Manchester Cathedral...

I was in Manchester Cathedral last week. I wanted to get some pictures of the new floor. It may not be as grand as St Paul's, York, Lincoln or Durham but it is no less interesting. And what it lacks in height, it makes up for in width, being the widest of any cathedral in the country.

The present building is a Victorian renovation of a Medieval church but, if you know where to look, you can still find parts of the ancient church. It was badly bombed in WWII and after Coventry, which was burned to the ground, it was the most damaged cathedral in the country. It lost all it's Victorian stained glass as well as it's organ. After the war they replaced the stained glass with modern and I like the combination of old and new.

The new floor was put in as part of a plan to heat the cathedral. It could be cool on a warm day in summer and winter services needed to be attended in coats. Looking for a sustainable way of heating the cathedral, they have drilled under the building to tap into a lake of hot water deep under the city that is heated by the core of the Earth. This lake is huge, stretching from Manchester, under Cheshire as far as Crewe.

It has worked well with the Cathedral toasty warm on the chilly March day when I was there. In the picture you can see the columns of the Victorian building, some of the modern stained glass and a little of the beautiful, new polished local limestone floor.