If It's Friday, This Must be Lincoln

On Friday, there was a school trip to Lincoln.  It was great!  The school organized everyone so that we would all have four "slots," one each for the Cathedral, Roman ruins, Castle, and then a fourth for going to whatever seemed fun.  Faculty were allowed to do whatever, so I tagged along for the Roman ruins and Cathedral tours (led by British faculty folks), then had lunch at a pie shop, then went to the Castle, and then back to the Cathedral to look some more.  Because the Cathedral is just that GREAT!

Without someone telling me, I would have totally missed these in the street.  There's a row of them, as you can see in the next picture.  Just right in the middle of the street.

 They mark, according to our guide, the columns that held up the Roman basilica/forum thingy, back when Lincoln was a colonia of Rome.  (I love that some names have Roman origins, and we still use them.)

 Part of the Roman wall still stands.  I gather it started as a fort, and then once the local population was pretty much pacified, turned into a colonia, a city with colonists from all over Rome.

 And, when it was a colonia, it had big open gates, the better to welcome traders.  Unfortunately, that meant it wasn't defensible really when the Angles and the Saxons attacked once the Romans pulled out the legions.  Oops.

Amazing to think these have been here for about 2000 years.

 The Cathedral, on the other hand, is practically new, not even a thousand years old yet.

 We learned a bit about architecture and planning.  Notice, for example, that the row of kings disrupts the arches built around the door.  Not part of the original planning, perhaps.

 The Normans were descendants of Vikings, and their buildings show motifs that come from Viking imagery, like this amazing dragon over the arch.

 And these very weird heads with massive, ornate tongues sticking out.

 Inside, if you embiggen the picture, and look along the roofline, you can see where there's an architectural error.  Or something.  (I missed the story that went along with that, alas.  But I've read that a lot of the Cathedral was ruined by an earthquake in the 12th century, so maybe after that?)

 A closer view.

 The stone masons were amazing!

After the Roman and Cathedral tours and lunch, I went to the Castle.  Imposing!

The most interesting part of the Castle for me was in the prison chapel.  When originally built, the prison was built on a system of separation, keeping prisoners alone.  And the chapel was built the same way, so there are individual little cells where the prisoners all stand, with a door between each, and watch/listen to the preacher in the pulpit up above.

 They had manikins in some of the little cells, and holy cow, they're creepy!  I looked down, not realizing one was there, and almost jumped out of my skin when I saw it!  You can see a couple heads in this picture below.

 Magna Carta was, as always, magnificent and exciting.  They also had two Charter of the Forests from different signings on display.  But you can't take pictures in there.  So I walked around the top of the castle wall walk, in the rain, and took a picture looking towards the Cathedral.  I hadn't realized how different the spire things are until I looked from this angle.

 After walking the wall, I went back to the Cathedral to look at things I hadn't looked at enough before.  There's little Hugh's memorial, and a Bishop Richard Fleming's famous cadaver tomb (there was a scaffolding being put up just in front of it, so my picture's sort of iffy).

And then it occurred to me to see if there were any Green Men about, so I asked, and the docent gave me a map!  Here's the first one, in a little hidden place, but lit now by modern lighting.

 This next one is interesting, with oak leaves and such.

 And finally, a friend showed me these snails, which are a reminder of our mortality.