Canterbury Cathedral

It rained on and off today as we went Kent, the next county south of Essex, and visited Rochester - a place where Dickens lived - and then Canterbury to see the famous cathedral.

From the Cathedral's website:

St Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, arrived on the coast of Kent as a missionary to England in 597 AD. He came from Rome, sent by Pope Gregory the Great. It is said that Gregory had been struck by the beauty of Angle slaves he saw for sale in the city market and despatched Augustine and some monks to convert them to Christianity.  [I know it was a different time and people thought about slaves differently, but it still sounds bizarre to me.]

Augustine's original building lies beneath the floor of the nave– it was extensively rebuilt and enlarged by the Saxons, and the Cathedral was rebuilt completely by the Normans in 1070 following a major fire. There have been many additions to the building over the last nine hundred years, but parts of the quire and some of the windows and their stained glass date from the 12th century.

By 1077, Archbishop Lanfranc had rebuilt it as a Norman church, described as "nearly perfect". A staircase and parts of the North Wall - in the area of the North West transept also called the Martyrdom - remain from that building.

Again from the Cathedral website:

The Nave

The Romanesque Nave was replaced in the 14th century by the one we see today. Its tall columns rise to meet in delicate vaulted arches and gilt roof bosses high over our heads. It is one of the most magnificent surviving examples of English Perpendicular Gothic, designed by Henry Yevele, the King’s Master mason.

The Quire

The Quire was rebuilt and extended after a disastrous fire in 1174 destroyed the earlier structure. Thomas Becket's shrine was placed in the Trinity Chapel in 1220, until it was destroyed in 1538 during the Reformation by order of Henry VIII. The Corona, built as a separate shrine for the a piece of Becket's skull, completes the eastern exterior of the Cathedral in a unique fashion.  Beautiful stained glass windows illustrate miracles and stories associated with St Thomas.

Mrs. Warren's Profession - Photos Added

 Doug arranged that we go into London to meet a friend of his and go to the theater.  We were able to go to the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery after getting the tickets - there's a half-price booth in the area - and before the play.

  Both galleries had no photo rules, but we're headed off to Kent soon, so I don' t have time to do the photos I did take. [photos added later]

My impressions of London as a chaotic jumble of monumental buildings with lots of walkways in-between and millions of walkers using them was reinforced.  All these pictures were taken within 1/4 mile or less of each other.


The portrait gallery [left] had some interesting new stuff - including computer generated portraits that were not static and one artist made a bust of his head using various materials including his own blood which is kept in a temperature controlled glass box. There was also an exhibit of Indian Portraits from 1560 - 1860, .  From their website:

"This outstanding exhibition, the first of its kind in the UK, tells the story of the Indian portrait over three centuries, exploring the fascinating ways in which Indian artists have approached the depiction of the human form and the changing role of portraiture in Indian history. Bringing together 60 stunning works from international collections, the exhibition will celebrate the beauty, power and humanity of these works of art."

Then we walked out - across the street was St. Martin's in the Field and then around the corner was Trafalgar Square.

The national museum, which looks out onto Trafalgar Square,  had room after elegant room of paintings of Christ at different ages (mostly babies or on the cross) by artists of different times and different European traditions.


As you can see from the banner, the National Gallery has free admission, as did the National Portrait Gallery, and the British museum.  They only charge for some special exhibits.  The Smithsonian in Washington DC is all free as well.  In Berlin, there was an admission fee for all the museums. 

 Here's Trafalgar Square from the steps of the National Gallery as we came out. 

The play, a George Bernard Shaw classic written in 1894, was well acted, but not terribly exciting.  I did like being in a theater where no mics were used.  The story - a young woman who barely knows her mother finds out the source of the income that has paid for her upbringing and education - still has observations of society that are relevant, but I thought the daughter's reaction to be the most dated.  Also, the daughter, Miss Warren, was the actress who did not project her voice as well as the other actors.

Peter Brown  gives a useful review and his conclusion is close to mine:

Watchable and interesting from a historical perspective, and brave for its time, our views about morality have changed significantly, making 'Mrs Warren's Profession' seem rather tame and quaint.

Punting on the River Cam, Cambridge

The hope had been to go punting on the River Cam which runs through Cambridge, but the weather had been so cold, grey, and windy lately that we weren't sure.  But it turned into a spectacular day that was not only pleasant to walk around in  but it my camera trigger finger go crazy.  So BG, who was a Cambridge student forty years ago, took us punting. 

He managed to stay on the punt the whole way, even when the pole got stuck in the mud.  More impressive is that he got us where he wanted us - through bridges, past other punts, along the shore - without crashing into anything.  This was all done by pushing off with the pole and occasionally using it as a rudder.

