Climbing Up On Salisbury Hill...?

[sakon76]

We went to Salisbury Cathedral today. Good god, that's an impressive structure. There really isn't anything on that scale in California, either in grandiosity or age. (A tiny bit of me always looks at half the architecture here in the UK and thinks "One good quake, and that'd come tumbling down." I am such a Californian.) It's always a bit odd walking around cathedrals over here, because I'm never sure if I'm being disrespectful in walking over where people are interred beneath the floor. I mean, if you go to a graveyard, you just don't walk over the graves....

Anyway, very big building. Very beautiful. Very impressive. Has a very nifty working medieval clock, which Wonderful Husband was quite taken with, and, oh, by the way, the freaking Magna Carta.

That sound you just heard? That was the echoes of my brain being broken. I have seen one of the four surviving copies of the Magna Carta with my own eyes. I have been less than two inches away from it.

GAH.

Nothing quite like this in America. Not even on the East Coast.

Tomorrow, Wonderful Husband and I head to North Wales, there to meet up with toothycat. We're stopping in Stratford-upon-Avon to break up the drive. Just since, y'know, it's on our route anyway....

Totally broken.

Comments

[toothycat]

We have totally got to make it out to Anglesey. Groups of stones just quietly standing in the middle of someone's fields... as they have been for six thousand years ;)

[sakon76.livejournal.com]

You're trying to break my brain further just for the pleasure of it, aren't you?

[tainry.livejournal.com]

I could see the city lights
Wind was blowing time stood still
Eagle flew out of the night

MAGNA CARTAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

Standing stones in random cow fields. Yes.

I do the same thing, when I've been in Europe. All that stone and brick. Come right down in a quake... Well, a lot of it. Some of the older stuff might have actually already survived shakeups even in places we don't expect them. And building sturdy for one thing sometimes does make it sturdy for other things.

[rose0mary.livejournal.com]

California?

Have you seen the Giant Sequoias? The great big Redwoods trees?

Wait, in context, you were referencing the architecture and building. Not just the size and age.
But being built by human hands, and withstanding the test of time, weather, and everything.

*sigh*
I do have to agree with you.
The United States does NOT have a lot of old, impressive buildings. And even The Constitution or The Declaration Of Independence is young compared to the Magna Carta!

I think the difference between graveyards / cemeteries and having the physical remains interred in the floor/construction is .... hmm. Maybe it was a way to protect the bodies from grave-robbers? Or to show respect and honor after their life is gone?
(Haven't been in a cathedral that's doubled as a crypt, but I'd imagine more than one of the named individuals was well-received in the church, or a leader/respected religious man (or woman)).
Could be our culture and the social implication differences. A look into history, if you will, noting the changes wrought since the Americans became a separate nation, sovereign over their own lands.

I wish you blessings on the rest of your journey!