After visiting Avebury and Stonehenge (yes, on the same day; slow blogger, sorry), hubby and I drove over to Salisbury to visit the Cathedral.  Salisbury Cathedral came highly recommended by my father-in-law, who had visited on a choir tour and told us it was a can’t-miss destination.  Now, I won’t pretend to be an architecture buff (wish I was, but I have plenty of hobbies already), but I’ve visited my share of cathedrals – York Minster, Westminster Abbey, and St. Paul’s in England; Notre-Dame, St. Severin, Sainte-Chappelle and Sacre-Cour in France; St. John the Divine in New York and the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., for instance.  (I think I also visited one or two cathedrals in Germany during my exchange student days, but I was sixteen and most of the pictures I took were of German boys.  Just telling it like it is.)  So, to the extent that I’ve seen a few cathedrals and therefore have some degree of credibility, I’ll tell you that Salisbury was one of my favorites.

The Cathedral was a short walk from the center of Salisbury, a lovely town in its own right.  Hubby and I split a pasty for lunch – which quickly became our go-to routine for mid-day – and ate it while walking through town to the Cathedral Green.  We took our time wandering around outside, admiring the graceful architecture and ornamental carvings.

The interior of the Cathedral was just as impressive as the exterior.  Intricate stained-glass windows lined every wall, from the nave to the side-chapels.  The stone ceilings defied gravity and soared – or so it seemed – up to Heaven itself.  And the side-chapels boasted old, faded, but still grand flags (one of my favorite things about English cathedrals; it seems I rarely find flags in other cathedrals).

We stopped into this small free-standing chapel on an assignment from my father-in-law.  Inside the chapel we found a decorated ceiling with a relief-carved pomegranate and apple motif.  The apple was the symbol of England’s King Henry VIII (he of six-wives fame).  The pomegranate was the symbol of his first wife, Queen Catherine of Aragon.  When Henry created the Church of England and divorced Catherine, he ordered her pomegranate symbols destroyed wherever they could be found – but somehow this one was missed.  Catherine of Aragon is a distant ancestor of hubby’s, so my father-in-law told us to keep an eye out for this special bit of family history.

Can you spot the pomegranates?  Salisbury Cathedral was a gorgeous place and a meaningful – if brief – stop on our southern England road trip!  I’m sure it’s one that we will want to re-visit in the future.

Stay tuned for the next stop on our southern England tour, coming up next Friday!