Chester Cathedral

I don't think I ever went into Chester Cathedral when I was last in Chester - which must have been the 1970s, which is a fairly scary thought. I certainly didn't remember the Addleshaw Tower, which was built in 1974 to house the bells.

It's well worth visiting. One of the first things I came across was the Consistory Court, which used to be used to try cases pertaining to the Church, including accusations of slander. It's arranged round a big table, with benches on each side, a witness stand, seat for the judge, and a seat perched high on one corner like an umpire at a tennis match. All this enclosed with a wooden partition. I think it's unique in the country.

I also loved the Abbot's Chapel, which became the Bishop's Chapel at the Reformation, accessed up spiral tower stairs.
Heading towards the East end, I passed through the Quire, with the magnificent misericords. Then I came to an area with a lectern, and seals of the saints in the tiling of the floor, which made me grin delightedly. This is exactly what Katherine Kurtz was describing when she wrote Deryni Rising - the climactic magical battle in the cathedral depends on the young King finding the seal of St Camber in the tiled floor to trigger his powers.
I also lit a candle to St. Werburgh, the patron saint of the cathedral - the shrine was rebuilt in the 19thC after being damaged at the Reformation. St Werburgh was the daughter of King Wulfhere of Mercia and St Ermenilda, and her grandmother was St Sexburga, Queen of Kent. She became a nun, and was put in charge of all the convents of Mercia. Her most famous miracle is of bringing her pet goose back to life when it had been killed for the table (I suspect she also sacked the steward responsible!). She died around 700AD.

While strolling round the cloisters, I was approached by two young school children (with teacher in tow), who were handing out leaflets for a sale they were putting on.
This was in the Chapter Room, where they'd laid out clocks made from an old LP, splattered with paint and fitted with a clock mechanism, and painted mugs. There were a few other, smaller gifts as well. I asked how the clocks had been made, and a little boy gave me a detailed description of how they had put the records on a turntable, powered by an exercise bike, which they had then squirted paint onto. I remember making pictures like that at school fetes. They seemed to have had great fun making the clocks.
All this was to raise money for Passion For Learning - they were also looking for volunteers to join the team, to spend between one and three hours a week working with kids to make learning fun, and to help children reach their full potential.
I bought a mug. It's hideous.

The cathedral café is in the medieval refectory, with a magnificent lectern built into the wall, with stairs, for the monk doing the reading while the rest of the brothers ate.
And back to the gift shop, which was full of very beautiful things (and they already had the Christmas stock on display) but very little which was specific to that particular cathedral. I had to ask the staff if they had anything about St Werburgh, and all they could come up with was a postcard.

St Hugh of Lincoln

This is one of my favourite medieval saints, for two reasons: he had a pet swan and he quelled an anti-Jewish riot. He was the Bishop of Lincoln from 1186 until his death in 1200, and he was quickly made a saint after that.
The swan lived at his manor of Stow, and this is what Gerald of Wales (who wrote a Life of Hugh, and knew him personally) says:

"When he fed it, the bird used to thrust its long neck up his wide and ample sleeve so that its head lay on his breast; for a little while it would remain there, hissing gently, as if it were talking fondly and happily to its master and asking something from him...."

This is the Jew's House, which may also have been a synagogue, and which was certainly there at the time Hugh was Bishop - it may have been somewhere near here that Hugh faced down an anti-Jewish mob, at considerable risk to his own life. It was one of the riots that took place all over the country where there were settlements of Jewish people just after King Richard the Lionheart was crowned, in 1189.

When he died in 1200, in London, his body was brought back to Lincoln, and this is how David Hugh Farmer describes it in his book Saint Hugh of Lincoln:

"When they arrived 'at the foot of the hill almost a mile from the city', they were met by the Kings of England and Scotland, the archbishops of Canterbury, York and Ragusa (now Dubrovnik - what was the archbishop of Dubrovnik doing in England?), bishops, abbots, magnates, nobles, clergy and people in an immense crowd that had seldom been seen before. The king of England and other magnates carried the coffin on their shoulders: the king of Scotland, William, was so overcome with grief that he stood behind.
At the entrance to the city of Lincoln the king and bishops gave way to other bearers, and they in their turn to others and to others again, in spite of the heavy rain and deep mud."

I've always rather admired King John for doing this, and now I've actually walked the route that the coffin took I'm even more impressed. He didn't help to carry it up the steepest slope - that comes inside the city wall - but he still went quite a distance, and partly up hill.