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When heavy rain made it impossible to hike, we decided to visit Haut-Kœnigsbourg Castle. The castle has a rich history that goes back more than 800 years. It was originally built in the 12th century by the Hohenstaufen family and served as a strategic fortress, controlling important trade routes in the region. The castle sits on a high hill overlooking the Upper Rhine Plain, offering expansive views of the surrounding landscape. The castle was destroyed during the Thirty Years' War in 1633 by Swedish troops and lay in ruins for centuries. In the early 20th century, the German Emperor Wilhelm II restored the castle to reinforce German heritage in Alsace. The restoration, completed between 1900 and 1908 by architect Bodo Ebhardt, rebuilt the castle in a medieval style, blending historical accuracy with some creative touches. Despite the creative touches, we truly enjoyed the morning we spent there - Haut-Kœnigsbourg Castle, Orschwiller, Alsace Region, France
Visit to the Tower of London the 2nd of July 2021. I had to book a ticket on line so booked the first slot at 9am. It was very slow there due to Covid-19 but great to visit without the crowds that would be there from all over the world in normal times. The Tower of London dates back to 1066 with the White Tower being built in 1078. The castle is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Historic Centre (Old Town) of Tallinn is an exceptionally complete and well-preserved medieval northern European trading city on the coast of the Baltic Sea.
The city developed as a significant centre of the Hanseatic League during the major period of activity of this great trading organization in the 13th-16th centuries.
Travelled up to Salisbury today to revisit the wonderful cathedral. It has the tallest spire in the United Kingdom. I climbed to the top of the spire last time I visited back in 2014. The tower is not open at the moment due to Covid-19 rules on social distancing. Salisbury cathedral is one of our newer Norman cathedrals as it was not built until 1220AD. Sadly the weather today as you can see was cloudy and overcast.
The closest Cathedral to me is Portsmouth Cathedral which was built in 1180AD and paid for my a local wealthy Norman merchant. It has a very interesting history. In 1449AD the Bishop of Chichester was murdered in Portsmouth by sailors so the cathedral was closed and the people of Portsmouth excommunicated!
The Tympanum of the St. Francis' Basilica in Assisi
From the Internet:
The Papal Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi (Italian: Basilica Papale di San Francesco d'Assisi, Latin: Basilica Sancti Francisci Assisiensis) is the mother church of the Roman Catholic Order of Friars Minor, commonly known as the Franciscan Order, in Assisi (Italy), the birthplace of St. Francis. Burial place of St. Francis, the basilica is one of the most important places of Christian pilgrimage in Italy. The basilica, which was begun in 1228, is built into the side of a hill and comprises two churches known as the Upper Church and the Lower Church, and a crypt where the remains of the saint are interred. With its accompanying friary, the basilica is a distinctive landmark to those approaching Assisi. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000.
The interior of the Upper Church is important as an early example of the Gothic style in Italy. The Upper and Lower Churches are decorated with frescoes by numerous late medieval painters from the Roman and Tuscan schools, and include works by Cimabue, Giotto, Simone Martini, Pietro Lorenzetti and possibly Pietro Cavallini. The range and quality of the works gives the basilica a unique importance in demonstrating the development of Italian art of this period.
St Mary's Anglican parish church, was built in the 1130s in the outer bailey of Portchester Castle. The church was built for an Augustinian priory which Pont de l'Arche established within the castle in 1128. Part of the priory was demolished leaving just the church. Portchester castle was built by the Normans sometime between 1066 and 1100. The castle was built on a former Roman Fort which was built between 285AD & 290AD and was home to the Roman fleet in Britain.
Merton College Chapel is the church of Merton College of the University of Oxford. Dedicated to St Mary and St John the Baptist, the chapel was largely completed in its present form by the end of the 13th century. The building retains a number of original stained glass windows, and is noted for its acoustics.
This description incorporates text from the English Wikipedia.
