Spirit of Place: Worcester

ToWorcester today. I've always liked Worcester, it's a friendly place. Could this be related to it being a cathedral city? - not necessarily a recipe for niceness by any means, more like a recipe for privilege and ambition!

Perhaps it's to do with the sense of history the place has, and history it has aplenty. It  even has one of the inns associated with King Charles. The eagle-eyed will see that it was a lovely day and I did Worcester barechested.

History of different times of course. I love the way this Victorian frontage has been randomly stuck on this older building:

Worcester has wonderful olde worlde street names as well:

And even signs for what the streets used to be called:

I even like the Cathedral:

I swear that's a letter box in that door. But I do love the idea of there being no parking by the flying buttress:

I do realise that if it hadn't been for Victorian ideas of renovation, most ancient buildings would not now be standing, given the state of disrepair into which they had fallen by the nineteenth century. Worcester definitely shows a heavy Victorian hand in all its most visible places:

Especially the choir. Below is the monument to the Dean who had the reredos put up. I swear his feet are resting on a cat:

The crypt is of course the oldest (and least pretentious part):

 I do like the modern art that has been added:

I love the way these Christians claim not to do homosexuality when their churches are full of half-naked suffering men. The monuments of dressed men at Worcester are just plain camp:

Perhaps one of the nicest parts of the cathedral is the cloisters:

Very Harry Potter. This is where the monks (it was a Benedictine Priory - strange that a Benedictine should be the subject of my last post) would have washed:

And the cloister garth: