Jane Austen, King Cnut and Three Whales Walk Into A Cathedral ...
An unlikely collection of graves, carvings and sculptures
I had yet to make it to one of the art installations in the cathedrals closet to me - Winchester and Chichester. Moon, Mars and Sun I’m looking at you. Despite my best efforts I didn’t make it to any of them, and so when I saw that ‘Whales’ was on in Winchester Cathedral this half term, I didn’t need much more of an excuse to entice the family out for a visit.
‘Whales’ was described on the cathedral website as …
‘Three monumental sculptures of sperm whales, created by artist Tessa Campbell Fraser, will hang from the cathedral's Nave in this immersive art installation.’
They weren’t wrong.
The whale sounds throughout the isles, banners depicting the whale sounds in images, three sculptures of sperm whales made out of recycled fishing nets and the blue lights shining through it all hung from the wondrous cathedral nave, the ribs of which are said to be architecturally similar to that of an upturned boat, did not disappoint.
A special little addition to the exhibition for me was that Mary Tudor was married in this cathedral on 25 July 1554, to Philip II of Spain. What’s that got to do with whales, Dawn? Well, when I asked a guide it there was anything in the cathedral to mark Queen Mary’s marriage, he rather apologetically told me there was only the chair that she sat in to be coronated but that that was in storage in need of repair. He then went on to add, almost as a postscript, that ‘if you count this as a thing’, the holes where the banners for the exhibition are hung are the same ones that the banners for her wedding were hung in. Yes I count that! History upon, history upon, history. This sort of arcane fact really makes me smile. I wonder what Mary would have said about the whales?
So who else has been in Winchester Cathedral I hear you wonder. Walk a little further down the South isle and you’ll find Jane Austen, one of the most celebrated authors of her time and the writer of some six novels, no mean feat for an 18th century woman. She was also the absolute master of the marriage plot in story. Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Sense & Sensibility are possibly her most famous. The 1995 BBC production of Pride & Prejudice holds a special place in my heart, as seventeen year old me loved every episode of it.
Walk further down to the Quire, enclosed in the middle of the cathedral, and you will behold a glorious sight. Carvings and misericords, bench ends and tapestries abound, as well as the possible bones of none other than King Cnut.
There are six funerary casks and within them the bones of several individuals, all jumbled up after various ransacking during reformations and civil war and as a result they think some may be Cnut’s but which ones remain a mystery.
I could have spent hours in the Quire as within this part of the cathedral are carvings of wyverns, green men, knights and monkeys playing lyres in the form of bench ends, misericords and ornate carvings. One of the guides suggested that the faces on the bench ends may even have been those of the carvers. As they worked they looked to each other’s faces for inspiration. Whether it’s true or not, it’s a great tale.
And if the carvings aren’t enough then around the outsides of the enclosed Quire, at the end of the south and north isles are some beautiful medieval tiles, which I would happily have in my house!
Our tickets last for a year and there is plenty I didn’t get a chance to see even though we there for almost 2 hours, but the call of lunch beckoned and so it is that we shall return to learn the story of the diver who saved the foundations of the cathedral, the mermaids that hide in the stonework and a light show called ‘The Storytellers’ which is coming up later in the month. How could we not!
One to listen to, one to watch and one to read:
Listen - Whale Sounds via Spotify
Wonderful history, much appreciated here in the US!