Truro Cathedral
If you look up Truro Cathedral you will find a number of ‘fun facts’. I shall list the three most commonly shared ones here, in order of truthfulness.
The first ‘fun fact’ about Truro Cathedral is that it’s the first Anglican Cathedral in England built on a new site since the Reformation. This is true. In fact, it’s the first since Salisbury was relocated in 1220. It’s our only fully Victorian Cathedral, and that phrase alone should be foreshadowing for regular readers.
The second ‘fun fact’ about Truro Cathedral is that it is the place where Nine Lessons and Carols was first held. This is true, and also not; in that though the service of Nine Lessons and Carols was invented by the first Bishop of Truro and held in the building serving as the Cathedral at that time, the building in question was a temporary wooden structure they were using as a Pro-Cathedral (the fancy term for a temporary Cathedral), because the actual Cathedral I’m about to show you would, in fact, take another 7 years of construction to be usable.
The third ‘fun fact’ about Truro Cathedral is that it’s one of three Cathedrals in the UK with three spires. This is bollocks. I have no idea why people say this. There are four spires. I will elaborate later, but I have become a Spire Truther. This is my new weird conspiracy theory. Why is the Big Cathedral Spire Lobby trying to keep Truro down and deny her the honour of being a Four Spired Cathedral???
With this all said… let us begin.
Truro Cathedral is enormous, and it’s hard to take a good photo of the whole thing. If you come in by train, you can see her sat in the centre of the hills, glinting in the sun like a great golden marble at the bottom of a bowl. However, if you come in at night, you will not see her, you will see only the darkness of her shadow. This is because they turned off the creaky old external floodlight system one year for Earth Day, and then discovered that the system only worked if you never ever touched it, and that now they’d turned it off it wasn’t going to turn back on again. So… just a touch more environmentally friendly than they were planning.
Inside, the proportions are quite French, with very tall clerestory windows - but the design itself echoes many of the great English Cathedrals, with particular inspiration from Lincoln Cathedral, where both the Architect and the Bishop (the primary customer, for want of a better description) had both previously worked.
Looking down to the length of the Cathedral, you’ll notice a marked angle to the church, with the west end kicking off slightly to the side. This bend in the Cathedral has spawned endless folk-histories, myths, and legends, but like most of these things, has a very simple explanation: there was a road in the way. They did try to buy the road, but couldn’t get the cash together. Hence, the angle.
The Cathedral was built on the site of, and mostly replaced, the parish church of St Mary, built in the 1500’s, but the south aisle of that church remains. The Dean joked that the fact they retained part of St Mary’s does, in some way, make Truro Cathedral one enormous extension. Like many extensions, there’s little effort to blend things in. Here the whitewashed walls and smaller scale of this space sit at great contrast to the rest of the Cathedral’s enormity. It’s also, strangely, still a parish church in it’s own right, a church within a church, retaining it’s own identity, throughout the centuries.
The rest of the Cathedral exists on a much larger scale. Vast windows…
Soaring columns…
Bay after bay, marching on into the distance…
It’s full of chapels too, some big, some small.
The High Altar is surrounded by a beautifully carved stone screen, and Italian marble floor (the floor is only slightly held together by tape, it's fine, don't worry about it, because it’ll cost a lot to fix).
Behind it, tucked right into the east end of the Cathedral, are handful of smaller chapels.
The wood in the chapel above was carved by local artist Violet Pinwill, as were the figures on the Choir stalls (below), and lots of other wood in the Cathedral.
But this newsletter is called ‘Church Climbing’ for a reason. So, having had a few hours to look around the ground floor, I met up with Simon, the Dean, signed away any right to sue them if I fell off the Cathedral, and began to climb.
We begin with a narrow staircase tucked behind an unassuming door in the north west corner of the Cathedral.
This staircase leads up into the roof. Though the wood here is much newer than the beams you find in medieval Cathedrals, the vibe here is extremely similar to others we’ve visited before, especially with the jumbled tops of the stone vaults below.
But we will look at the roof spaces properly later. For now we’re just passing through, heading across to the south west tower. So let’s leave the roof behind, for now, and head through a narrow corridor, and up a handful of darkened steps, before coming to a halt beneath the most incredible staircase I’ve ever seen…
I show you this staircase with a mix of joy and despair, for though I did get to see it, I was not allowed to climb it, because the wood needed checking over. I said I was fine to try it anyway, that if it gave way under my feet I would be okay with it, that I’d already signed away any right to sue, so it was okay, right??? But I was told that the Cathedral would NOT be okay with it, even if I was. So… I did not climb the worlds most amazing staircase. Though I have asked to be informed the moment it’s certified safe, so I can come back.
