Ranking Cathedrals, Part 3.

 So the last of the first three is Dunkeld Cathedral, another Church of Scotland, not actually a cathedral.

Photo credit:Dr Richard Murray / Dunkeld Cathedral / CC BY-SA 2.0

Dunkeld is another partially ruined medieval cathedral.  The choir is still roofed and in use as church, while the nave has lost it's roof, but the walls of the nave and aisles still stand, as does the unruined bell tower.  The cathedral contains the tomb of Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan (d. 1405) with a fine effigy.

This is again a place that, while interesting, is not interesting enough to attract me to Dunkeld.  I like ruins, and these look nice, but as a Cathedral it just doesn't do that much for me. The tomb effigy looks interesting, but it's not an uncommon attraction.

In the end I think that while it is more attractive than St Moulag's, the heraldic ceiling of St Machar's is a bigger draw.  So the list now stands at:

1.  St Machar's Cathedral, Aberdeen

2. Dunkeld Cathedral

3.  St Moluag's Cathedral, Lismore.

 

 Up next: Dunblane Cathedral

Ranking Cathedrals, Part 2.

Next up is St Machar's Cathedral in Aberdeen. 

Photo credit: AlasdairW under the
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Again this is Church of Scotland building, so no bishop, not really a cathedral, but it used to be one. Like St Moluag's, it is a remnant of larger building.  This time the nave and aisles remain. The transepts, central tower and choir are mostly gone.  The transept ruins contain some late medieval bishop's tombs, and the nave and aisles are mostly original.  The 16th century ceiling of the nave has a unique heraldic display with 48 coats of arms, including those of most of the monarchs of Europe at the time, as well prominent Scottish families and churchmen.  The west end has two massive fortified towers.

This place is of some interest to me, especially the heraldic ceiling. It doesn't have enough interest to draw me to Aberdeen on it's own, and I'm not even sure it would make the cut if I had other things to see in Aberdeen, but it would be worth seeing.

Obviously this ranks higher than St Moluag's so the list as it stands now is. 

1.  St Machar's Cathedral, Aberdeen

2.  St Moluag's Cathedral, Lismore.

The final of the first three in the next post.

Ranking Cathdrals, Part 1.

I'm going to start with three Church of Scotland buildings that are not technically Cathedrals, but were historically cathedrals before the Reformation.  None of these were ever ranked in the best Cathedral lists I collated together, and it will be pretty obvious why.

photo credit: Otter under the Gnu Free Document License

 

First, up is St Moluag's Cathedral, on the island Lismore.  St Moluag's is a Church of Scotland congregation, so not technically a cathedral. As you can see it's a pretty modest building.  St Moluag's was the seat of the medieval Diocese of Argyll, which was Scotland's poorest diocese, so St Moluag's was modest to begin with.  All that survives now is the choir, and that in heavily modified form.  There are a few medieval features remaining, mainly doorways, and  few medieval gravestone left in the church yard and in the church itself.

All in all, there's not much here to attract me.  If I were in the neighborhood it might be a way to kill a half hour or so, but unless there's something else on Lismore to attract, me I don't see myself visiting there.

That said, since this is the first cathedral to be rated, it goes to #1.

 The list as it stands is

1.  St Moluag's Cathedral, Lismore.

Next Cathedral in the next post.

Here I am again.

 Let's try this for a bit.

I've got a new project, which is over planning a vacation to the UK.  The plan right now is for some time in 2022, maybe 2023 and spending 3 to 4 weeks.  I'm limiting myself to Great Britain, that is, Scotland, England and Wales, Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Isles won't be considered for this trip.

First step is figuring out what I want to see.  I'm starting with Cathedrals. 

Cathedral is a slippery word.  To a lot of people it means "Big Church". The technical definition is the home church of a bishop.  There are many denominations in the UK that have bishops, but the big ones are the Roman Catholics and the Anglican Churches.  I'm going to ignore the cathedrals of all of the smaller denominations and focus on those two.  Plus I'm going to include those churches within the Church of Scotland that were medieval cathedrals before the Presbyterians got rid of bishops. So the list of potential sites includes, those Church of Scotland churches, the established Church of England cathedrals, the Church in Wales cathedrals and the Scottish Episcopal Church cathedrals, along with the Roman Catholic Cathedrals.

There are 94 buildings on that list.  I'm going to work my way through all of them looking for reasons why I would want to visit them and ranking them accordingly. My preferences are for medieval and all of the Scottish Episcopal Cathedrals and the RC cathedrals are modern, so while, I'll take a look at them, they are unlikely to rank high.

My first step was to collate a bunch of "best Cathedrals" for the British Isles I found on the web.  After throwing out Irish and other Cathedrals, plus things that weren't Cathedrals, like Westminster Abbey, there were 43 buildings that were ranked on at least one list.  There were 51 that didn't make any list.  I'm going to work my way through all 94 of them, starting with the 51 and ranking them by my own criteria. Publishing the results here as I work.

Stay tuned.

Salisbury Cathedral

Salisbury was my first. I was an ignorant 18 year old, just graduated from high school, spending the summer in Europe. My brother and I were on our way to Stonehenge and when we got to the town of Salisbury and we found that we had missed the bus. The next one wouldn't run for an hour. We noticed a spire looming over the town, and decided to go take a look. Finding a massive cathedral set in the middle of a park, we thought it would be worth exploring. In 1981, you couldn't enter through the main west portal, instead you entered on the west end, but off to the side. As I came in, it all felt very familiar, we were in the sort of vestibule that any Anglican church might have. Then we turned a corner and were in the nave. To this day, the feeling of absolute awe I felt has stayed with me. Only one other time, high in the Rocky Mountains, have I ever been so completely struck. On that trip we saw other cathedrals, Canterbury, Westminster Abbey, and St. Stephen's in Vienna, but, for me, that initial feeling of shock and joy will always belong to Salibury. We didn't catch the next bus either.



Salisbury, is unusual amongst cathedrals in that it was built entirely one building campaign and was happily spared major renovations in later centuries. There were no previous buildings on the site that could have constrained the plans. As a result it was built largely in a single style and has a unity that many cathedrals lack.



Image credits:
First exterior, michaelday_bath on flickr
Second exterior, Stephen McParlin (stephen_dedalus) on flickr
Nave, ajoh198 on flickr