Thursday morning, the 30th, we had time to take a walk from our hotel to the Yorkshire Museum Grounds. We had done the bulk of our packing Wednesday evening after returning from a second visit to York Minster. It was cool on Thursday with the temperature in the high 30s when we went out.
Our hotel is located about a 15-minute walk from the area around the Minster and that area includes the museum and its grounds. After our relatively short time in York we felt comfortable going back and forth. While it was cool, the sky was mostly cloud free and it was a pretty nice Fall day. We did not go in the Museum, but we did walk the Garden grounds. The ruins of St. Mary’s Abbey are on the Grounds. When I say ruins, I mean there is not much left. There are some upright walls, and some traces of the outlines of buildings dating back to the 11th century. Some of the Abbey was destroyed when Henry VIII’s troops looted it during the time known as the Dissolution of the Abbeys in around 1534. We enjoyed our walk around the colorful (Or colourful, since we are in England) grounds. The grass is still very green, but the trees have lost a lot of their leaves.
We got to the railway station about an hour before the train was supposed to leave. In Ireland and at least in York, the stations are mostly open air and not heated. There are roofs but no good places to stay warm. That is important to know for this next part. Shortly after we arrive at the station, the departure information for our train displayed on the big notification board. Shortly after that, it was amended to say the train was 15 minutes late, then 18, 19, 22 minutes late. Then, the updates stopped and the board said the train was cancelled. I have a general idea of what to do a flight is cancelled, but what does one do about a train? The large crowd of riders knew what to do: queue up at the only information window. That seemed unproductive, so I went back to the display board which now said, in addition to “cancelled”, service to Doncaster (a city on the route to London). I found a person who told me we would ride our original train to Doncaster where we would get off, and by the time we arrived there they (the Grand Central Train Company) would probably have figured out how to get us the rest of the way to London. Of course, he said, whatever happens in Doncaster, your seat assignments won’t be valid and you will just need to find a place to sit. And that is pretty much what happened. There was a real scrum to get on the two trains.
We arrived in London not much more than 1.5 hours late and checked into the Kimpton Fitzroy.
This morning, the 31st, we had tickets to visit St. Paul’s Cathedral. The temperature was not bad when we left—about 58 degrees—but the sky was threatening. There is a Tube station right around the corner from the hotel so getting to the Cathedral was no problem. In central London, it is often far better to deal with the Tube than to walk or take a taxi because the sidewalks and streets are clogged with people and cars (no cars on the sidewalks, of course). When we entered the Cathedral, the ticket taker looked at the codes I had on my phone and said that he had never seen tickets like that. I was able to show him the original purchase, and he admitted that this was the first week of using their new entrance system, so we both learned something.
We took a 2-hour tour with a guide who was really knowledgeable and who had a great presentation style. [We have had great luck with guides on this trip.] He took us to places in the church that we would have never found by ourselves and told us the history of the church and why it now looks the way it does on the inside and outside.
Unsurprisingly, there have been other churches on this site. The one immediately preceding this one was called Old St. Paul’s Church. It was begun in around 1087 and was destroyed by the Great London Fire of 1666. It was in a state of disrepair when the fire destroyed it. Sir Christopher Wren was given the task of re-building (or, I would say, creating) the new St. Paul’s. There were committees and commissions involved and each one wanted to make “minor” alterations to Wren’s plans. The church was finished (mostly) in 1710, which is fast work for something on this scale.
I had gone into St. Paul’s expecting to see a lot of stained glass but there are only 3 stained glass windows in the cathedral. At the time it was being built, the religious establishment would permit no images of religious figures, either statues or depictions in glass, of humans or spiritual beings. On the other hand, they would permit memorials of military figures such as Admiral Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, and General Cornwallis. The Cornwallis memorial does NOT show that he was the general who surrendered to George Washington to end the fighting in the American Revolution.
There were only 6 people in our little group so it was easy to ask questions and the guide was always able to answer. I think he knew that it is easy for visitors to look at St. Paul’s and be overwhelmed by its size and beauty so he spent most of his time telling us about the small things such as how the tile mosaics were made in two different styles, and anecdotes about the people who are buried there, who built the cathedral, and those who maintain it now.
I mentioned there are only three stained glass windows in the cathedral. They are all at the east end of the church in the American Chapel. This chapel is dedicated to the 28,000 American soldiers who were stationed in England and lost their lives in the Second World War. The three windows have symbols of the 48 (at the time) U.S. states, arranged in order of their acceptance. He took time to point out some of his favorites.
At the end of the tour, we wandered around in the vast space with, I think, a deeper appreciation of the church and its history.
Given that it is now raining quite hard, I think we are in for the night.