Samsung phone photos of my visit to the Tower of London the 2nd of July 2021. I had to book a ticket on line so booked the first slot at 9am. It was very slow there due to Covid-19 but great to visit without the crowds that would be there from all over the world in normal times. The Tower of London dates back to 1066 with the White Tower being built in 1078. The castle is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Ministry of Rural Affairs of Estonia (Estonian: ) is a government ministry of Estonia responsible for policies regarding agriculture, food market and food safety, animal wealth, welfare and breeding, bioeconomy and fishing industry in Estonia.
Chichester Cathedral, formally known as the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Chichester. It is located in Chichester, in West Sussex, United Kingdom. It was founded as a cathedral in 1075. I visited again on the 28th of July 2021. Had a nice walk around inside the cathedral and around the outside too where the changing clouds made an interesting backdrops
Visit to the Tower of London the 2nd of July 2021. I had to book a ticket on line so booked the first slot at 9am. It was very slow there due to Covid-19 but great to visit without the crowds that would be there from all over the world in normal times. The Tower of London dates back to 1066 with the White Tower being built in 1078. The castle is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Arundel Castle in West Sussex England. This Norman castle dates back to 1067 and is the seat of the Duke of Norfolk.
A view westwards along the nave at Bradford Cathedral, including most of the choir, to the West Window, the Catherine and Jane Wells Memorial Window of 1864. The window depicts the theme of Women of the Bible, and was placed here by a Bradford solicitor named Wells in memory of his sisters. This is mostly an older portion of the Cathedral, with little of Maufe's mid-20th Century work visible here.
The Grade I Bradford Cathedral, the Cathedral Church of St Peter, is built on a site used for Christian worship since the 8th century, when missionaries based in Dewsbury evangelised the area. It is notable for having a distinctly more Protestant tradition of furnishing, worship, and theology than any other Church of England cathedral, and it is under the patronage of the Simeon Trust.
The Saxon church fell into ruin during the Norman Invasion in 1066. The Norman Lady of the Manor, Alice de Laci, built a second church that three hundred years later would be destroyed by raiding Scots.
During the 14th century the church was rebuilt and some of the older masonry may have been used in the reconstruction of the nave. The nave arcades, the oldest parts of the present building, were completed in 1458. A clerestory above them was added by the end of the 15th century. Chantry chapels were founded, on the north side of the chancel by the Leventhorpe family, and on the south by the owners of Bolling Hall. The tower in the Perpendicular style was added to the west end and finished in 1508.
The building was extended in the 1950s and 1960s by Edward Maufe. The east end of the Cathedral (shown in the photo) is Maufe’s work, but he reused the Morris & Co. stained glass from the old east window—there is therefore Victorian stained glass throughout the building. In 1854 Robert Mawer carved a new reredos in Caen stone for the church – there is a photograph of it in the church archive – but this was lost during Maufe’s rebuild. There was a substantial internal reordering in 1987, which included the replacement of the Victorian pews by chairs.
St Peter’s Church became a cathedral in 1919, when the Diocese of Bradford was created out of the Diocese of Ripon; it became one of three co-equal cathedrals of the new Diocese of Leeds upon its creation on 20 April 2014.
Bryggen is a historic harbour district in Bergen, one of North Europe’s oldest port cities on the west coast of Norway which was established as a centre for trade by the 12th century.
In 1350 the Hanseatic League established a “Hanseatic Office” in Bergen. They gradually acquired ownership of Bryggen and controlled the trade in stockfish from Northern Norway through privileges granted by the Crown. The Hanseatic League established a total of four overseas Hanseatic Offices, Bryggen being the only one preserved today.
Happily secluded and little affected by the present times, Holcombe Old Church has been left on its own since the village moved a mile away, with a new St Andrew’s in the main street opened in 1885. That is now the parish church, and this is now a disused church under the care of the Churches’ Conservation Trust; the information in this description is taken either from their helpful guide or the Rev’d Clarissa Cridland’s slightly longer history.
A Saxon church once stood here, but the present building is a small, unassuming, partly Norman construction in shell grey, serenely placed against deep woods, hiding a stream, and green hills.
