The Lantern of the North

Sunday was rosy-cheeked glorious.  Just a wee nip in the air if you stepped out of the sun.  Perfect day to re-visit the ‘Lantern of the North’.

Many medieval cathedrals have two west-facing towers, usually housing the bells.  They may have been masonic symbolism, Christian symbolism, perhaps serving some building purpose lost to us now. 

Elgin’s west towers are accessed through a tiny arched door, up narrow, spiral staircases of tricky, sloped stairs.

Worth the helter-skelter climb though, views from the top are exhilarating.  There is an anti-pigeon chain-mail curtain to push through, prior to getting out onto the roof.  Thought, ‘what if it were a timeslip, back to the 1300s’?  Then had a dizzying, heart-stopping moment.  The final stair-railings to the roof are modern, openwork metal.  After being wrapped in the all-encompassing sandstone, the cold air, seeing just how high up I was, felt horrible.  Once over the oil-rig stairs flashback, after admiring the views of the ruins, realised that this tower was built in 1224.  It is 1200 years old, and the rest of the place had mostly fallen down.  Built, not a decade after the magna carta (1215) was signed.  A sobering thought. 

Promptly returned to terra firma. 

There are original carvings displayed in the tower rooms.  Most beautiful is the ‘sacred forest’ exhibition, including a ‘Green Man’.   The whole cathedral was once painted and gilded.  It must have been spectacular.

The stained glass was probably destroyed by the ‘Wolf of Badenoch’, Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan.  In 1390, he had the cathedral burned because of his excommunication, for infidelity. 

Gives wolves a bad name. 

Some 1200-year-old stained glass, from the rose-window, is displayed, faded, broken, but beautiful and amazing none-the-less. 

Drove home as the golden hour blushed the clouds, and gilded the corn stubble rose gold.

Images for this journal have been posted on Insta @purplehaze_journal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Stewart,_Earl_of_Buchan

https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/elgin/cathedral/index.html