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Durham
At the beginning of our second week on the road, we came to Durham, a quiet and little-touristed cathedral city less than an hour by train north of York. We came here for choral evensong and a good place to roost before retrieving a car at Newcastle. | ||
 Sunday celebration in Durham |
We found Durham celebrating summer (or something) with ethnic dancing of unknown origin. The counterpoint of festival and looming cathedral was fascinating.
Durham Cathedral sits atop a fortified point of land within an oxbow of the Ouse River. Its golden stone and gothic architecture glow even on a cloudy day. After the week of heat in Oxford and London, the coolness of York and Durham were welcome.
Folks were streaming into the cathedral and so we entered and asked if we might sit in the choir to be closer to the music |
When we entered, the organ was gently noodling about finding its voice, but after we had settled in and started looking about, the organist suddenly turned up the volume for the preliminary voluntaries, and the bass notes literally vibrated the rennaisance carved wooden seats we were sitting in. Chad arrived a little late, and so just Rochelle and I were surrounded by the truly devout who had come to occupy the choir and hear the service. I realized soon after the choir had filled with people that the whole ensemble -- organ, cathedral, carved choir, and congregation of people -- were the "instrument".
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 Durham Cathedral Tower |
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After the voluntaries, which were stirring, a procession, led by a solemn fellow with a dove-headed staff, of the clergy and the choristers entered and took their places, and we were invited to join in a hymn. For me, the service was eerily familiar, resonating back to my days as a choirboy and acolyte. Raising my voice, surrounded by "churched" people who knew the tune well enough to sing their parts, raised the fur on my neck, and I could feel my departed mother and father hovering nearby. When the reader stood up to read the first lesson, I could hear my father's voice. All the Anglican standing, sitting, kneeling, sitting, and then standing only to kneel again seemed sensible under the circumstances. The music, from plainsong to elaborate ordinaries, was polished. The voices of the young boys, especially, rose into the heights of the cathedral and mingled with the sound of the organ to create an amazingly elevated sense of rightness.
Curiously, surrounded by such magnificence and self-satisfied richness, the theme of the service (besides praying that the Queen would have a good life and be an inspiration to Her people) was to make allowances for the less fortunate, for those under stress. |
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Photos are not permitted inside the cathedral, but the windows were so glorious I couldn't resist taking just one picture.
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 photo credit: Chad Abramson |
After the service, we walked down the hill through the ancient narrow corkscrew streets of the old city.
We came down to the first bridge, and walked along the river around the cathedral, where we found an isolated carved stone seat decorated with grotesques. Chad couldn't resist taking a picture of us in our "going to church" finery. We finished our circuit and taxied back up the steep hill to Farnley Towers, our elegant B&B. A bit later we walked back downhill into the town and had a mediocre dinner overlooking the Ouse, then taxied back up the hill. |
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