The Cathedral of the Canals

August 3, 2016 Andrew Comments 0 Comment

The weather forecast today said it was going to be windy as f*ck this afternoon. Well it didn’t use those exact terms, it was a bit more meteorological, but you could see what they meant. Thus prompted, we got off to an early start and got our travel for the day out of the way by the time for elevenses. That’s actually a pretty good time to stop for the day if you want to moor somewhere popular, as that is when most people have just pulled out for the day. We wanted to moor at Braunston Junction, which is a very popular spot.

Braunston is one of the hubs of the canal system, where the north branch of the Oxford canal connects with the Grand Union. The canal is lined by chandlers, boatbuilders, and gift shops. The village of Braunston, which is much older than the canal, is perched on a ridge looking down on the cut. The church at Braunston was a convenient place for the canal folk to celebrate their births, marriages, and deaths, so it became known as the Cathedral of the Canals.

There has been a church on this site for a thousand years or so, and it was probably a burial mound before that. The first Christian church there was built by the Normans, but torn down after it was polluted by murder in 1290. If only it had been a century or two earlier they could have called in Brother Cadfael and we would have had a full account of the dirty deed, with TV adaptation starring Derek Jacobi. Sadly it was not to be, and we no longer know how many people were killed, or if indeed it really happened. In any event, the old church was torn down, and a new one was built in the 1300s.

That lasted until the early Victorian era, when rather than repairing a gothic church they tore it down and put up a gothic revival church. However, they used the red sandstone stones from the older church to build the new one, which was adding insult to injury. I’m reminded of the Victorian dons at my Cambridge college, St. John’s, who tore down a twelfth century chapel because it wasn’t big enough and put up a gothic revival monstrosity. The view from St John’s College chapel tower is the best in Cambridge, because it is the only place you don’t have to look at St John’s College chapel tower.

One of the popular sports at Cambridge is night climbing or edificeering. This started out as a purely utilitarian way of getting in and out of college after the gates were locked for the night, but eventually students started climbing buildings after dark just for the fun of it, and leaving souvenirs to show they had been there. Personally I stuck to the safer routes in my own college like the traverse of New Court, but others were more ambitious. One day a For Sale sign appeared on the top of King’s College Chapel, one of the most beautiful places of worship. The bursar of St. John’s called up the bursar of King’s. “I see your chapel is for sale. We’re very interested, and we wonder if you would take ours in part exchange.”

There’s a rather phallic ex-windmill next door to Braunston church.

The windmill no longer has any sails, which is probably just as well, as a workman who was attempting to repair one of them fell to his death when it moved in an unexpected gust of wind. Down the street in the pie shop at the Dog and Gun, the pieman’s brother was convicted of murder. Braunston seems to be one of those places like Midsomer and Saint-Marie that get a statistically improbable number of violent deaths. However, they are losing out as they don’t have a TV series yet.

The buildings are a mixture of stone and brick (sometimes in the same building) with one Tudor black and white where Paula stopped by for a haircut.

You can often see where the slope of a roof changed as steep thatch roofs were replaced by slate or tile. I’m not sure what is going on with this building. As well as changing the slope of the roof it also seems to incorporate some of the wood framing from a building that used to be next door.