The earliest notice of the church ‘is to be found in the acts of Bishop Reginald (1174–91) creating the prebends of Holcombe, White Lackington and Timberscombe, in the cathedral Church of Wels.’ One block of limestone, however, has inscriptions which are difficult to decipher but are almost certainly Saxon, perhaps indicating the first church on this site was dedicated by Wrotard, Archbishop of York on his way to or from the Exeter Council of Easter 928.
A surviving Saxon stone church really would be a big deal, but most of the present church dates from the Norman church-building boom of the 12th Century, with alterations in the 16th and 17th Centuries.
We do not have a precise date for the construction of the tower, but the many Somerset churches, like this one, with their fine square towers with windows of vertical lines, started being built from end of the 14th century onwards: the Black Death caused a shortage of skilled craftsmen for the earlier, more elaborate Decorated style.
The porch gable incorporates a recut Norman arch, with a zigzag around it. Above the arch, in place of the keystone, is a 16th-century carved angel with wings outstretched and arms folded.
The nave of the south of the Grade I listed St Michael and All Angels, the parish church of the village of Urchfont near Devizes in Wiltshire (pop. 1,181).
St Michael and All Angels Church dates from the late 13th Century and early 14th Century and is a Grade I listed building.
The chancel arch, centre of shot here, is, along with the font, one of the only survivors from an older building on the same site dating to around 1220.
The crowning glory of the church undoubtedly the fine vaulting with carved bosses in the six-bay chancel. Pevsner likened these to the the aisles of Bristol Cathedral.
The nave was rebuilt and extended in the 14th Century and the roof is 17th Century. The transepts were added in the 14th Century, while the tower at the west end (out of shot) was built in the late 15th Century.
The stone pulpit dates from 1863. The aisles were re-roofed in 1631 and 1787, and restoration was carried out in 1864 and 1900.
Wonderful Arundel Castle in West Sussex England. This Norman castle dates back to 1067 and is the seat of the Duke of Norfolk.
Chichester Cathedral, formally known as the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Chichester. It is located in Chichester, in West Sussex, United Kingdom. It was founded as a cathedral in 1075. I visited again on the 28th of July 2021. Had a nice walk around inside the cathedral and and around the outside too where the changing clouds made an interest back drop
Saturday 14th of August 2021 and a trip to the closest Cathedral to me in Portsmouth. Portsmouth Cathedral was built in 1180AD and paid for my a local wealthy Norman merchant. It has a very interesting history. In 1449AD the Bishop of Chichester was murdered in Portsmouth by sailors so the cathedral was closed for a time and the people of Portsmouth excommunicated! The Cathedral is just a short walk from the closest beach at the Hot Walls.
The sanctuary at Rochester Cathedral is dominated by George Gilbert Scott's 1873 reredos featuring the Last Supper in haut relief. The east windows also date from Gilbert Scott’s restoration – and not only the glass! Gilbert Scott got rid of the ‘uncouth’ window which he felt should ‘give way to the integrity of the Early English design’; he replaced with the current three lancets in a classically unrestorative piece of “restoration”.
Rochester Cathedral in the English county of Kent, formally the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary, is the seat of the Diocese of Rochester, the second oldest bishopric in England after that of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The edifice is a Grade I listed building.
The war memorial was executed by the famous Sir Herbert Baker in 1922.
There has been a cathedral on this site since 604, but after the Norman Conquest, the by now decayed building was replaced by a new Rochester Cathedral, constructed beginning in 1080 by Bishop Gundulf.
The building was dedicated in either 1130 or 1133, but was badly damaged by fire almost immediately, and then again in 1137 and 1179, with the east end almost complete destroyed. This was replaced around the turn of the 13th Century. There was a significant period of extension in the late 13th and early 14th Centuries, which added much Decorated work while leaving the Norman-Romanesque superstructure largely intact.
