Contrition

It's possible I may have been a tad dismissive of the joys of St Alban's cathedral the other day, by summarising it as mostly "lumpen Victorian".

So I thought I ought to make it up to you.

Outside, the cathedral does indeed suffer from all sorts of Victorian interventions, but it also has a rather jolly 1980s lean-to (for the Chapter House, Library and the inevitable cafe), in the form of a rather fine Roman-style brick basilica.

While the bricks have been laid in traditional English "garden wall" bond, the bricks themselves are not traditional: in fact, so flat they are almost tiles, they are much closer to Roman bricks than traditional English.

There are some rather good earlier remains, too: St Alban's cathedral was, originally, an abbey (and, in fact, the premier abbey in England), although little remains of the Medieval mini-city other than the main church and this rather nice gate-house:

I suspect that I'm not the first person to decry the cathedral's architectural merits, as the positioning of a number of trees seems almost designed to hide the more egregious aspects of the elevations.

So let's retreat inside, where there are actually some delights to be found -- like a rather extensive collection of medieval wall paintings:

Most English churches had these destroyed or whitewashed over during the Reformation, so these are rare survivals. Most of us are more used to our churches being in blank, creamy-white stonework:

Although for some reason we like painted ceilings (the Victorians added these to churches like there was no tomorrow):

A little of the very early Norman architecture survives, including these rather fine polychromatic arches:

And a rather gorgeous effect is created at the crossing, with the combination of arches and painted ceiling:

For me, one of the joys of places like this is their eerie emptiness, the sense of solitude (which is easily found in St Alban's: off the main tourist routes, and internally divided into lots of separate spaces).

Like almost every church in Britain, there are far too many places here for the tiny congregation -- which at St Alban's would probably comfortably fit into one of the tiny side-chapels:

These have their own charms. Let's end here, with the light in a side chapel piercing the heavy gloom and illuminating a rather fine modern altar cloth.

You see: St Alban's isn't quite as tedious as I may, inadvertently, have painted it. Though it's probably best to see it when there's lots of light to pour into the gloom.