GLOUCESTER

SEPTEMBER 2018

Constrained by the need to be in Tunbridge Wells at the end of October (to provide access to my flat during external redecoration), this year I had to forgo an autumnal search for the sun in Europe.

Instead I decided to visit Wales again and to travel there in easy stages from the caravan storage farm near Winchester.

I stayed first at a basic campsite near the small village of Slad, high in the Cotswold Hills on the escarpment overlooking Gloucester and Cheltenham. This was a single field in which I was the sole occupant for the first 24 hours, and had all essential services (including a power supply) but no showers. 

One of the reasons for choosing this place was to visit an annual History Festival in Gloucester. For the most part that was a disappointment due to congestion in the city centre that was once a beautiful place – when the population was about 5 % of its present number. 

Cathedral Design and Construction

But one of the events was a talk on Cathedral Green by a young stone-mason being trained and employed by the Cathedral as one of its small team maintaining the fabric of the building. His talk and demonstration of traditional tools was very interesting and I was surprised to learn most of the work was performed with an axe - chisels and claws being employed only for fine work and decorative carving. 

I very much enjoyed the discussion that followed, leading as it did to confirmation critical decisions on the design and construction were originally taken by a Master Builder and a Master Carpenter. Both reached their positions after a long apprenticeship and many years experience in their trades. 

I also learned the Master Carpenter became less important as time passed because there were so many roof fires that timber vaults and construction were replaced in stone and flying buttresses developed to carry the greater weight and outward thrusts resulting from this change – all done empirically since the mathematics and physics of science and engineering were not developed until centuries later. 

The young mason confirmed many problems and accidents arose from this empirical approach because, knowledgeable and skilled though they were, contemporary masons couldn't foresee all possibilities. 

Perhaps the most famous example is the free-standing Bell Tower of Pisa Cathedral in Italy and it is less well known that the central tower in Wells Cathedral suffered a similar problem in the same period (14^thCentury). 

In both cases the problem stemmed from the underlying ground being unable uniformly to support the weight of the towers. At Pisa it was softness of the ground on one side that caused the inclination observed during initial construction and prevalent ever since. The central tower at Wells was first discovered to be leaning about a hundred years after construction and is now thought to have been caused by a fault generated during an earthquake a hundred years before that. 

Many unsuccessful stabilisation measures have been tried at Pisa but the latest series, starting as recently as 1964, seem to have led to a successful result in 2008! 

Medieval masons were more successful at Wells and the strong but elegant“Scissors Arches”were introduced in the first half of the 14^thCentury. 

Gloucester Cathedral Construction and Use

Christianity had been established in England for many years before the Norman invasion and an abbey built in Gloucester in the late 7^thCentury. At that time it was secondary in importance to one already established at Hereford that originated, along with one at Worcester, as a sub-division of the Bishopric of Lichfield. These latter places were at the heart of the Kingdom of Mercia, established after the Saxons had pushed the Britons into Wales but later over-run by the Viking invaders from Scandinavia and then the Normans.

The Normans quickly changed everything they found and immediately after their victory at Hastings in 1066 imparted a new vigour to both civil and religious life with a massive programme of Castle and Cathedral building unlike anything seen before in strength and size.

In the Midlands they started at Hereford in 1079 to replace an Abbey destroyed by the Welsh under Prince Llewellyn, and the Norman Bishop of Hereford started construction of another new Abbey at Gloucester ten years later in 1089.

A 7^thcentury Saxon church had previously stood on the site chosen but the new building was stone-built as a great place of Worship that would completely overawe the local population.

In common with many other Norman buildings the Abbey was largely completed in the 13^thcentury but extensively expanded and modifed over the next 100-200 years. It had many Royal associations, with Henry III being initially crowned there in 1216, Edward III buried in 1327, and Henry VIII destroying its ownership during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1520 but re-instating it as a Cathedral one year later.

Today, it continues as an active place of worship and a magnificent reminder of past glories.

In these less devout days it is also used for more secular purposes such as film-making. My grandchildren may be interested to learn it appeared as Hogwarts School in several of the Harry Potter films and my daughter that it was the setting for Wolf Hall in the BBC's adaptation of Hilary Mantel's novel of the same name.