Salisbury Cathedral: historie og arkitektur

The story of Salisbury Cathedral starts in the year 1075, at an ancient plateau. The Bishop who was stationed there was called St. Osmund, he had a Norman cathedral built without taken the exposure to the elements into consideration, and there was also a lack of sufficient water. There is a legend about St. Osmund, that he shot and arrow in the direction the cathedral should be built, but he hit a deer and the deer died several miles away, and that became the place for the cathedral. Almost two centuries later a Bishop called Richard le Poore wrote to Pope Honorius III, In hope of being allowed to move the Bishopric to another location, his petition was granted, and he moved it to Salisbury. They started the building of the new cathedral the year 1220; the architecture style was the Early English Gothic style. The work was completed quickly, and that resulted in a unity of architecture rarely seen in England, even though the Bishop moved to Durham the builders stayed with the same design until they were finished, they main building was finished in 1258.

The Technical elements of Salisbury CathedralFoundation: The building is made out of solid stone, so the building weighs thousands of tonnes. That equals that the foundation needs to be big enough to support all that weight, so the building doesn’t sink into the ground and becomes unstable. The Soil the cathedral is built on is very hard and not very moist, that equals the building doesn’t sink that easily into the ground, as if the ground was very wet. The roof weighs a lot, and to help distribute all that weight, they made these narrow piers that take a large surface and distributes the weight into solid marble pillars that can withstand almost anything as long the weight is put down on top of the pillars. The Spire alone weighs (6.400) tonnes, the spire could carry itself on the original pillars for over 400 years before the pillars started bending inwards, then an architect called Christopher Wren reinforced them witch steel beams, and made a fake ceiling to cover them up.