Salisbury Cathedral
“The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history . . . It was written in Magna Carta.”
Join us on our climb to the top of Salisbury Cathedral!
The Salisbury Cathedral Close has enclosed Salisbury Cathedral and the surrounding buildings for nearly 800 years. Every night the gates to the close are still secured as they have been throughout history.
Today we entered the close through the High Street Gate in the north wall.
Amanda next to the same door inside the North Gate arch that she took a picture in front of in 2009 (below).
Amanda in 2009.
Between the High Street Gate and Salisbury Cathedral sits the Choristers' Green. On that green sits a phone booth that I have taken a picture inside of during each visit. Above is the picture from 2009—not a gray hair in sight.
Again in 2015, the grey making itself known.
And now 2023, the challenge being to find hair that has not yet turned grey.
And now here’s my 22-year-old Mini Me taking the same photograph—pretty cool! Will, I hope you get to look back fondly on this moment one day when you are lucky enough to have a head full of grey hair.
Mompesson House is a beautiful Queen Anne house, completed in 1701, located inside the close. The 1995 version of Sense and Sensibility, starring Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant, the late great Alan Rickman, and Emma Thompson, was filmed at the house.
The amazing Salisbury Cathedral (we learned later there was some invasive species infecting the lawns around the cathedral).
Lighting a candle in remembrance of Grandma Nina just past the one year anniversary of her death on January 29.
Salisbury Cathedral has a special link with the churches of Sudan and South Sudan. The candle is a focus for prayer for the Sudanese. A copy of an ancient Sudanese icon, a painting of the Virgin Mary and her son Jesus, hangs by the altar.
This wooden chest was made sometime around 1250 to store documents and money. It has seven locks for extra security. Each key was kept by a different priest so the chest could only be opened when all seven priests came together. The chest was originally kept in the muniment room. Before the Cathedral Library was built in 1445, the priests may also have stored the books they used for worship and study in the chest.
Standing in the Choir, looking east into the Presbytery, with the stained glass window high above depicting Moses and the brazen serpent.
Salisbury remains a favorite Cathedral. It rests inside a walled close in a small town and if you wander the close early in the morning, you get a real sense of stepping back in time. There is a prohibition against tall buildings in the city, so the Cathedral retains its dominance over the landscape as it has for over 800 years. The Luftwaffe used the cathedral for navigation toward the many Allied air bases established across the Salisbury Plain, so the Cathedral was virtually untouched by WWII.
Secondly, the fictional Kingsbridge Cathedral from the wildly popular Pillars of the Earth novel was set in Wiltshire (where Salisbury Cathedral is located). Follett based his vivid story of the construction of Kingsbridge Cathedral on both Wells and Salisbury Cathedrals. In so many ways, reading the book was like watching Salisbury Cathedral take form from the ground up.
The foundation of Salisbury Cathedral was laid in the year 1220. When you marvel at any cathedral (and marvel you must), the first thing your mind tries to make sense of is how anyone could have contemplated—much less built—something on that scale in the year 1220!
Follett’s The Kingsbridge Novels: Pillars of the Earth, World Without End, Column of Fire, The Evening and the Morning, & Armour of Light—became so popular precisely because Follett answered the question every visitor asks—how did they do it? Follett’s protagonist, mason Tom Builder, faced countless struggles in the novel as he built Knightsbridge Cathedral. Some of those same struggles are still evident in Salisbury Cathedral today.
Salisbury Cathedral was started in 1220. Between about 1300 and 1329, builders decided to make the tower taller and add a spire. At 404 feet, it was then, and is now, the tallest spire in England!
In the picture above, the square section of ceiling to the right is directly below the tower and spire. The pillar in the picture is one of four directly supporting the new spire. And no, you’re not imaging that the columns appear to bend toward the top. Straight from the pages of Pillars of the Earth—how to manage extreme weight loads without the benefit of present-day engineering expertise. Here’s another view:
Follow the wall from left to right and you should be able to see the drop in the wall as it nears the column that supports the tower and its spire. Yet, despite the many limitations in knowledge of the age, and despite the visible irregularities—the cathedral has stood fast for over 800 years! Fascinating!
The third reason I love Salisbury Cathedral so much: it is one of the few cathedrals where you are permitted to travel up inside the the upper reaches of the building. Will looking down at the Nave from the Triforium.
View from the Triforium—The Triforium is the space formed over the ceiling of the aisles on either side of the vast nave. It takes its name from the shape of the room (see below). The Clerestory above is where windows are installed to allow light into the space.
The narrow walkway from the Triforium to the stone spiral stairway to the Clerestory and up.
We climbed past the Clerestory level and into the rafters over the Nave.
The vaulted ceiling above the Nave rest under the walkway. They were constructed of stones and then lye was dumped over them and water added so that the lye became slurry and flowed and filled the spaces between the stones.
The ceiling over the nave showing a mortise and tenon joint with wooden pins holding them together.
Adze toolmarks.
Buzz Aldrin visited the Cathedral in 2008 and was allowed to engrave his name on the wall.
(Boys and girls please understand we’re not talking about Buzz Lightyear here. 😉 Buzz Aldrin was a real astronaut. He piloted the Lunar Module Eagle on the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, where he and Neil Armstrong were the first two people to land on the Moon. Lightyear’s name is borrowed from Aldrin.)
Looking up into the Tower, below the Spire.
