Christine's blog: Lincoln Cathedral

Friday 16 February 2024

Lincoln Cathedral

Following our very poor efforts at the cathedrals of Salisbury and Winchester, we decided that we would try harder at Lincoln.

After many decades being shrouded in scaffolding, I was very pleased to find that it was all taken down about eight months ago leaving the entrance looking immaculate.

We booked on the morning guided tour and heard all about the history of the place. Work started almost 1,000 years ago, although it was much smaller than it is today. It was originally just a small fortified square building that was made mostly of wood that soon burned down.

Work started again and that was mostly destroyed by an earthquake, and then work started again. But then most of the money that had been collected to pay for the building was stolen in an uprising.

They carried on building but had to scale back their plans, although it does look magnificent now. In fact, it also used to have a huge wooden spire, and in 1,311 it became the tallest building in the world until it fell down in a storm 237 years later.

In the 1,300's a civil war and battle caused most of the stained glass windows to be destroyed. The small pieces of glass were carefully saved and about 100 years later an architect got the job of putting it back together. People assumed that he was going to put the pictures back together, but that was too difficult so instead he made a lovely random pattern.

At the moment a huge globe is hanging from the ceiling, and a few months ago we saw it in Bath Abbey when we went there for a concert.

We also saw the Lincoln Imp which is a legendary naughty creature that turned up and caused a lot of trouble, until an angel got fed up with it and turned it to stone - allegedly.