The cathedral suffered a steep decline after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century, during which time its estates were confiscated by the Crown, and it became dilapidated and fell into disrepute. Samuel Pepys, the diarist, would later dismiss it as a "shabby place". After William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, visited the cathedral in 1633 and complained about its general state, there seems to have been a significant programme of repairs, only to fall into disrepair again under Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth, although remedial work began as early as 1664 after the Restoration. Almost inevitably, the Cathedral was “restored” by George Gilbert Scott in the 1870s.
This description incorporates text from the English Wikipedia.
St Peter ad Vincula, Broad Hinton, Wiltshire is Grade I listed Early English parish church of the Church of England Diocese of Salisbury.
There may have been a Saxon church here, but the earliest parts of the present church are 12th Century. The 13th Century chancel was substantially restored 1879-80 by CE Ponting.
This period was also when the 15th Century tower was repaired, and when the pinnacles were added, but in 1928 the south pier of the tower arch was found to be bulging inwards and giving way. The tower was shored up with timber while new foundations were laid and survived a gale while standing on only three legs! Mind you, in 1553 the parishioners refused to attend services here because the risk of falling masonry was so great. The broken stones allowed so many birds into the then chancel that the minister couldn’t stand by the communion table. John Batewell, a vicar appointed in 1576, was officially censured for his inability to preach, neglect of catechizing and failure to wear the prescribed dress.
Much of the nave seems to have been restored in 1634-6, representing recovery from this period of dissolution.
The Sir Thomas Wroughton monument, from 1597, is one of the church’s finest features.
e from hunting to find his wife, Anne, reading the Bible instead of cooking his supper. He flung the Bible in the fire and she badly burned her hands retrieving it. His blasphemous behaviour caused his hands to wither away, as well as those of his children. Anne holds a partly burned Bible.
Wroughton was clearly a bit of a character: Sheriff of Wiltshire, yet listed among poachers of the King’s deer in the records of the Wardens of Savernake Forest!
Unfortunately, I missed the significance of the tomb of the Civil War Royalist, Francis Glanville, even though I photographed the stencilled Victorian font. I will come back another time to capture it, which may also help with a more strong and stable shot of the nave. As St Peter ad Vincula was the terminus a quo for a 28km walk when I took these photos, I did NOT have my tripod with me and I had to improvise camera stability and was not always entirely effective in doing so.
Bryggen is a historic harbour district in Bergen, one of North Europe’s oldest port cities on the west coast of Norway which was established as a centre for trade by the 12th century.
In 1350 the Hanseatic League established a “Hanseatic Office” in Bergen. They gradually acquired ownership of Bryggen and controlled the trade in stockfish from Northern Norway through privileges granted by the Crown. The Hanseatic League established a total of four overseas Hanseatic Offices, Bryggen being the only one preserved today.
The ambulatory (here on the south side) of Tewkesbury Abbey leads to a cornucopia of side chapels. I love the contrast of the warm interior light with the cool outside blues of a cloudy afternoon as sunset approaches.
The Abbey Church of St Mary the Virgin, Tewkesbury – commonly known as Tewkesbury Abbey – is located in the English county of Gloucestershire. A former Benedictine monastery, it is now a parish church. Considered one of the finest examples of Norman architecture in Britain, it has the largest Romanesque crossing tower in Europe. Tewkesbury had been a centre for worship since the 7th Century. A priory was established there in the 10th Century. The present building was started in the early 12th Century. It was unsuccessfully used as a sanctuary in the Wars of the Roses. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, it became the parish church for the town. George Gilbert Scott led the Restoration of the building in the late 19th Century.
The churchmanship of the Abbey is strongly Anglo-Catholic.
This description incorporates text from the English Wikipedia.
A south-west elevation of Coventry Cathedral and the ruins of the original which were destroyed by aerial bombing in 1940 (note this building is oriented perpendicular to the conventional east-west geographical orientation).
The present Coventry Cathedral is topped by Geoffrey Clarke’s sculpture in the form of a winged cross on a 26 metre manganese bronze alloy flèche, in place of a conventional spire, which was airlifted on top of the roof by helicopter. When once asked sarcastically what a radio pylon was doing on top of his cathedral, architect Sir Basil Spence said, “To receive messages from heaven.”
