There are more than 100 cathedrals in England, Scotland and Wales of many different denominations (although I for one had been previously unaware of the Belarus Autocephalous Orthodox Church). But, wisely, Christopher Somerville focuses on those great galleons with which we are most familiar: the cathedrals that first rose up above the plains of England after 1066.
The metaphor which Somerville uses, of these cathedrals as ‘ships of heaven’, runs before the wind throughout this book. If the early cathedrals were blunt old battleships, built as foursquare as castles to show that the conquering Normans were here to stay, later Gothic ones were as elegant as grand and beautiful yachts.
Somerville describes the atmosphere in the cathedral towns as being much like that of a seaport while the giant constructions were built in their midst, with a crowd of attendant prostitutes, merchants and craftsmen. For miles around, the countryside too was changed, as agriculture was intensified to feed and clothe the incomers.
From the finagling and manoeuvring over where they would be built to some truly devious political machinations between bishop, dean and chapter when they were (as seen in modern times in Lincoln), cathedrals have always been contentious.
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