Once the staircase had been properly admired, it was time to move on. That journey onward begins, as a disturbing number of my journeys seem to do, with an ominous hole in the floor.
The hole leads into a small unlit room formed entirely of suspicious vibes. It’s only a transitional space, though, so duck your head to avoid the cobwebs, and head straight for the door!
Then it’s time to head towards the glimmer of daylight; round a corner, along an extremely narrow passageway, shoulders brushing the walls, up a short flight of stone steps, and into a room that contains nothing but piles of dust from the disintegrating stones all around us, and a ladder that leads to a door halfway up the wall.
A squeal of old bolts, and the door swings open. Beyond it, the roof, and the central tower. I visited in December, shortly after storm Darragh hit the country, and the exposed nature of Cornwall meant they experienced gusts of almost 100mph here. A wind like that can lift the lead on a high Cathedral roof like so much paper. Later, I was shown footage of the Cathedral during the storm. In the video some of the lead on the roof could be seen literally flapping in the wind. For context, lead is extremely heavy. A single cube of lead, measuring 1 inch on every side, weighs almost 200g. This isn’t their first storm, however, so they have people already booked in to fix the damage.
The slates on the roof of the nave are shiny and new, having been replaced a few years ago. On the underside of many of the slates people carved their names, as part of a fundraising bid. Imagine looking up at your local Cathedral, knowing your name is up there somewhere, helping to keep the rain out.
But it’s cold, out on the roof, so back inside.
Here, over the vaults, evidence of past storms quite literally litters the floor.
Here’s a lump of torn and twisted lead, ripped off a few years before. Luckily it landed in the gutter, not on a person, so two people climbed up the next morning, hauled it inside, and abandoned it on a walkway, just steps from the roof hatch. It’s too heavy to move much further.
But I think you get the point, so onwards, to the crossing. The crossing is the centre of the Cathedral, and the lower level of the central tower, where you can look down to the distant floor, and up, too, to the great windows which pour light into the building. I’ve found that no photograph can ever truly capture these places right, but if you’ll forgive me cracking out the wide angle lens, here’s an attempt at contextualising the strangeness of the place, with the Cathedral spreading out below, and the tower soaring up above.
The windows in Truro are spread over two levels, with the traditional great circular trapdoor in the middle, for the bells - though you’ll notice there’s no bell ropes coming from it. That’s because there’s not, actually, any bells in the central tower. They’re kept elsewhere. We’ll see some of them later.
Below, the Cathedral stretches out on four sides. The remnants of the November poppy fall (when red paper petals are dropped from the balcony during a Remembrance service) litter the edge of the balcony and other hard to reach areas.
In the nave a crowd begins to gather. There’s a choir performing this afternoon, and they begin to rehearse as we move away into the west end of the Cathedral.
Unlike the west end, the roof over the east end of the Cathedral hasn’t been replaced since it was first laid. You can tell this, even from the inside, by the great shafts of blue daylight that break through the slate tiles, laid directly onto the wood.
Along a walkway, and through a fire door (we love a fire safe Cathedral with regular firebreaks in the roof), and suddenly a lot more daylight comes pouring through. Not from a missing slate, or great hole in the roof, but a decorative window.
Look, there’s even the opportunity to open the window, and let a nice breeze in!
Moving away from this window, we head over into the south east transept, here a set of lancet windows let light in. But it’s not them that we’re here for.
Ah yes, that’s more like it… A little door. Our guide goes first, to check the slipperiness of the gutter.
Then, out we go!
Edging around to see the transept, one of the main structural problems with the Cathedral becomes immediately clear.
Do you see it? No? You’re a normal person? Who doesn’t care a weird amount about Cathedrals? Well, let me tell you.
Truro Cathedral is, as I’ve mentioned before, subject to a lot of weather. Set on a peninsula, it’s 17 miles from the sea to the west, 8 miles from the sea to the north, and, well, here’s a photo I took while standing in that gutter, without zoom, looking south. In it you can see the estuary - the beginning of the sea.
