Churches.

IdleRich

IdleRich
On the Winchester thread I was talking about how the medieval era was a time of perpetual drunkeness.
Probably literally true as a lot of the time the water was not good to drink and people tended to drink several (admittedly weak) flagons of ale a day. Most people half-cut most of the time.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
what's the story behind that firefinga?

I don't know, I stumbled across that pic some time ago. In fact, there are many grotesque figures and ghouls attached to old cathedrals. Also Notre Dame has some great ghouls on its walls.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I think statues were usually painted in ancient Greece and Rome too, weren't they? It's funny, we're so used to seeing them in cool, stately, natural grey or off-white marble that the idea of them being painted seems bizarre. Like they'd look incredibly gaudy - tacky or naff, even.
 

catalog

Well-known member
Proust has hit upon something I've mentioned before, not to say he necessarily plagiarised me, but that the steeple is two hands met in prayer.

This is a symbol of duality and unity, the two forces equal and balanced in energised opposition. /\ like so.
Again a Masonic, engineering principle as well as a spiritual cosmic principle.

I like this. The tower versus the tall building as well. Skyscrapers, flat on top, what a load of bollocks. It's all about the point. So that the very top cannot be stood upon. Cannot be touched
 

catalog

Well-known member
From Pynchon - the light in Churches is mediated by the stained glass. The colour allows you to see the light.
 

jenks

thread death
Went to Copford in North Essex to see the wall paintings that had been covered by white line sometime in the Reformation. Lovely small, quiet place with Ravillious buried in the churchyard.
 

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Slothrop

Tight but Polite
About Salisbury:


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The foundations of the cathedral are only 28 inches (just over 700mm) deep and built on a barely drained swamp. They were not built to withstand the additional 6,500 tonnes supplied by the spire. Slowly but surely the spire moved out of alignment as you can see today by looking up along the purbeck marble columns.

It was soon found that the cause of the movement was variation in the water below the cathedral, so a complex sluce system was developed to regulate the water from the nearby stream. Twice a day a cap is lifted on the floor beneath the spire and a dipstick inserted to measure the level of the water.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
And Winchester:


The land on which the Normans began to build the Cathedral in 1079, alongside (and eventually overlapping the site of) its Anglo-Saxon predecessor, was not ideal geologically. The site was on the prehistoric bed of the Itchen (which had been diverted to the east of Winchester by the Romans) and valley gravels, which would have provided a good foundation, were covered by a layer of peat from the decaying vegetation of the river valley, then chalky marl washed down from the town’s western slopes.

The situation was summarised by Sir Thomas Jackson, the architect who oversaw the repairs (although recent archaeological research has shown that in fact the foundations were more sophisticated than Jackson believed): ‘Bishop Walkelin’s men dug down to water and then seem to have scooped out the marly soil overlying the peat, and part of the peat itself, in some cases within a foot or so of the hard gravel on which we underpin. Into these excavations they pitched loose flints and chalk till they were able to build in the dry.

But it's alright because in the early 20th Century they got an actual diver in to shore it up:

Under eleven feet of water, Walker ‘was shovelling a slimy mixture of rotten wood, peat and chalk into buckets to clear one of the 9ft. square spaces from which the water will be pumped, and in which a solid support will be built. By the aid of a match one could see the foundations of the Cathedral shored above his head with beams, like the passage of a coal mine.’
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
Went to Copford in North Essex to see the wall paintings that had been covered by white line sometime in the Reformation. Lovely small, quiet place with Ravillious buried in the churchyard.
But did you notice the two famous names in the visitor book?
 
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