The Ham Nomads

19 Nov 2014. <GB-ENG> Gloucester, Glos —

Suzie started off with another bath!! We organized a doctor's appointment in the city at 4pm. We went across to Tesco, basically to get a paper, then came back to the hotel and left for town. You can take the 12 or 12A bus into town, and it drops you in Eastgate Street, very near the centre of everything.

First port of call — a walk up Eastgate Street, left into Southgate Street and into the Visitor Information Centre, mainly for a good map of the central city.

Tomb of Edward II

Tomb of Roger, Duke of Normandy

Then we walked down to the Cathedral. Amazing. Here is where William the Conqueror ordered the compilation of the Domesday Book, and it is one of the best preserved of the cathedrals in England, mainly because they were able to point out to Henry VIII that Offa, Prince of Mercia, and Edward II, as well as Robert, Duke of Normandy, eldest son of William the Conqueror, were all buried there. This convinced Henry not to dissolve the Cathedral, but to make it the centre of a new Church of England see based in Gloucester — it is one of the six former abbeys refounded as cathedrals under King Henry VIII. We wandered the cathedral, just wondering at its magnificence.

The Quire is the current core of the cathedral, with most services being held here. (The nave is just too big, and the congregation would be lost in its sheer volume.) Under the royal patronage of King Edward III, the original Norman arcade was shaved back to allow for a stone screen to be constructed on its inner surface. They removed the apse and the roof, and continued the screen walls up to new heights, and topped the whole with a magnificent lierne vault 27 metres above the floor. Replacing the apse, they erected a rectangular east end to contain a magnificent stained glass window, 22 metres high and 12 metres wide — the second-largest medieval stained-glass window in any British church. The glass dates to the middle of the fourteenth century.

But the cathedral is a living building. There are modern stained glass windows, the newest of which is in the South Ambulatory Chapel, and dates back to 1989. (The Cathedral was built under Abbot Serlo, with the foundation stone laid in 1089, and this window was part of the 900-year anniversary commemoration.)

Another window of special significance to anyone who has sung major English church music is the one commemorating Herbert Howells, which portrays four anthems of his. The window beside it is rather sweet, a memorial to Herbert Brewer, organist at the cathedral from 1897 to 1928. It depicts four angels making music, and captioned respectively "Religioso", "Allegro", "Adagio" and "Marziale" — cute!

The juxtaposition of the old and the new is nowhere more striking than behind the altar in the Lady Chapel. Here a medieval wall, clearly showing the vicissitudes of age, has three modern canvas panels set into it, representing "Crucifixion", "Pietà" and "Resurrection".

We had lunch in the Cathedral coffee shop — they serve a "Pilgrim's Pie" closely based on the fare served to pilgrims 800 years ago — delicious.

As we came away from our lunch, we were in the cloister. This is the first time we have experienced a cloister whose walks are fully enclosed, with walls pierced by stained-glass windows (and doorways, of course) separating the walks from the central cloister garth. The walks have a fan-vaulted ceiling which, at 650 years old, is the oldest of its kind anywhere in the world! Another claim to fame for the cloister walks is that they feature as part of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films!

As we left the cathedral, we walked up College Court, where we found the House of the Tailor of Gloucester. The book The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter was reportedly her favourite, and is based on a true story about the local tailor. The Museum and Shop's website summarises it succinctly:

"Closing his shop at Saturday lunchtime with a waistcoat cut out but not sewn together, he was surprised to discover when, on the Monday morning he opened the shop again, to discover that apart from one button hole, the waistcoat had been sewn together. A tiny note was pinned to the button hole which read, 'no more twist'." In fact, the tailor's apprentices came back during the weekend and completed the work (but for that last buttonhole), but they never admitted to it, so the story got about that the fairies had come to the party. Beatrix simply retold the tale, substituting mice for the fairies. But her watercolours reproduced in the book are recognisably this very shop!

We went back to Eastgate Street, and to the doctors' clinic (the GHAC). After a long consultation — which was mainly the time needed to actually prepare the prescriptions — we came away with what we needed. And Dr Raj gave us a few tips about places to visit in Turkey!

After this, we took the bus back to the Hotel, had dinner in the van, and then adjourned to our room for the night.

Distance driven — today, 2 miles ( 3 km ); to date, 9,802 miles ( 15,775 km )