With this in mind, you would think they’d build the Cathedral in good solid stone. Granite would be a good choice. And they did use granite. Except, not everywhere. Inside, they mostly used Bath Stone. I have no problem with this. It gives a lovely honey-colour to the interior.
You know where else they used Bath Stone? On the corners, pinnacles, and decorative details outside. This is… bad. Bath Stone is an oolitic limestone. Basically it’s just calcium carbonate and sand. It’s porous. It’s sensitive to acid. It’s very prone to abrasion. In short: it’s soft. Over the years of exposure to the elements the Bath Stone on Truro Cathedral has started to develop ‘honeycombing’, a form of wear that looks like this:
If you are thinking “oh, that’s not good” you are correct. Welcome to the stress dreams the Cathedral buildings guy must have every night.
Now I’ve stressed you out, let’s head back inside. On the way through the door you can catch a glimpse of graffiti, scratched into the soft lead surround. See if you can spot the piece of graffiti that was left on one of the (many) times the lead on the roof ridge had to be put back after a big storm.
Stepping over the fallen slates hauled in from the gutter, we return to the hidden east window.
Then back the way we came, over the tops of the roof vaults, weaving our way through the carefully cantilevered wooden roof structure.
Back into the lantern, and then up. We’re headed for the top of the central tower, and that means going up another very very narrow spiral staircase. I don’t know what it is about Truro, but it has uniformly tiny spiral staircases, much smaller than any Medieval Cathedral I’ve been to. Still, that’s not going to stop me.
Round and round we go, up and up and up, past tiny windows letting in tiny slivers of light.
Then, we arrive. Into what would, ordinarily, be the bell chamber. But it’s empty.
Acres and acres of space, the floor lead, the ceiling vanishing high above us. Here and there, a dead pigeon, and mounds of their shit. A stark nothingness atop a Cathedral of such grandeur. Up above, the space begins to narrow, the corners closing in, step by step, to form an octagonal base for the central spire. Then, above that strange suspended maintenance walkway, the Cathedral vanishes into the darkness.
It’s a very very odd space indeed.
But the staircase continues onwards, and so must we.
On and on we go. Try not to get dizzy. We’re going right to the top!
Finally, we make it. The top of the tower. The balcony at the base of the spire.
Below us the cathedral spreads out, hemmed in by the surrounding city.
If you walk around the tower, the two spires on the western front strike up, thin and needle-like. The northern tower (on the right of this photo) contains the main set of bells. You can see the difference in their design, the small square window that would have belonged to the ringing room. They do it differently now. We’ll see that soon.
When we popped our heads out of the south west tower, we saw some of the damage Storm Darragh had done to the lead on the roof ridge. From above, the north side damage becomes clear, too. The Cathedral, peeled open by the wind.
While we are here, looking down at the Cathedral, there is something I’d like to point out. It’s about the spires. You didn’t think I’d got over that weird rant from the beginning, did you? No. I’m unhinged. I’m a Spire Truther. Let us begin.
Above us, there is one great big central spire. It’s hard to photograph from here, so here’s an image from ground level. I think you’ll agree, that’s definitely a spire. Spire Number One.
To the west, there are two spires. Spire Number Two and Spire Number Three.
This tracks. After all, this is, famously, a Cathedral with three spires.
And so if that is true then what, pray tell, is this?
Spire number FOUR, is what it is.
This isn’t a pinnacle. It’s atop a bell tower and everything. If we were looking at a parish church this wouldn't even be in question. Don’t try to trick me.
Who do I need to write to about this? Why are people lying about the number of spires this Cathedral has? Who benefits from this absolutely rubbish conspiracy? Why does it fall upon me to get out a corkboard and some red string in order to make clear what is already there? This is a four spired Cathedral. This three spire slander will not be borne. I know I sound deranged. I feel deranged. I probably am deranged. But I am also capable of counting to four. And there are FOUR spires on Truro Cathedral.
Anyway, I’ve loads more to show you so I’ll consider my point made. Spread the word. Together we can right this injustice and Truro Cathedral can claim her title as England’s only Four Spired Cathedral.
Right. Back to the tour.
You may have noticed, during the early section of the ‘spire rant’ that there’s four pinnacles on Truro Cathedral’s main tower. These sit on each corner. One contains the entrance and exit of the spiral staircase we used to get here. The others are simply decorative.
