All the Cathedrals (11): Truro

Zero and I have just returned from a visit to Cornwall, where we stayed in what is very much Daphne du Maurier country. We stayed in the village of Tywardreath, which featured in the du Maurier novel that Zero was reading (The King's General), just a 5 minute drive from Menabilly, where Daphne du Maurier lived for many years, and which recognisably features in both The King's General and in My Cousin Rachel, which I started reading during our time away.

On one of our days, we visited Truro Cathedral, which is sharply distinguished from our earlier Cathedral visits by the fact that it was built relatively recently - that is, in Victorian times. The typical story of a (Norman) monastic house dissolved by Henry VIII's commisioners to become a diocesan cathedral with chapter, subsequent despoliation by Parliamentary forces during the Civil War, and then restoration and (Victorian) repairs, is therefore absent. That having been said, the Gothic style and layout does echo the style and layout of those much older Cathedrals, as does its city centre location, something that our guide suggested was the result of a deliberate attempt to imitate that tradition of cathedral building. The history of the building of the Cathedral can be accessed from this page on the Cathedral website: History. 

One of the best features of the Cathedral is the reredos behind the high altar. The best online pictures of this I can find are at this blog post - you can enlarge the photographs there by clicking on them. The reredos is very striking, and you can see in it an idea of portraying key moments in salvation history, with Old Testament types of Christ's sacrifice in Calvary, and Eucharistic representations such as the gathering of the manna in the desert.

Another feature of note is the very extensive stained glass. An outline of the themes of the stained glass can be found on the Cathedral website: Stained Glass Windows. A much more detailed account of the planning of the windows, and pictures and exploration of each window can be found in the links from this page (though you might like to jump straight to this page to find links to accounts of the windows themselves).  In some ways, it is the last windows in the order, on the left as you face the high altar from the end of the nave, that allow the visitor to appreciate the one of the intentions of the whole. They show such figures as Queen Victoria, John Keble, Bishop Butler, Richard Hooker, and Lancelot Andrewes - that is, figures that represent the history of the Anglican Church with a specific reference to the High Church tradition in that Church. A Catholic is struck by a certain incongruity in seeing representations of the medieval saints such as Bernard and Francis, the Tudor humanists Thomas More, Dean Colet and Erasmus and key figures of the Reformation such as Wycliffe, Cranmer and Coverdale. Along with the intention to show the history of the Church in England, there is an implied assertion that the Anglican Church of today lies in a continuity with the Church of the medieval times and the times of the Fathers.

So Truro Cathedral is a very different visit than our previous visits to Cathedrals.