Tonight's TV
Praiseworthy
How To Build A Cathedral (BBC4, 9pm);
A Time Team Special: The Lost Dock Of
Liverpool (C4, 9pm)
THE master masons who built York Minster
could've had no idea that one day their toilet
habits would be exposed to the nation.
Even a serious programme like How To
Build A Cathedral - which sounds like an ambitious
Blue Peter project involving more
than old washing up bottles and sticky back
plastic - can't resist prying into the private
lives of the men who built these great edifices
of the medieval world.
Presenter and historian Jon Cannon goes
to an upstairs room at the Minster to show
us the workshop and living quarters of the
man who designed York Minster - and see his
WC. A uninviting stone one, I might say.
This then is his private toilet where he may
have "come up with some of the best ideas".
It's touches like this that get me through an
hour-long show on cathedrals, screened as
part of the BBC's Medieval season.
Cannon fires off praise for the great cathedrals
as "the wonders of the medieval world".
The tallest buildings since the Pyramids, they
were the showpieces of the medieval world.
And all the more amazing for being built with
hammers and chisels, ropes and pulleys.
This architectural revolution came after
the Norman conquest of 1066 and all that.
The buildings were as much about showing
the power of the conqueror as the power of
God and representing heaven on earth.
By the 1090s, from Durham to Canterbury,
there were 15 cathedrals under construction.
Cannon does a thorough job, a nice balance
between technical and fascinating facts.
We can marvel at the engineering by which
the cathedrals literally stand or fall. Here he
gets technical again with mention of slenderness
ratio, intensity of load and stress, all
of which sound reminescent of a Weightwatchers
meeting.
It was all done with columns and arches.
Sometimes they got it wrong, putting beauty
rather than strength. Cannon lists a catalogue
of disasters - the central tower at Winchester
Cathedral fell, the west tower at
Gloucester collapsed, the Norwich spire blew
down.
This had more to do with poor foundations
than anything else. The feeling is that many
cathedrals are over-engineered and that you
could take away a lot of stonework without
12:00pm Monday 21st April 2008
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