Even so, they’re huge, stretching up into nothing. Employees of the Cathedral noticed a peregrine falcon using the tower as a place to sit and eat a few years ago, so they put a nest box in one of these pinnacles, hoping to join the ranks of British Cathedrals with peregrines nesting in them. The peregrine has not, yet, made use of the nest. This is good for the pigeons who also call this tower home (see if you can spot the pigeon in the next photo - name suggestions for them are welcome).
The spire itself has four doors into it - two of them lead to that strange platform we saw earlier. It’s not exactly safe to stand on, so we inched in a tiny bit, and even here, as close as you can get, the top of the spire just disappears into the darkness.
Let’s back out, seal up that door, and take one last look around up here.
Then it’s down we go…
Down past the empty bell chamber, the wind whistling through the great space
Then it’s time to cut through the crossing, the sound of the choir rehearsing below drifting up to the balcony.
Through another door, back into the roof.
Feeling lost? Don’t worry. There’s a sign for that.
We’re heading down again. Past the bell chamber. Am I allowed inside to see the bells? Well, let’s see…
That’s a no, then.
Ah well, keep going down, try not to think about how much of the Cathedral is just gently dissolving and covering the stairs. Those piles aren’t dust, they’re church. Gotta love Bath Stone.
The stairs spit us out on the west balcony, from which you can look down the length of the Cathedral. What are those lights on the pillars for? Gay Things. Not joking. I’ll explain later.
For now, let’s take a look at the modern ringing chamber they’ve got tucked up here on the balcony, at the top of these wooden steps.
The sign on the weird gate thing says you’re not allowed in for health and safety reasons (valid, bell ringing is actually really dangerous), but peering over it I think the rule is at least partially in place to protect their excellent snack stash.
Back onto the balcony and if you step right to the edge you can look up at the great west window. Go the other way, and you can see the detail of the stained glass.
There’s also the expanse of the cathedral, the size of the elevation, the gothic arches advancing into the distance.
You can see from the sodium orange lighting, and the dimness of the glass, that time is moving on. Simon, the Dean of Truro, says that when we reach the ground again he will have to head back to the office. He has real work to be getting on with… But I have nothing to do until later in the evening, and there’s so much more to see. Come quickly, let’s go.
I saw a balcony in the north west transept when I was looking around earlier. Also these sketchy looking pathways. How am I supposed to resist that?
I ask kindly, politely, and a new set of keys is procured. A new door is opened. A new staircase, just as narrow as the others, is climbed.
The balcony sits at triforium level, and from here it’s a quick trip to the organ. The Father Willis Organ is enormous. So enormous they built a special vaulted chamber stretching the full height of the Cathedral, clerestory and all, to hold it. After all, unlike medieval Cathedrals, Truro was built when church organs already existed. They could plan for it.
The thing is, that photo doesn’t really give you a sense of the scale of the thing. So I took a photo of one of the pipes from inside the organ for you.
This, too, doesn’t give much of a sense of scale, however, so I decided… why not take a photo of that same pipe, with me, for scale?
It’s ludicrously big. Hope that helps.
Since being built in 1887, the only big change the organ has seen is the moving of the organist’s console (the keys) from up here among the pipes (deafening, and hard to communicate with the choir) to down in the south aisle. There are these two little hatches left behind for the organist to peep out of, however.
Shall we peep? Let’s peep!
You can see the Organist’s new home from up here!
Closing the hatches, you can catch glimpses of the rest of the Cathedral between the organ pipes.
But look… to the east, the triforium heads onwards. It looks like there was a door here once - see the remnants of hinges? - now, it’s open, and begging to be explored.
Let’s go.
Slipping along the triforium, we reach the high altar. The floor of Italian Marble sparkling up from below. Here we’re above even the Angels atop the screen.
We’ll need those Angels with us, though, as we cross our first set of bridges.
From here we can look across to the south east transept window, though the dim evening light, and interior lighting ruin the photos somewhat.
Then glance back to where we came, the pathway disappearing into shadow.
Above, the tall clerestory and high ceiling vaults reflect the sound of the choir back to us, their concert now in full swing.
In this part of the triforium there is no walkway, and it’s time to gingerly pick our way around the cross of ceiling vaults below our feet.
Then, because the east elevation is slightly different from everywhere else, it’s up a small ladder.
I hadn’t thought much about the concert going on in the nave until this point, but now, I realised there was a problem. I’m here, north side of the great east window. Minding my own business. Enjoying the view.
n the nave? Hundreds of people enjoying a concert.
