Back in January, before 2020 really started, I went to London to cross some cathedrals off my list. The list started on April 16th 2019, when the Notre Dame fire made me realise that the great English medieval cathedrals might not be waiting for me to get round to them. Project #BeforeItBurnsDown kind of got halted as quickly as it started but I squeezed Winchester, Salisbury, Wells, Canterbury, York, Oxford and St Paul’s in before the world fell apart.
One of those is not like the others. St Paul’s isn’t one of the great English medieval cathedrals. There was one on the site but St Paul’s came into being following the Great Fire of London in 1666. Not that the fire was solely responsible for the loss of the Gothic cathedral that stood there before.
William the Conqueror, of 1066 fame, started the program of cathedral-building shortly after his arrival here. They were built in the Norman style of the time – chunky, kind of rough around the edges, big round arches, thick pillars – by craftsmen who weren’t experienced in that kind of building project. Cathedrals like those were new and innovative, the skyscrapers and Grand Designs of their day. The French had started building such things but the English… well, they weren’t.
A lot of them had major surgery a couple of centuries later, when the Gothic style came along. It’s very different – high and slim and graceful and ornate. Think elf architecture compared to Norman’s dwarf. It wasn’t practical to pull down cathedrals and replace them with the newer fashion so they converted them or built around them. At Winchester they replaced the pillars pair by pair, starting at the west end, and you can see where the money ran out and the Norman remained.
Between the amateur building and the budget converting, sheer age and appalling foundations, there’s barely a medieval cathedral in the country that should still be standing. Some of them are still upright simply out of habit; some because they haven’t noticed that they should have fallen apart. Some have undergone major structural engineering work in recent centuries and they all need permanent care and attention. As they say, “If there isn’t scaffolding on your medieval cathedral, someone’s not looking after it properly”.
In short, by the 1060s, the old Gothic cathedral at St Paul’s was falling apart. It was going to either have to be replaced or have some hugely expensive work done to it, so in a way, the Great Fire was helpful in clearing the site for free. It’s a shame because I’ve seen pictures of what it might have looked like and it was pretty. If they could have propped it up and repaired it and of course, if it hadn’t burnt to the ground, it would be up there with my favourites today.
You see, I really like Norman cathedral architecture. I really like Gothic cathedral architecture. I really like that half-finished fusion of Norman and Gothic. I am not a huge lover of the Baroque style and today’s iconic St Paul’s is very Baroque. If you like English Baroque, I’m sure this is an excellent example. It’s not for me.
I guess it doesn’t have the same raw stone atmosphere I’m used to in a cathedral. The architecture doesn’t sing as the dominant decoration. It feels kind of cavernous and empty and soulless, despite all the gold. Queen Victoria felt similarly. In her days, the decor was very muted, with lots of grey and she found it miserable and demanded art and colour.
However, St Paul’s has one great wonder – the dome. Inside, it fits in that same empty void feeling in my, despite the paintings in it. But outside, you’ve got a very distinctive shape and two viewing galleries!
The Whispering Gallery, the one that runs around the inside of the dome, was closed when I was there but the two outside were open and available. So off I went, up 376 steps – yes, count them! – to the Stone Gallery.
It wasn’t so bad. The steps up to the Whispering Gallery are quite gentle and I stopped a few times beyond that, not least because the route ambled around the building a bit and sometimes I had to stop to wonder if I was going the right way.
The Stone Gallery runs around the outside of the bottom of the dome – that is, the outer dome. It’s a totally separate structure to the inner dome and there’s a third dome in between that holds everything in its proper place. The views are good from the Stone Gallery. It’s nice and spacious and has thick stone railings to peer between down at central London 53m below.
Then there were 152 further steps to reach the Golden Gallery on top of the outer dome, 85m above the streets of London. Those were the worst. My legs get cramp very quickly going uphill or up stairs but this was so slow going that they didn’t. The trouble is that the Golden Gallery is small and you have to wait until everyone in front of you has shuffled out, taken their photos and shuffled back in. I was there quite late in the day and that’s a popular time, especially in winter, because you can see the sun set over the city. So getting up was a slow crawl.
That wasn’t my problem. That was a good thing for my legs. The problem was wrought iron spiral stairs. Ever since Tallinn, I’ve had issues verging on a phobia of spiral stairs. They just scare me, irrationally and disproportionately. And these were open spiral stairs. Did not like. Did not like having to stop on them. Did not like keeping my fingers away from people’s feet as I clung to the treads. I’d genuinely have felt safer and more comfortable climbing the outside of the dome with a rope and harness. Never mind that the stairs ran up the outside of that third in-between dome. It wasn’t a moment for appreciating the engineering.
The view was kind of worth it. I shuffled out, onto my view right over London and took the circular shuffle round to the other door and the down staircase as slowly as everyone else. I took cathedral-top selfies with the sunset, I took the time to look at London’s 21st century skyline and particularly at the other stone relic of the Great Fire – the Monument, which was once described as “monstrously high” and which now vanishes among the ordinary office buildings down below. If you’ve ever climbed it, you’ll know that it does indeed feel “monstrously high”, with 311 steps inside that narrow column. But London has grown in every direction, including up, since the 17th century and you now hardly notice it.
By the time I came down, St Paul’s was attempting to close for the day so I didn’t linger much in that Baroque interior.
I didn’t make it to Westminster Abbey the next day. It’s not officially on my #BeforeItBurnsDown list, not being technically an Anglican cathedral, but it’s a work of Gothic magnificence and I want to see it. But I was too late for that day and the next day it wasn’t open to tourists.
Westminster Cathedral was – a Catholic cathedral, built in stripy red brick in a kind of Victorian Neo-Byzantine style. It’s not exactly open to tourists but they don’t mind you visiting if you’re quiet and respectful. Sunday wasn’t the right day for that but I could visit the tower, and my calves were delighted to learn that it has a lift. The views from the top are from between bars but they’re serious Central London views – Westminster, Waterloo, St Paul’s, Victoria, they’re all right here, and you can stay as long as you like. No hurrying to allow the shuffling queue behind you up. I’d never heard of it and it seems plenty haven’t, despite it being a big old distinctive building right on the main road from Westminster to Victoria. I’ve been down on buses and never seen it; I’ve been down on foot and never seen it. And now I have and when the plague is over, I’ll be back for Westminster Abbey and Southwark Cathedral, which I abandoned in favour of my beloved catamarans.
