Choir Trip 2024: Winchester Cathedral, July 26

We all started the day whistling the song Winchester Cathedral, from 1966 by The New Vaudville Band, https://youtu.be/byIskf4Atqw?si=5LSxJnJYHpoAxSEl

The tour guides who show us around the places we visit are fountains of interesting information, as is Simon, our main tour guide who takes us from place to place.

Winchester Cathedral is the longest medieval cathedral in the world with an overall length of 558 feet. The cathedral as it stands today was built from 1079 to 1532 and is dedicated to numerous saints, most notably Swithun of Winchester. It has a very long and very wide nave in the Perpendicular Gothic style, an Early English retrochoir, and Norman transepts and tower.. In the early 20th century the walls began to crack and it looked like the cathedral might collapse. A diver from London, named William Walker is credited with saving the cathedral. Walker, who was arguably the most experienced diver in the country at the time, had an extremely challenging job. His task was to descend into the flooded trenches in a primitive and immensely heavy diving suit and level the trenches, by removing the peat topsoil and then laying bags of cement to plug the water coming up from below. Walker's suit weighed 200 lb (91 kg) dry, and the trenches were cramped and pitch-black; Walker had to feel around with his hands. Additional challenges were that the water was full of bodies and graves, which made the water septic. He worked 6 to 7 hour shifts almost every day for six years to achieve this, diving under the majority of the cathedral building. He'd work Monday - Saturday, then ride his bike 70 miles back to London on Saturday night to spend time with his family, returning to Winchester on Monday morning.

Winchester is not just the location of Scott Hanoian's first residency with CCGP, it's also the final resting place of Jane Austen, a favorite author of many of the adults on the trip, who encouraged the choristers to read Pride and Prejudice, after explaining to them that the movie Clueless is based on Emma! It was a personal highlight for me.

Our next two days will be spent in Salisbury, getting ready for Sunday services (these will be livestreamed on the Salisbury YouTube Channel! and home on Monday.