This will be a self-drive visit, AND CAR SHARING WILL BE ESSENTIAL BECAUSE OF LIMITED PARKING AT THE VENUE.

Arrival time at the Mosque is 11.15 and our visit commences at 11.30 and will comprise a talk about Islam with questions and answers and then some demonstrations.

Please note that the mosque has a strict, but not very onerous dress code to which all visitors MUST adhere.   The guidance they supply states ‘everyone to wear modest dress (ie no shorts, short skirts, etc no bare arms). Ladies to wear a headscarf or bandanna.’  You will probably need to remove your shoes upon entry.

The mosque provides a lunchtime meal of Asian food which is not particularly hot or highly spiced at a cost of £6-00 pp.  This is a daily event; the food being prepared in their own kitchens from where they feed members of their community.

A number of other groups known to us have made this visit and they have been full of praise about the warm hospitality, general interest, and friendliness of the congregation.  It is recommended as a completely new experience.

 

FURTHER DETAILS TO FOLLOW.

Meanwhile, please indicate you interest to me and whether you require a lift.

Best wishes

Norma Bryan

01264 335652

rjb@btinternet.com

Questers Salisbury Cathedral Guided Tour – Thursday 22^nd February 2024

Another rainy day in February what can we do today    ? Well luckily a guided tour of Salisbury Cathedral had been arranged by the Questers Group.

A number of us met up at the London Road Park and Ride and travelled in on the bus where we met the rest of our members at the Cathedral who had come in earlier to avail themselves of a coffee in the Refectory prior to the start of our tour. We met our guides who introduced themselves and divided our group into two to explore the cathedral.

The guides explained that the cathedral building had commenced in 1220 and the main part was completed in 1258 (38 years later) which was very quick for the period. The tower and the spire took another 72 years to be added and were completed in 1330. The spire was later heightened to 404ft and since 1561 has been the tallest church spire in the UK.

Originally the cathedral was sited at Old Sarum but permission was given to re-site it. Legend says that Bishop Poore shot an arrow in the direction of where he wanted to build the cathedral which hit a deer who carried it with him until dying on the site where the cathedral now stands. As we progressed around the cathedral, we saw the clock which dates from 1386 and is the oldest working mechanical clock in the world and the modern font which is the largest working font in any British cathedral. The font is cruciform in shape and is a 10-foot-wide vessel filled to its brim with water, designed so that the water overflows in filaments through each corner into bronze gratings embedded in the cathedral’s stone floor. It was installed in the cathedral in 2008.

We were given a potted history of the cathedral with some quirky features highlighted during the tour, such as the tombs of various dignitaries that had been defaced with graffiti over the years, a removeable block in the floor with a rod that enables the water level beneath the building to be monitored, Edward Heath’s memorial plaque showing where he was buried and the Whistler Crystal which is an engraved prism depicting the Cathedral housed in a side chapel.

         

We then moved into the octagonal Chapter House which has one of the best medieval friezes in the world. The circular frieze, located above the stalls depicts the scenes and stories from the books of Genesis and Exodus. In the Chapter House is the best-preserved copy of the Magna Carta and its transcription into modern English is displayed. The copy came to Salisbury because Elias of Dereham who was present at Runnymede in 1215 was given the task of distributing some of the original copies. He later became a canon of Salisbury and supervised the construction of the cathedral.

This completed our tour and as we had to leave the cathedral because it due to close for a major funeral to take place in the afternoon, we all dispersed to various places to eat in the town after completing an interesting and very informative tour.

Kevin Barter