Lincoln Cathedral (Part Five)

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unless otherwise accredited.

Lincoln Cathedral (West Front) 

seen from the Castle wall

Picture from Wikimedia Commons.

Photo taken March 2006 by Brian

Fan-Vaulting in Lincoln Cathedral's Chapter-House

Picture from Wikimedia Commons 

Photo taken April 2011 by Mattana

Recently, concerns have been growing once more about the state of the West Front, as there has been some stonework falling, which has raised questions as to the effectiveness of the repairs carried out in 2000.

Lincoln Cathedral is at present a very popular destination and is visited by over 250,000 tourists a year. The semi-mandatory entrance fee for weekday visiting is £6.00, which is charged on admission throughout the tourist season. The Cathedral offers tours of the Cathedral, the tower and the roof. The peak of its season is the Lincoln Christmas Market, accompanied by a massive annual production of Handel's Messiah. The Episcopacy of Lincoln Cathedral is currently in inter-regnum, following the retirement of Dr John Saxbee on 31 January 2011. The current Dean of the Cathedral is the Very Reverend Philip Buckler.

Lincoln Cathedral (by Wenzel Hollar, 1607 - 1677)

Choir

The Choir is currently formed of ten Gentlemen (who are either Lay Vicars or Choral Scholars), a team of circa twenty boys and a team of circa 20 girls.

The Cathedral accepted female choristers in 1995. Lincoln was only the second Cathedral in the country to adopt a separate girls' choir, after Salisbury Cathedral, and remains one of the few who provide exactly the same musical opportunities and equal weekly singing duties to both girls and boys. All the choristers are educated at Lincoln Minster School.

Interior of Lincoln Cathedral.

Picture from Wikimedia Commons.

Photo taken April 2012 by Merlin-UK

The Director of Music is Aric Prentice, who conducts the Choir of girls and men, and the Assistant Director of Music & Sub-Organist is Charles Harrison, who conducts the Choir of boys and men. The Organist Laureate is Colin Walsh, previously Organist and Master of the Choristers, and the Assistant Organist is Claire Innes-Hopkins. 

Like any great Cathedral, Lincoln has had its share of organists who have achieved international renown: perhaps the most famous is William Byrd, the Renaissance composer. Although it is uncertain whether Byrd was born in Lincoln, as has been claimed, he was organist at the Cathedral from 1563 until 1572 and continued to compose works specifically for the Cathedral Choir after his departure.

RAF Waddington Station Badge,

depicting Lincoln Cathedral

Organ

The organ is one of the finest examples of the work of 'Father' Henry Willis, dating from 1898 (it was his last Cathedral Organ before his death in 1901). There have been two restorations of it by Harrison & Harrison in 1960 and 1998. The specification of the organ can be found on the National Pipe Organ Register.

Literature

An important scene in D. H. Lawrence's novel, "The Rainbow", takes place at Lincoln Cathedral.

The Cathedral features in Ken Follett's novel "The Pillars of the Earth".

Film

The Cathedral was used for the filming of The Da Vinci Code (based on the book of the same name). 

Filming took place mainly within the Cloisters and Chapter-House of the Cathedral, and remained a closed set. 

Lincoln Cathedral Triforium

Picture from Wikimedia Commons.

... Le chevet de la cathédrale de Lincoln (Angleterre) nous fournit un

exemple des plus remarquables de la persistance de cette tradition (fig. 21). Là le triforium est encore couvert par une charpente apparente comme celui de l'église normande romane, et le chemin de ronde supérieur se combine avec le fenestrage ouvert sous les formerets. Ce chemin de ronde n'a plus alors une utilité réelle, puisque les vitraux pourraient, s'il n'existait pas, être réparés du dehors en passant sur la tablette de recouvrement du comble du triforium. La claire-voie intérieure du chemin de ronde se relie à la fenêtre vitrée au moyen de linteauxformant l'assise du tailloir des chapiteaux ...

This image comes from

Dictionary of French Architecture from 11th- to 16th-Century 

(1856) by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879).

The Cathedral took on the role of Westminster Abbey, as the Abbey had refused to permit filming. Although there was protest at the filming, the filming was completed by the end of August 2005. In order to make the Lincoln Chapter-House appear similar to the Westminster Chapter-House, murals were painted on a special layer over the existing wall, and, elsewhere, polystyrene replicas of Isaac Newton's tomb and other Abbey monuments were set up. For a time these murals and replicas remained in the Chapter-House, as part of a "Da Vinci Code" exhibit for visitors, but in January 2008 they were all sold off in an auction to raise money for the Cathedral.

The Cathedral also doubled as Westminster Abbey for the film Young Victoria, filmed in September 2007.

Wartime history

Lincolnshire was home to many Bomber Command airfields during the Second World War, giving rise to the nickname of 'Bomber County'. Lincoln Cathedral was an easily recognisable landmark for crews returning from raids over Occupied Europe, and, as such, took on much importance to the men. 

The Station Badge, for the nearby RAF Waddington Airbase, depicts Lincoln Cathedral rising through the clouds, a sight which returning bomber crews used to help find their way back to Waddington's airfield.

Appropriately, the Cathedral, as of 2006, has the only Memorial in the United Kingdom dedicated to Bomber Command in the Second World War.


The official Lincoln Cathedral Web-Site can be found at 
http://lincolncathedral.com/


This concludes the Article on Lincoln Cathedral.