Day in Coventry

We went to Coventry for the day on Saturday.  It was a rather long day, but we very much enjoyed ourselves.  The goals were to go to the Coventry Cathedral(s) and to the Transport Museum.  We also had lunch.  The trip there took about an hour as we had to change trains.  There were all kinds of interesting people on the train as there was a football (soccer for Americans) game in Coventry.  At 10:30 in the morning there were all kinds of young men heading to Coventry drinking beer in their team colors.

We really enjoyed both places.  I think the boys liked the transport museum best and we enjoyed the cathedrals.  The original Coventry Cathedral was destroyed in 1940 during the Blitz on a night when much of Coventry was bombed because it was an industrial city.  Unfortunately there weren't enough firefighters to save the cathedral and it basically burned to the ground.  The new cathedral was built in the 50s and is a modern cathedral.  It's art is powerful and has some very beautiful side cathedrals.

The transport museum had cars and buses and bicycles.  It also had an exhibit of Coventry during WWII.  

We approached the cathedral from the south and so first saw the old cathedral - which is now open to the sky.

Here is a view of how the 2 cathedrals are connected.  You walk out the front door of the new church and walk up a flight of stairs into the shell of the original cathedral.

The day after the bombing a cathedral stone mason noticed two burned beams that looked like a cross.  He fastened them together and put them up where the altar had been.  This cross is the original and there is a replica standing where the original once was.

A mosaic that I particularly liked which was in one of the side chapels.

The altar with the replica cross in the old cathedral.

Robert enjoyed climbing on the pedestals which were once columns holding up a soaring ceiling.

Harry poses for the camera :-)

This statue in the old cathedral was given to the city of Coventry from the city of Dresden in 2012 in the memory of the civilian who were killed in bombings during the war.  It is called "Choir of Survivors" and as I walked through the cathedral I was thinking of the Gedaechtnis Church in Berlin and the stories my host family told me of Germany after the war and how they played in the rubble.

As we headed out of the cathedral you could see the two buildings together.  We could also see a few bits of stained glass in edges of one of the windows.  Unfortunately the light wasn't right to get a decent picture.

Goofing around at the transport museum.

Here is Robert in a postman Pat car.  This is a program Robert has been watching in the mornings over here.  After checking out the car, we were humming the postman Pat tune - bit of an earworm.