One Last Day Trip

Well, folks, the countdown has begun. Yesterday was the last Saturday I had free before returning to the States. Next Saturday, Dec. 1, is the Harlaxton Christmas parties, one for staff and their families in the afternoon and one for students and faculty in the evening. The choir will be singing carols for each, so I'll need to be here. Finals also begin that day and run through Wednesday morning, Dec. 5. Then it's off to Heathrow for the flight home on the sixth.

So, yesterday, Dr. Jim Larner and I went over to Ely near Cambridge to view what is one of the most unusual cathedrals in England. It has a octagonal tower crowned by a wooden lantern which links the transept, the nave, and the quire. The first church on the site was erected by St. Ethelraeda in 673 AD. The cathedral itself dates from the 12th century and the parts from that time are in the Romanesque style. However, in the 1322 the Norman tower at the transept collapsed in a heap. So, a new tower had to be built. It was built in the Gothic style, and the octagonal shape, unique in English cathedrals, was adopted to reunite the various areas of the church. Here is a shot of it from the outside.

Note the octagonal stone walls and the wooden lantern which sits atop the tower.

The cathedral also boasts the fourth longest nave in England which you can get some idea of from this photo. The ceiling of the nave is completely covered in paintings, highly unusual.

We toured the Octagonal Tower, and suffice it to say that it was fascinating. Once we reached the lower roof of the tower, we went out to look at the flying buttresses erected to support the transept's roof and seen in this photo.

Then it was through the rabbit hole into the lantern itself and up to the panels--32 of them--that can be seen from the floor of the nave, 110 feet below.

Believe it or not, I made it through that opening as well, but I would not recommend it to people who suffer from claustrophobia. The spiral staircase it opens into is not much bigger and very steep. However, once you get up those steps and can breath again, you are inside the lantern structure among the timbers, all original, that hold the thing in place.

As you can see, they didn't even bother to completely finish some of the trees, just stripped them of their bark. Some of these timbers were about 300 years old when they were cut down in the 14th century, making them as old as the Norman Conquest. The timbers were assembled on the ground, then each joint was marked with a numbering system. They were then taken apart, hoisted by hand up to the top of the tower and re-assembled. Some of you may recall the timbers in the middle portion of the Campbell Mansion done in the same fashion with carpenter's marks to guide the re-assembly, which you can see in the cutaway spot io the wall leading to the second floor.

On the right of the photo above you can see some framing. That is the back of one of the 32 images, created in 1874 as part of a 50-year restoration project of the entire cathedral. I had some trouble trying to get pics of these as when one of them was opened into the space above the transept, my camera didn't like the contrasting light values apparently. Here's one pic, however taken from the opening on one side of the lantern looking across at another panel opening.

I'm very sorry that I couldn't get any better pictures because it is truly amazing. And, if you look down, it is a 110-foot freefall to the floor. Pretty hairy. Then it was back down the rabbit hole and out onto the roof again and then back to the transept landing before the descent back to the nave. I took this picture of just one panel of one of the stained glass windows in the transept on our way down. These windows are not from the Middle Ages but replacements following the iconoclasm of the Reformation.

All in all, a wonderful last visit to a unique cathedral. Now, down to the last week and preparing for finals. It's very good to be on the academic calendar again rather than the administrative one. With teaching, there are built in stopping points every few months where you have to come to a halt whether you are ready to or not. With administrative work, it just goes on and on and on and on and on and. . .