Salisbury Cathedral in Wiltshire England is a wonderful site to visit. After seeing what happened to Notre Dame in that fire recently, it makes me all the more appreciative that I was able to visit the cathedral at Salisbury and get a close-up look at the place from inside and out.
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| Salisbury Cathedral |
Salisbury Cathedral was finished in 1320 and has the tallest spire in England. It also houses the best preserved copy of the Magna Carta.
If you go, take the tour of the tower. Lot of climbing, but you will appreciate the skill of the medieval builders and just marvel at the bones of this beautiful building!
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| Above the cathedral main isle. |
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| The bells of Salisbury Cathedral. |
There is loads of medieval timber, much of which has been strengthened over the years by the addition of metal braces, but you can easily see how detrimental a fire would be and how fast it could spread.
It is a tribute to the workers who built Salisbury Cathedral that it has lasted in such condition, even through wars and religious upheavals.
Shown in the images below are your rewards for all the climbing. You get to look right up into the spire and then go out on all four sides of a shallow balcony and get awesome views of the English landscape!
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| The view right up in there! |
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| Fantastic views from as high as you can go. |
Only authorized workers are allowed right up into the actual space of the spire itself. According to our guide, we have one person to thank for even being able to see up in there today, and that is HRH the Prince of Wales who subsidized the floodlights.
Years before Salisbury was built, the building style for churches was called Romanesque. The Romanesque style had thick, heavy walls and dark enclosed interiors with rounded arches. Salisbury was built in the new style sweeping mainland Europe (especially France) at the time, called Gothic. The Gothic style features tall, airy, and light filled interiors, and pointed arches. With less than 300 years separating the Norman invasion and the building of Salisbury Cathedral the style, in England, is sometimes referred to as the Norman Gothic.
One tends to think these amazing sites will be around forever. Sadly not.