The original St Michael’s was almost completely destroyed by the Luftwaffe; the rubble was not cleared for seven years. Only the tower, spire, the outer wall and the bronze effigy and tomb of its first bishop, Huyshe Yeatman-Biggs, survived. Largely constructed in the late 14th and 15th Centuries in red sandstone, it was one of the largest parish churches in England and only elevated to cathedral status in 1918 with the creation of the Diocese of Coventry as a result of rapid population growth in the industrial West Midlands. The Perpendicular Gothic spire still dominates the site: the top of the weathervane is 88 metres above the ground, making it the tallest structure in Coventry; among Church of England cathedrals, only Norwich and Salisbury have a higher spire. The ruins remain a permanent memorial to the 600 or so residents of Coventry who died on the night the cathedral was destroyed. The site of the ruins is open to visitors is are occasionally used for acts of worship, particularly those related to reconciliation.
Just occasionally people tell me they don’t like Coventry Cathedral. I couldn’t disagree more; a powerful symbol of Resurrection, restored to a very different life barely twenty years after being destroyed in the Blitz on 14 November 1940. The Modernist Cathedral of St Michael of the 20th Century both surrounded by and incomprehensible without the ruins of 14th Century building that surrounds it.
Coventry Cathedral incarnates the twin and interconnected British revivals of the two decades after the end of the Second World War – a revival of high culture and a revival of Christian faith. Basil Spence’s cathedral housing Jacob Epstein’s sculptures, John Piper’s massive arrangements of stained glass into windows, and Graham Sutherland’s tapestry, still in 2021 the largest in the world, represent collectively a totemic achievement in modernist visual arts and architecture.
The brief for the competition to select the architect of the new Cathedral demanded that the design emphasise the celebration of the Eucharist; Spence himself had a further vision of the building as the repository of great modern works of art. He described his building as “a plain jewel casket”. Piper’s windows cast shafts of colour into the heart of the nave, while the plain glass West Screen, which faces to the geographical south, allows much natural light into the building, essential given that the east end is entirely filled with Graham Sutherland’s great tapestry, still the largest in the world at 22 metres tall by 12 metres wide.
Coventry Cathedral was built to a tight budget – “not more than £985,000” – and making much use of reinforced concrete, the new cathedral was constructed in just six years, between Queen Elizabeth II laying the foundation stone on 23 March 1956 and the dedication ceremony on 25 May 1962.
Could there have been a finer or more appropriate setting for the world première of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem on 30 May 1962? On that night, the Cathedral’s great post-War religious theme was also incarnated in the three soloists: Peter Pears (Britten’s partner) from the host nation, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau from Germany, Galina Vishnevskaya from the USSR, representing three belligerent nations. That tri-national partnership continues to be symbolised by the presence of a replica of the Stalingrad Madonna given by the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, where the original hangs, with a second copy being in Kazan Cathedral in Volgograd.
A building that breathes with the presence of the Holy Spirit, giving new life the Church in every generation.
Chichester Cathedral, formally known as the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Chichester. It is located in Chichester, in West Sussex, United Kingdom. It was founded as a cathedral in 1075. I visited again on the 28th of July 2021. Had a nice walk around inside the cathedral and and around the outside too where the changing clouds made an interest back drop
St Andrew’s Church in the Somerset village of Blagdon (pop. 1,116), was built in the 15th century. It is a Grade II* listed building.
The church has a 35-metre-high tower, one of the tallest in Somerset. Apart from the tower, rest of the church was rebuilt in 1907–09 by Lord Winterstoke (of the Wills tobacco family). A piscina with a 12th Century frieze of the four Evangelists has somehow survived multiple re-buildings and attests to a Norman church on the same site.
Augustus Toplady was serving as curate of St Andrew's in the 1760s when he wrote the hymn Rock of Ages. It is believed that he was inspired to write the lyrics while sheltering under a rock in nearby Burrington Combe.
This description incorporates text from the English Wikipedia.