Looking up into the Tower and the wooden staircase we’re about to use to climb up toward the bells and then the Spire above (remember the trapdoor visible at the top).
As this section is not visible unless you are standing in this space, you may wonder why there are decorative columns and archways. You may recall that when the Cathedral was first built, there was no tower and no spire. The original roof was above these arches (at the level of the scaffolding); so under the original design, the lower half of this space was visible from the cathedral floor.
The clock mechanism that rings the cathedral bells, which are housed on the level above.
As we climbed the stairs you could see medieval ironwork that used a mortise and tenon joint. Those clever medieval builders! 🤓
View from the scaffolding looking down into the base of the Tower where we were just standing.
From the scaffolding level, our guide showed us window panes that were sold to raise money to support restoration of the tower and spire.
When you purchased a pane, you could etch whatever you wanted into the glass before it was permanently installed on the tower (remembering, of course, that it was going to be part of a church).
From the scaffolding we took a very narrow stone spiral staircase to the belfry. Structurally, the tower will not support swinging bells, so the bells are mechanically struck by hammers instead. You can see the cables that travel to the level below where we saw the clock mechanism.
In the video below, while standing in the room below the bells, I caught the tolling a little late, but did manage to get the 2 o’clock gongs. Look for the moving cables. The second half of the video is the quarter-hour chime while standing right next to the bells. Yikes!
Looking through the trapdoor in the floor of the belfry, down to the base of the tower where the clock mechanism sits. You can see the spiral wooden staircase that took us to the scaffolding and the etched windows. You can also see the small openings in each corner that lead to stone spiral staircases to the belfry above.
The wooden staircase was added because they had to fill in the original stone staircases between those two levels to reinforce the tower.
Nearly to the base of the spire, looking down into the belfry. You can see the trapdoor in the center and the bells toward the top the frame.
Finally, we arrive at our destination—the base of the spire. Originally, the Spire was constructed with scaffolding on the exterior, so you would have had an unobstructed view up into the spire. However, the spire was damaged in a major storm and internal scaffolding was installed to allow repair work. Needless to say (then why am I saying it?), the tour does not continue up the rickety old wooden ladders (though I would have gone up if they let us 😊).
The original wooden mechanical wheel used to raise stone from the cathedral floor up into the spire during its construction—amazing!
From the base of the spire, you can walk out onto four small balconies, one on each of the four sides between where the squinch transitions from the square tower to the octagonal spire. The balconies provide exceptional views over the city and across the Salisbury Plain.
Looking up toward the anemometer on top of the spire.
Amanda pointing to Old Sarum, the original hilltop fortress from c. 400 BC.
Looking down on one of the double transepts.
Magna Carta
Inside Salisbury Cathedral’s beautiful Chapter House, home to the best preserved of only four surviving Magna Carta documents from 1215 (two other documents are held in The British Library and one in Lincoln Castle).
Habeas corpus is a recourse in law through which a person can report a detention to a court and request that the court determine whether the detention is lawful. The term originally stems from the year 1166 and the Assize (Courthouse) of Clarendon. Under King Henry II, the royal hunting lodge at Clarendon Palace, right here in Wiltshire, was used as an assize, or courthouse. As Americans, our rights under habeas corpus stretch all the way back to Wiltshire, 857 years ago!
King Henry II was succeeded by Richard I, who was succeeded by King John. King John—also of Robin Hood infamy—ruled as a tyrant. After sixteen years, many of the King’s barons finally forced King John to the negotiating table at Runnymede, near Windsor. On June 15, 1215, the King reluctantly agreed to the barons' demands and the resulting document became known as Magna Carta—Latin for “Great Charter.”
Magna Carta was intended mainly to protect the rights and wealth of a privileged elite. But it also asserted the freedom of the Church, improved the justice system, and established the fundamental principle that even a monarch had to rule within and not above the law. Democracy sprouted from these events and our US Constitution is founded squarely on habeas corpus and the principles first written in Magna Carta. It was quite an honor to view one of the original documents!
After all those stairs, it was time for a drink. We made our way over to Haunch of Venison for a pint. The first record for the building is c. 1320 when it was used to house craftsmen working on the Cathedral spire.
Just look at this room—it's oozing with history! As I’ve said before, every pub has its lore. In this one, it’s in red in the old bread oven in corner near the fireplace.
As the story goes, a stranger came to town and stopped in the Haunch. His reception wasn’t warm until he produced a bag of coins and bought everyone a round. Now a welcomed addition to the crowd, the stranger invited the locals to a game of cards. No one thought to ask how the man had made his wealth. The stranger won round after round after round. A clever local butcher, however, realized that while the stranger had made the whole pub drunk, he remained sober. When the stranger got up to leave, ten times richer than when he arrived, the butcher challenged him to one more round. As the stranger laid out his cards, the butcher took out a clever and cut off the stranger’s hand. The locals were not so much surprised by the blood, but by the five aces the stranger had hidden up his sleeve. The hand of the stranger has remained in the pub since. (Well, it has been stolen at least once, but we don’t have enough time for all the sordid details.)
The alleged skeletal remains.
The tiny “Horsebox” bar at the front on the right hand side of the ground floor is referred as a "Ladies Snug" dating back to the times where public houses were for men only. The paneled bar counter has a pewter top which is one of only six in the entire country and there is a rare wooden carved elevated arch with seven original gravity-fed spirit taps fitted in 1909. The Horsebox was reputedly used by Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower during the planning of D-Day landings back in 1944.
