Worcester Cathedral
Worcester Cathedral stands magnificently on the west bank of the River Severn in the city of Worcester, its honey-coloured sandstone tower reflected in the river below and visible for miles across the Severn Vale and the Malvern Hills beyond. It is one of England's great medieval cathedrals, a building of nearly a thousand years of continuous development that combines Norman solidity with Gothic elegance and contains some of the most important medieval tombs in the country. The cathedral's origins lie in the seventh century when the first Bishop of Worcester established a monastery and church here, but the building that visitors explore today began with the construction of the Norman crypt under Bishop Wulfstan in the 1080s. This crypt, one of the largest Norman crypts in England, survives almost entirely intact beneath the later Gothic nave and gives a powerful sense of the massive, round-arched solidity of early Norman architecture. Above it, the cathedral was progressively rebuilt and extended over the following three centuries in the successive Gothic styles of Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular, creating the harmonious medieval building visible today. The two greatest medieval tombs in the cathedral give it a historical significance matched by very few buildings in England. King John, who died in 1216 and whose reign was marked by the sealing of Magna Carta, is buried before the high altar in a tomb that features one of the earliest royal effigies in England, a Purbeck marble figure of the king in full regalia. Nearby, the chantry chapel of Prince Arthur, the elder brother of Henry VIII who died in 1502 at the age of fifteen before he could succeed to the throne he was born to inherit, is one of the finest pieces of late Gothic decorative carving in the country, its intricate stonework creating a screen of extraordinary delicacy around the prince's tomb. The cloisters on the south side of the cathedral are exceptionally well-preserved and the quiet garden they enclose provides a peaceful retreat from the city outside. The view of the cathedral from the meadows across the Severn, with cricket played on the county ground adjacent to the building during the summer season, is one of the most enduringly English scenes in the country.