Exeter Cathedral

Exeter Cathedral

[ Aug.2016 ] The last destination of our travels with my mother who stayed with us in London was Exeter, the city in the south west England.

This was my first visit there, too.

It took about 2 and a half hours by train from London Paddington station.

Although I bought the train tickets beforehand, the seats were not booked, so we had to go there early to get the seats.

After being settled in the seats, it was a nice journey looking at the rustic scenery with cows and sheep scattered around.

Exeter is an important historical city, so there must be a lot to see there, but because my mum is elderly, we just went to see the most important cathedral.

The cathedral was in a green park.

The entrance fee was as much as £7.50, but it was worth it.

The huge space was impressive, especially the ceiling called the vault.

According to the leaflet I was given, the length of the vault is about 96 metres from west to east.

This is the longest continuous vault in the world which was made in the Middle Ages.

There were round stones on the ceiling and these stones are called Bosses and important elements to support the vault.

In this cathedral there are about 400 Bosses and each one was shaped as a person’s face, a plant, an animal and so on with the colours, which were rather cute.

They started building the cathedral in this place in 1114.

At first it was in Romanesque, but around 1270 – 1350, a huge renovation works were done and it became a Gothic style.

Inside, there was a space showing a video about this cathedral, so we decided to rest there and watch it.

In the video, they said there is an evidence that the sculptures on the outside wall used to be coloured like the Bosses.

The colourful statues would give us a totally different image, wouldn’t they.

Also, during the WW2, the Allied Force bombed the historical buildings in Lubeck in Germany, so the German force bombed Exeter Cathedral in revenge.

The restoration work was very difficult as if solving the world’s biggest jigsaw puzzle.