vaulting. Also Shakespeare.

Southwest view; not known for its outside sculpture

Knave view; England was not subject to the
Council of Trent, thank you very much, and so
the screens remain in most of the cathedrals, as
here, augmented by the organ, to provide further
barrier between the merely faithful and the
priests and their mysterious activities within

Elevation; no galleries; note the huge piers,
Norman vaulting, etc.; as with all English
cathedrals, low ceiling and relatively few
windows; they were just not into the height
and light thing

Choir; so-so

West transept window; nor were they much
into the Christian education via windows thing

Altar and very large east window; the shadow
beyond it (what an image!) is that of the Lady
Hall

The organ; we got to the cathedral about 1:30 and our whole
visit was serenaded, inside, by a wonderful organ recital, the
best way to tour a cathedral

Gloucester

We took another rest day at Tintern Abbey, catching up on things and recovering from the previous day's hike. Sunday morning we crossed the Wye again and were back in England. Originally we had thought we'd spend a week or more in Wales, but when it came to it, we decided that most of the things that interested us were up in the north, and that we had covered them well enough in 2009. We drove on through the Forest of Dean (the Deanery, nyuk, nyuk), got to Gloucester in the late morning, found an empty parking lot near the train station, and decided to spend the day, a beautiful Sunday, walking the old city and touring the cathedral.

Sunday street scene in Gloucester; much of the downtown
is pedestrianized; like many English cities, Gloucester has
maintained its Roman street lay-out; the center of the city is
the Cross, where meet the four main streets, Northgate,
Eastgate, Southgate, and Westgate

The New Inn, built in 1455, remains one of the best examples
of a Medieval courtyard inn; it was here that Lady Jane Grey
learned that the deal was done, she would be the next Queen
of England 

We thought we might have lunch at the New Inn but opted
instead for the similarly old Fountain

Pub grub: about half way through this meal
I remembered to take a photo: it was the largest
slab of fish I've ever been served (halibut), and
Vicki's ribs were similarly proportioned; Old
Butcombe and the week-long Ledbury Poetry
Festival guide for company

Old and really old: a shop building and the
cathedral towers beyond

One of Glouceter's other attractions is the Blackfriars Abbey,
one of the few abbeys in the UK not dismantled; maintained
now by English Heritage, mostly as a party house and
meeting center, I think; here we are in the courtyard

And here inside the church, looking at a
revealing cut-away: the abbey survived because
the mayor of Gloucester bought it directly after
the Dissolution, and converted it into his great
house; it has had many other uses in the
centuries since; the blocks have been cut away
to reveal some of the old church architecture

Vicki in the scriptorium, where the monks copied, and
re-copied, and illuminated, etc., the manuscripts; each of the
columns along the walls partitioned a monk's carrel; one
of the oldest still-existing library buildings in the UK, if not
Europe

Scissors vaulting in the scriptorium; note the large pegs where
the pieces are joined

Monk-ly graffiti? porn?

Really old door lintel

Not the baker's; Mr. Baker was apparently the town watchmaker,
jeweller, and optician; we didn't get to see figures doing their
things, but it must (have been) be a sight

Offa's Dyke

Offa's Dyke is a 130-mile ditch and rampart that runs, more or less, from the River Dee to the River Wye, roughly drawing a line between Mercia (now England) and Powys (now Wales). The current border actually follows it in some places. There is very scant historical or other documentation about it. According to tradition, it was built by Offa, king of Mercia, in the 8th century. It is not completely continuous, skipping over or around natural barriers. It is thought to be a defensive structure built by the Mercians, since the rampart is always on the Mercian side and natural barriers, e.g., hills, always favor the defenders to the east. Some scholars apparently think it goes back to Roman times; others think it was built in sections over a number of centuries. Whoever is right, it is still there and something any armchair archaeologist will want to see if passing (very) nearby. Besides, it is just beyond the Devil's Pulpit, a famous Tintern Abby overlook. And we wanted a little exercise as well as communion with Nature and the spirits of Bill and Dottie.

View of Tintern Abbey from the ridge; you can see our
camper, middle/right...

Devil's Pulpit view of the abbey; it was from the pulpit that
the devil enticed monks from the abbey...

Eureka! We are on the Offa's Dyke Path, one of the UK's
great walks

So there it is; you have to use your imagination as it's become
a bit overgrown in these 1200 years

Ditto

Age-old war between tree and boulder: tree
wins again

Nice hike, nice trail, nice day, perhaps our
first day of summer here

Tintern Abbey

It was to be a big day, first the castle, then the abbey, a few miles away, then the walk, as Wordsworth said, "a few miles above Tintern Abbey" (actually only a couple hundred feet above the abbey but a couple miles down the river), then the sight of Offa's Dyke. Tintern Abbey is famous in part because of Wordsworth (he doesn't even mention the abbey, as I recall), but also because of Turner's early watercolors, also Tennyson, Jane Austen, and even Allen Ginsburg. Vicki had been there before, but I wanted to see it and especially wanted to see Offa's Dyke, which runs nearby. We had lunch at the abbey, toured it, and then set forth across the river and up the long ridge.

Most of the abbey is a wreck, but the great 13th century
Cistercian chuch still stands, sort of; here, a view from the
west/southwest; a "decorated" Gothic, perhaps less
austere than other, earlier Cistercian churches we have
see; two aisles, no galleries, big clerestory windows...
once

West facade, huge lancet windows now gone

A bit of the carving remains

Nave view; the south aisle still stands; the north is mostly
gone

At the crossing

Looking up; the lead roof was among the first things sold;
things fall apart pretty quickly after the roof goes; and the
ivy takes hold

Back down the nave

More interior

Century-old oak, planted on the occasion of George V's
coronation

The abbey's all-important reredorter

Our campsite at the abbey

A bit later that evening

Chepstow Castle, Wales

We spent another quiet if rainy night at Ladye Bay, then decamped and drove across the bridge to Wales, passing over enough of Bristol for me to see the natural outlet of the mighty Avon and one of the contemporary "floating docks" (that is, an artificial channel of the Avon that has been "locked" to make a small harbor). Our goal was to see Chepstow Castle, its ruins, one of the earliest Welsh castles. It was begun, in stone, not wood, in 1067, by William the Conqueror, finished off and improved by Edward I, and improved even more by Roger Bigod. (I think Bigod is Middle English for Bigdog; whatever).

We found our way to Chepstowe and easy street parking there,
literally a walk in the park to the castle; as it turned out, this was
the first of several miles we walked in the Wye Valley; I wonder
now what the river Wye may have to do with David James Duncan's
charming novel The River Why, which I read early in my Montana
period; did I miss something important, something Welsh?

Attacking forces' view of castle

Entry view

Great Hall; note if you can (click to enlarge) the
thin red line of bricks about 1/3 of the way up;
these are recycled Roman bricks

Interior

Traces of interior splendor; the castle declined
and disintegrated naturally; it was captured by
the Parliamentarians in 1648, but was never
"slighted"

Overlooking the Wye

Sally port

Last interior view