Norwich Cathedral

[poliphilo]

Norwich is my favourite cathedral. The carcass is Romanesque (my preferred architectural style) but with Gothic add-ons- like the superb stone vault- replacing a wooden roof that went up in flames- that look like they were always meant to be there. Other cathedrals meld the two styles (in fact most of them do to some extent) but nowhere is the marriage happier than here.

I took so many photographs. Here are a few...



A section of the nave- the Normans and the late medievals working together as if the three centuries that separate them were of no account.



A section of the ambulatory behind the high altar



The presbytery and high altar



A view down the south aisle, with coloured light flooding in through 20th century glass.

Comments

[cmcmck]

It is lovely.

Rochester is similarly Romanesque with Gothic bolt ons as you know.

Don't get me going on George Gilbert %^&^&! Scott!

[poliphilo]

We were in St Edmundsbury cathedral recently- a parish church that was bumped up to cathedral status in the 20th century. The new work (by Stephen Dykes Bower and associates) is hugely sympathetic. And in the course of rethinking the building they demolished George Gilbert Scott's Victorian chancel (hooray!)

[cmcmck]

I wish someone would take that awful GGS spire off Rochester!

[poliphilo]

Or lengthen it perhaps? It's too squat for a cathedral.

[cmcmck]

On a Romanesque building of that date, it simply doesn't belong there at all.

[poliphilo]

I'm not a purist. I'm happy for a Norman building to have additions from other periods. Peterborough, for instance, is mainly Romanesque but the Early English west front is one of its glories. I like spires and I'd be happy for Rochester to have one; it's just that the existing one is such a stubby little thing.