Slide Shows on Cathedral and Church Architecture - by Michael G Hardy

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Description of Slide Show

Part One of this show starts by quickly looking at how the tower and spire of Salisbury Cathedral ensure that Salisbury must be the most easily identified British city. Appropriately this area of Wiltshire is well renowned for its dominant prehistoric remains, and we see how Old Sarum developed from an iron age hill fort, to a Roman settlement, and later a Saxon town. After the Norman Conquest, the sites of cathedrals were moved to larger towns, and the see of Sherborne was therefore moved to the more important Old Sarum in 1075. We consider the two successive cathedral buildings that were built within the castle walls at Old Sarum, and then realise that problems with its location within the castle on a hilltop eventually led to a Papal Bull being granted to move the cathedral to a new site. That chosen was 2 miles to the south, naturally called New Sarum, and as a 'green-field' site, this would give the Bishop a rare opportunity to layout the whole city now known as Salisbury. The Bishop and Chapter actually left Old Sarum on 1st November 1219.

Salsibury Cathedral was therefore, in a fairly unusual way, all built from scratch, there being no existing building to be replaced. The plan of the whole cathedral was marked out on the ground and building work quickly started, the foundation stone being laid at the east end with great ceremony on 28th April 1220. Within 5 years Trinity Chapel and the Retro-choir were completed and consecrated. We look at this part, which is regarded by some people as the most beautiful part of the building, with the roof of Trinity Chapel being supported by slender pillars of Purbeck marble, nearly 30 feet tall but only 9 inches in diameter. We then continue to look at the rest of the original cathedral in the order in which it was built. The choir and eastern transepts were built by 1237 and these are the first parts to reach the full ceiling height. In particular we look at views of the eastern end, where every wall is filled with Early English lancets, giving a foretaste of the splendours that would be developing in the country's Gothic Architecture over the next 300 years. The main transepts and nave were then built in a 21 year period up to 1258. Some of the photographs in this show are taken from high levels within the cathedral, and there is no finer place to view the nave than from the base of the west window. Here one can really marvel at how 60,000 tons of Chilmark stone and 10,000 tons of Purbeck marble were crafted into a beautifully proportioned example of the simple grace of the Early English style. Some find it a little austere, but it must be remembered that the decoration here is generally provided by the Purbeck marble shafts, and not by sculpture (such as at Wells). Although I can agree with some who say that the the Purbeck marble at Salisbury has been darkened rather too much, making too great a contrast with the local stone. After looking at the nave, we move onto the West front which, in common with many English Cathedrals, cannot really be considered its finest part. The slides currently in this show have not been updated following the restoration of the West Front in the 1990s.

We then look at the large Cloisters and the memorable Chapter House with its vast windows and carved Old Testament scenes above the seat arcading. They were both built in the late 13th century, when the Early English style was developing into the Geometric Decorated style. It must be remembered though that the Cloisters were really an indulgence, there being no need for them, as Salisbury has never been a monastic foundation. After realising that the plan of Salisbury Cathedral has now been unchanged since 1284, we end Part One by looking at the painting of the choir vault, which is a 19th century replica of the original 13th century design depicting the months of the year.

Part Two starts with a detailed look at the exterior and interior of the unique tower and spire, added between 1285 and 1320. We also consider various work done over the centuries to the cathedral and the tower and spire, to try and keep them all standing, as the building was never originally designed to suddenly have 6,500 tons added on top of it. We then look at the building of the wall around the cathedral close, which was thought to have been started around 1331. Inspection of the wall reveals that we can see much carved stone from the Norman cathedral at Old Sarum, as the old building was obviously used as a supply of stone for building the close wall. We also see some of the historic buildings within the close.

A great deal of work was done to the cathedral and the close in the 18th century by Wyatt, and in the 19th century by Scott, and we see some of the effect that they had on the cathedral. We end Part Two with a look at a few of the remarkable collection of monuments that are within Salisbury Cathedral.

Contents, Important Dates, Number of Slides Shown

Please note that some of the dates quoted are only approximate

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This page last modified on 15th December 2005