More Winchester

Winchester Cathedral has a number of special happenings during the Christmas season. While we were there, they had a market with all sorts of stalls selling crafts and goodies. Not much different from the markets we have in Australia in what they sold. What was different was that each stall had a wooden chalet, each one the same.

All this scene needs is some snow falling and it would be perfect I reckon.

This is Winchester Cathedral.

Not bad for an old lady (or man).

They had also set up a skating rink. I thought about going but then couldn’t be bothered with waiting in the queue to get on the rink and the inevitable cold wet bum when I fell over. But here’s a photo of the rink area. This is 4 photos together. Looks pretty good, if I do say so myself.

In amongst all the craft items was an area that was selling food. I mentioned that I had never tasted roasted chestnuts, so K bought some for us to try.

As far as the taste goes. They are all right. Nothing special for me. But for someone who grew up on them, they would mean Christmas, winter, all sorts of connotations. A bit like vegemite to an Australian.

This one was taken inside the cathedral

And then looking straight up

This window was interesting. Apparently the original window was destroyed by a bomb during Oliver Cromwell's time. People pieced together the bits of coloured glass and ended up with a mosaic of stained glass instead of religious pictures.

Apparently

The cathedral's huge west window is made up of fragments of medieval glass put together randomly, in a manner something like pique assiette mosaic work. The original panes were deliberately destroyed by Cromwell's forces following the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642. Soon after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the broken glass was gathered up and used again.

As this display in the cathedral visitor centre shows, the original pictures were not reconstructed, as was attempted at St Peter Mancroft in Norwich. Perhaps the damage at Winchester was just too great for a "jigsaw" approach. Out of necessity, the cathedral pre-empted collage art by hundreds of years.

http://www.thejoyofshards.co.uk/visits/southtrip/winchcath2.shtml

The photo above gives an idea of the size of the window. This is a close up of one section. I just can’t imagine the amount of work that must have gone into recreating this window.

If you look closely, you can see a head in this one, but the rest are just bits of glass put together.

We had dinner/lunch (couldn’t decide if it was going to be linner or dunch) with K’s cousin who lives in Winchester. However by the time we got there, it was definitely dinner time and we were all tired and hungry. When we headed back to the car, the streets were much quieter and I took a couple of shots of the Christmas decorations all lit up.

Then we hopped in the car and came home, ending another journey.

Madeleine

Tuesday, 2 December 2008