England Guide
East Anglia
Norwich Cathedral
Opening time: Daily: mid– May to mid– Sept 7.30am–7pm; mid-Sept to mid-May 7.30am–6pm
Price: Free
Address: Cathedral Close
Website: www.cathedral.org.uk
Norwich Cathedral is distinguished by its prickly octagonal spire, which rises to a height of 315ft, second only to Salisbury's. The exterior is best viewed from the Lower Close to the south, where the thick curves of the flying buttresses, the rounded excrescences of the ambulatory chapels – unusual in an English cathedral – and the straight symmetries of the main trunk can all be seen to perfection.
The interior is pleasantly light thanks to a creamy tint in the stone and the clear-glass windows of much of the nave, where the thick pillars are a powerful legacy of the Norman builders who began the cathedral in 1096. Its fan vaulting is delicate and geometrically precise, adorned by several hundred roof bosses recounting the story of the Old and New Testaments from the Creation to the Last Judgement. St Luke's Chapel houses the cathedral's finest work of art, the Despenser Reredos, a superb painted panel commissioned to celebrate the crushing of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. The cathedral's unique cloisters are the only two-storey cloisters left standing in England. Built between 1297 and 1450, they contain a remarkable set of sculpted bosses whose dominant theme is the Apocalypse, though several also depict green men, originally pagan fertility symbols.
Outside, in front of the cathedral's main entrance, stands the medieval Canary Chapel. This is the original building of Norwich School, whose blue-blazered pupils are often visible during term time. A statue of the school's most famous boy, Horatio Nelson, faces the chapel, standing on the green of the Upper Close, which is guarded by two ornate and imposing medieval gates, Erpingham and, a few yards to the south, Ethelbert. Beside the Erpingham gate is a memorial to Edith Cavell, a local woman who was a nurse in occupied Brussels during World War I. She was shot by the Germans in 1915 for helping allied prisoners to escape, a fate that made her an instant folk hero; her grave is outside the cathedral ambulatory.