I’m hidden behind a pillar. They can’t see me yet. Normally, when I get in front of an east window I take my time, drink in the space, frame some nice photos for you, really put the time in.
I’ve got no chance of doing that here. As soon as I step out from behind this pillar I am very much in the full view of everyone attending this concert.
I set up my camera levels, hope it’ll cope with the dim orange lighting, point it outwards, spam the shutter button, and walk, briskly, across to the other side.
Success! We've made it to the south side of the Cathedral. Unfortunately, looking at these beams, so did a lot of water at some point.
Like before, we’ve got to descend to normal triforium level, and this time this is how we do it:
From here the views are just as good, the forbidden clerestory passages calling to me, dangerous, and high up, and beautiful.
Still, it’s not like there’s not enough danger down here, as we weave between pillars, heating pipes, and electrical conduiting, feet perilously close to an edge with no barrier.
After a very short walk we come to the point at which, on the north side, we crossed that modern metal bridge. The south side is less often traversed, and comprises of some planks of wood.
This is entirely my jam, and I had a GREAT time crossing them. I mean, look at that view!
At one point it was a bit of a squeeze along some heating pipes stacked onto the narrow window ledge in order to get to the second section of bridge, but it was fine. I’m only little.
And, like I said, the views were worth it.
Then it was on into the next section of triforium. I love these little passageways, they speak to the goblin need inside me to scurry around beautiful old buildings.
Here the points of the vaults, endless heating pipes and wires, and strange steps make for a series of fun tripping hazards.
But who could resist the view?
Reaching the opposite side of the Cathedral and looking over at the balcony where we’d begun, our journey through the triforium comes to an end.
But there's still one last thing to see. Time to slip through a narrow doorway into a small room. A tower room, in fact. We are in that strange small bell tower off of St Mary’s Aisle - the proud owner of that fourth spire. In a box suspended from the ceiling, a pendulum ticks.
Beside it, on the windowsill, a box of ashes. I have questions, but I doubt I’ll find answers. I just hope that Charles is happy to have been surreptitiously secreted up here for eternity (I suspect he is).
Halfway up the wall, in the corner of the room, there’s another door. It calls to me, as doors of this kind so often do.
Behind it, the roof, with soaring flying buttresses in the drizzling rain.
Back inside, and up another set of stairs to the clock room, where this great metal machine has spent centuries marking the time.
Then up again, one final time, to the tower bells, adorned with hammers and ready to strike the hour (as they had done, moments before, when we were in the room below).
With that seen, it was time to take one final spiral staircase down to the ground, popping out in St Mary’s Aisle, among a gaggle of confused singers, who had just finished their concert, and who were using the space to store their coats and other belongings.
I headed over to the Cathedral office. Time had moved on, and I had work to do after all. That evening Truro Cathedral was holding their very first Pride Carol Service, at which I was to read some poems.
The evening before I had sat down for dinner with the Dean, a man desperate to make it clear that Truro Cathedral was a home for all people; That this Cathedral did not belong to him, or to any one person, and that all were welcome here. A man palpably upset that too many LGBT+ people didn’t feel welcome at all.
That night the Cathedral was lit in rainbow colours, lights leaned against each pillar. The Dean opened with a welcome, an apology for the way the church has, and continues to, treat LGBT people. The local LGBT choir sang. I read my poems. People held their partners hands in a church for the first time.
At the end, a young transgender person walked up to where the Dean was speaking with the leader of Cornwall Pride, in their arms was a bundle of black fabric. They explained that this was a banner they’d unfurled in protest, weeks before, in a demonstration in the square outside the Cathedral - it said “protect trans kids” in Cornish. They asked, tentatively, if they could unfurl it in the Cathedral. An act seemingly impossible, in every Cathedral I’ve been in so far. An act seemingly impossible in almost any church. Not because people don’t agree with it, but because they (myself included) fear the backlash and danger from the hatred that could then come.
The Dean thought for a moment, and then nodded. “Go and stand in the middle” he said, gesturing at the platform right below the crossing “that’s where you’ll get a good photo.” Then he turned to me, explained what it said, and asked if I wanted to help hold it. A crowd gathered. He stood to one side, and watched, smiling, as God’s beloved children stood together - calling, as Christ so often did, for the protection of the marginalised and oppressed.
(Final two images by Kai Green Photography)