Tuesday 6th August 2019 in Lincoln.
A clear blue sky promised a good day to follow - and it was, we had a splendid day.
Our path into the City centre along the south side of Brayford Pool, took us past the campus of Lincoln University. How fortunate are the youngsters who come to study here!
Everything is new, bright and clean - a far cry from most of the student accomodation of our youth. MM is moored up alongside a long row of new purpose built student accomodation blocks. M had a peek in and declared them to be positively palatial.
We set off up the hill towards the cathedral. The road that leads up to the cathedral from the city centre is called, very appropriately, "Steep Hill". We were told that it is the sixth steepest residential street in the country; it also goes a long way up. You round a corner, thinking you have arrived, to find yet another steep cobbled street continuing upwards. But it's a lovely walk.
Finally, we arrived at the top in the cobbled square between the castle (to the west) and the cathedral (to the east); except for the cars, it cannot have changed a lot over the centuries.
We decided to visit the castle first, thinking that it probably wouldn't take that long as most castles like this consist of a few piles of stone and little else. How wrong we were! We ended up spending most of the day in the castle.
We joined a tour, which was due to start at 11:00am. Paul, our guide, duly waited for the last of the eleven chimes from "Great Tom", the five ton bell in the main tower of the cathedral before he started.
The tour was excellent, lasting about 90 minutes and taking us all around the castle grounds. It is always astonishing how knowledgeable the volunteer guides are.
The castle was originally a "Motte and Bailey" Norman stronghold started only two years after the Battle of Hastings on a commanding site previously used as a fort by the Romans. The "Lucy" tower, that dominates the south wall, is the location of the original Motte.
The Bailey is thought to have been much larger originally and to have included the land upon which the cathedral was built. The current walls were probably created at the end of the 11th century as an "Inner Bailey" and, at the same time, the wooden Motte was replaced by the stone tower.
After the tour, we had a refreshing cuppa in the café - slightly interrupted by the fire alarm, which meant that we all had to evacuate for a quarter of an hour!
Since a recent renovation, you can now "walk the walls" all the way around, a distance of over one third of a mile. A "must do" that provided wonderful views, not least of the cathedral.
On the south east corner is a second mound and a second tower. The main part of this tower dates from around the 13th century but the rather quirky turret on the top is much more recent. It was built in the early 19th century by John Merryweather, the governor of the prison that stands in the castle grounds.
He was a keen astronomer and it is believed that he housed his telescope in the tower. The tower windows also looked out over the women prisoners' exercise yard and it seems that he made full use of the view as he is reputed to have fathered at least two children with female inmates under his care!
If you look very carefully at the photograph above, you will see R waving from the top of the tower.
In the middle of the castle grounds is this very large bust of King George III. It was originally a full length statue 15ft tall, commissioned by the 4th Earl of Buckingham to celebrate George III's golden jubilee in 1809 and placed on "Dunston Pillar", which is itself 92 ft tall. The statue was removed by the RAF during World War II as a hazard to navigation. The bottom part is in storage.
In the castle is a "vault" that contains one of only four original copies of the Magna Carta. The Bishop of Lincoln attended Runnymede in 1215 and received a copy of the original charter so that it could be read out in the cathedral to the people. They know that it is Lincoln's copy because it has "Lincoln" written twice on the back. It has been here ever since.
We left the castle and walked across to the cathedral, which is in the middle of an extensive renovation programme. The west face is still magnificent even with its covering; close up, the detail is staggering.
We decide to devote a whole day to the cathedral another time but we stayed to hear the choral evensong. The cathedral choristers are on holiday but the choral evensongs are being sung by a series of visiting choirs. We were told that there is a two year waiting list for choirs wanting to sing in the cathedral - hardly surprising! The choir this evening was from the USA and they were extremely good and very disciplined.
Today: MM had the day off.
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