He told us where we were all along, but I wasn't taking notes.

The Anchor was near where we returned the punt and seemed like a good lunch spot.

Because BG knew how to punt, we did the self-hire.  And because he was a Cambridge grad he got a discount on top of that. 

And finally we have lunch at the Anchor, the pub we had just passed.  BG did let us know that the weather we had was quite out of the ordinary and that most punting was done in a drizzle. 

Cambridge 1 - King's College Chapel

Doug had arranged for us to meet with a Cambridge grad friend - BG - at Cambridge Thursday. An unexpected guest was the sun which warmed things up considerably and made for much nicer photo opportunities. I'll start with King's College, particularly the chapel.

But first, BG pointed out Senate House Leap - students jumping from the corner of one of these buildings to the other, which is described in detail at insectnation (which has pictures):

"There is, of course, one easy way up the Senate House. This is to climb up the South face of Caius, and then get on to the building by way of the Senate House Leap. This method has been well known for a long time, and the only argument concerning it that I know of has been over the distance to be jumped.
One night we decided to go up and measure it, and at the same time to get some photographs. Most people put the distance between Caius and the Senate House at 7-8 feet, but it proved to be only 6 feet at the narrowest part. It was very wet and slippery that night so we decided that a rope would be necessary protection, especially with flash guns going off. Brian jumped across first and belayed everyone else from the Senate House. This is a necessary precaution, since if an accident occurred the climber would dangle under the overhang of the Senate House, instead of smashing into the face of Caius, probably through a window. We have all done the leap several times without a rope, the only difficulty being summoning up enough courage on the first attempt. The reverse jump onto Caius is equally easy."

Shortly we were at the entrance to the King's College Chapel. 

King's College website says: 

King's College Chapel is one of the most iconic buildings in the world, and is a splendid example of late Gothic (Perpendicular) architecture. It was started in 1446 by Henry VI (1421-71) and took over a century to build. It has the largest fan vault ceiling in the world and some of the finest medieval stained glass.

(This picture does connect roughly with the one above.) I mentioned in the post on Arlington National Cemetery how the whole setting impacts one's unconscious (if not conscious) attitude toward the military and soldiers and war.  Clearly, this is an extreme example of how architectural space does the same.  It is hard to be in this building without feeling awe and one's own insignificance. 

Imagine, when they started building this chapel, the Western World hadn't heard the name Columbus nor did it know about the Americas.  And this also supports my recent comment about how people today really should have much more respect for the abilities of people in the past.  

 The chapel from the River Cam.

King's College Chapel and moorhen. 

British Elections High Voter Turnout

[Update: 11:23pm - BBC is reporting that in a number of polling places people were turned away when the polls closed at 10pm and they weren't allowed to vote. But it seems they were not prepared for such a possibility and different polling places treated such voters differently. I also learned today that EU members living in UK can vote in local elections, but not the national elections.]

[Update 10:12 pm: Here's the television's exit poll report.  307 for the Conservatives, but they need 326 seats to have a majority.  255 is for Labour.  59 is Lib Dems.  29 Others.  Here's a link to the BBC coverage.]

We were in Cambridge today and the sun was glorious and I'll post some pictures soon.  But it's election day in UK and here are some photos of voting.  Above was from the Park and Ride bus leaving Cambridge to the car park where Doug's car was.

And here's Doug's polling place in Brentwood. 

These were the officials at the polling place in Brentwood.  They allowed me to take pictures, but they did ask what I was going to do with them.  When I said I had a blog in Alaska, they had no problem.

Here are the voting booths.

These are the candidates for Member of Parliament (MP) from this district.  As I said in the previous post, Pickles is the Conservative Party Chair and current MP from Brentwood. 

These are the candidates for local council.

These folks were checking people's polling numbers on their voting cards as they came in or left.  They are actually party members who are checking on who votes so they can then go out and encourage their supporters who haven't voted to go out and vote.  The woman has on a blue ribbon which indicates the Conservative Party.  The man had a yellow ribbon in his pocket and represents the Liberal Democratic Party.  I asked about the Labour Party rep and she said she'd done this four times now and there never was a Labour Party rep.  They said that voting was quite high.  That was a couple of hours ago, about 6:30pm local time.

It sounds like a lot of people hadn't made up their minds yet.  We heard from someone today that he wasn't sure if he was voting Conservative or Liberal Democrat, but he was sure he didn't want Brown any longer. 

People are expecting a Conservative minority victory and then it will be a while until they can form a government and Gordon Brown would be prime minister until a new one has been selected. 


Polls are open until 10pm (it's almost ten now) and we'll be watching the telly for a while.