Lincoln Cathedral

The Victorian critic John Ruskin thought Lincoln Cathedral the most precious piece of architecture in the British Isles, worth any two other English cathedrals, and on its ridge above the flat Lincolnshire countryside it is easy to see why he said it. The first cathedral was begun in 1072 by the Norman bishop Remigius and consecrated in 1092. An earthquake in 1185 split it, and of that building only the lower west front with its deep Romanesque arches survives. The rest was rebuilt from 1192 under Bishop Hugh of Avalon, later Saint Hugh, in Early English Gothic, and the work continued through the Decorated and Perpendicular phases.

Between 1307 and 1311 the central tower was raised to about 83 metres. With the lead-covered timber spire that topped it until a storm brought it down in 1548, the cathedral is reputed to have been the tallest structure in the world, though the height of that spire is disputed. Today the building is the fourth largest cathedral in Britain by floor area.

Inside, the highlights come in sequence. St Hugh's Choir, begun in 1192, is the first part of the Gothic rebuild. The two great round windows face each other across the transepts: the Dean's Eye to the north, from the first Gothic rebuild, and the Bishop's Eye to the south, reconstructed around 1330; a medieval poem explains the pair as the eyes of the church, one shunning the dark north, the other welcoming the light of the south. East of the choir lies the Angel Choir, built to hold the shrine of St Hugh for the growing flow of pilgrims and named for the carved angels high in its walls. Among them sits the Lincoln Imp, a small 13th-century grotesque that became the emblem of the city. The cathedral also holds the tomb chest of Queen Eleanor of Castile's viscera, a duplicate of her Westminster monument, with a 19th-century copy of the effigy. Roof and tower tours take visitors up to a bell chamber and along the west front for views down the nave and across the city.

Getting there

The cathedral crowns the hill of Lincoln, about 0.9 km from the city centre. From Lincoln station it is roughly a fifteen-minute walk to the foot of Steep Hill, a lane with a gradient of about one in seven that leads up to the cathedral; a shuttle bus serves the cathedral quarter for those who prefer not to climb. Humberside Airport (HUY) is about 40 km away.