Salisbury is not too far from us by car – we can get there in about an hour – and early in 2007, since I’d only had my fancy DSLR for about six months and was still super-keen to find anything I could to photograph, we picked that Wiltshire town as our choice for a day out.
We weren’t just going for the cathedral. Near to the church there used to be a place called Snell’s Tea Rooms that we’d popped into once when we’d stopped on a drive towards the West Country when we were first going out together. My wife’s parents had also used it as the place for a treat when they took her and her sister on UK breaks as children. A place with some fond memories, therefore. Anyway, Snell’s was nowhere to be found and it transpired we were four years too late as it had closed in order that the owner could concentrate on the family farming business instead. We would subsequently have to make do with just seeing the cathedral.
Salisbury Cathedral was built in the thirteenth century in the English Gothic architectural style; you’ll see this most clearly in the pointed arches and tall, narrow, stained glass windows, but the vaulted ceilings with four curved ribs meeting at a central point are another key characteristic. Salisbury Cathedral’s cloisters are the largest in the UK and Salisbury Cathedral is the tallest church in the UK too.
To the photos of the cathedral, then, and these are obviously early in my photography-taking period with not quite the eye for composition or care about lighting that I like to think I have these days. The camera at the time was a Canon 350D and the lens was the 18-55mm kit lens. Starting outside the cathedral there are some photos of swans paddling along the River Avon before we come to the typically English cathedral.
Inside Salisbury Cathedral now and first up a few shots of the stained glass windows in that tall, narrow style typical of English Gothic.
This interesting piece of religious artwork is an icon donated from Sudan where Salisbury maintains a link.
If you’re a fan of tombs then you won’t be disappointed with the number of them, with many decorated with likenesses of those for whom they were made. Some were clearly for bishops, others were for knights, and there was even one which was sculpted in the form of an emaciated corpse. And why not?
For all its records – those cloisters and the height of its spire – I can’t recall being very wowed by Salisbury Cathedral, although a lot of that might have been because I was perhaps not quite as into history and architecture as I am now. The cathedral houses a copy of Magna Carta, for instance, but we clearly weren’t interested in seeing that at the time; something that wouldn’t be the case now. It’s probably a church we should try to make a return visit to at some point.
One thing we really did like on this visit to Salisbury in 2007 was the font in the cathedral. This was actually an early version of the one that would be installed on a permanent basis around eighteen months after this trip and you can compare the photos of the prototype we saw below with the finished piece by William Pye here: Salisbury Cathedral Font.
