Talk:Lincoln Cathedral

Spire collapse

Addendum by Mark Rejhon: In case someone tries to edit the 1549 date back to 1548, I should mention... There is some confusion about the date of the 525-foot spire collapse are 1548 to 1549 from several sources, but the official church website indicates 1549, so I am using that date.

"Tallest building in the world" claim

I'm extremely sceptical about the claimed height of 160m (before the spire collapse). Is there some hard evidence for that figure, or was it someone's wild guess? — Opie 05:04, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Being a historian myself, I had a quick look in contemporary 14th and 15th century sources, but could not find any evidence for the 525 feet claim for Lincoln Cathedral. First of all there are many contradictions in dating the spires and also on when the central tower spire was destroyed. (1541, 1547, 1548). I would rate the 525 claim "very unlikely" at best. But let's start from the accurate and critical work by A.F. Kendrick in 1898 titled 'The Cathedral Church of Lincoln' [1]: "The tall spire of timber, covered with lead, which originally crowned this tower reached an altitude, it is said, of 525 feet; but this is doubtful."

On the height of the spires, it was noted: The height of these timber spires was 89 feet from the base to the ball, and another 12 feet to the top of the vane. The central tower is claimed to be 271 feet, but this is from the top of the corner pinnacles. So the actual base from which the spire was built (on the central tower) is more like 225 - 235 feet. This means the claim here is that spire of the central tower was 300 feet(!) in height (525ft=225ft+300ft). That is simply a preposterous claim, knowing: 1) the western tower spires of Lincoln (who survived 200 more years) were 89 feet from base to the ball; and 2) the extremely tall spire of Salisbury cathedral was 150-175 feet (measured from the tower top): Salisbury cathedral's spire was only half of the 300 feet claim here for the tallest Lincoln cathedral spire. 2001:1C02:1C04:CD00:6DF8:19F5:D35F:435C (talk) 11:42, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

why are you sceptical? the smaller malmsebury abbey was 130 metres tall, salisbury was 123. st pauls cathedral was only slightly shorter. york minster had a wooden spire that made it over 100 metres tall too, infact the shorter towers were over 100m tall at lincoln cathedral. its perfectly easy to take a church and double the height from roof to tip by simply adding a spire as chichester or salisbury show today. its much harder to get it standing up as malmesbury shows. everywhere says so except for one victorian author ranging from the cathedrals own records to the guiness book. --unsigned comment by 86.6.160.50

Why I'm sceptical:

• The spire (above the main tower) would have to be about 40% taller than the one at Salisbury, on a base that is only slightly wider.
• The official cathedral site will only commit to saying that Lincoln Cathedral was the "tallest building in Europe," not the tallest in the world, which it would have been if it were 160m/525ft high (surpassing the Giza pyramid).
• Kendrick's book is the only source I was able to find that mentioned the reliability of the 525-ft figure; he called it "doubtful"

I'm not saying a 525-ft height is impossible. But since the spire fell down centuries ago and its height can't be directly verified today, it would be nice to know the source of the original measurement/estimate, so that we might know how reliable it is. If you say the height is documented in the cathedral's own records, or is accepted by the Guinness book (I don't remember it being there) then please add the appropriate reference to the article, if you would be so kind.

--Opie 02:28, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

It's documented records, I'm pretty sure it is, I'll have ago at badgering a tour guide or something next time i'm in the area - it could certainly be one of the highest tops of any being on top of a pretty high hill when you think about it from that perspective, there aint many, if any, that are built on top of hills --Streaky 06:13, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

it IS in the guiness book of world records. you will also find the list of the worlds tallest ever buildings replicated everywhere, for example on skyscraperpage or emporis, skyscrapernews.com has what is i believe the fullest list of britains big churches including ones that dont exist anymore, what happened to lincoln was not uncommon as york minster experienced. the extreme height would explain why it doesnt exist anymore, plenty of extremely tall buildings collapsed because of that! just to emphasise further - http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=138268 "Old St. Paul's Cathedral became the world's tallest building in 1549, when the 160m (525ft) wooden central spire of Lincoln Cathedral fell down. This lasted until the 4th June 1561, when St. Paul's spire was itself felled by lightning and the title passed to Notre-Dame de Strasbourg in Strasbourg." given the tallest buildings in the world were all in europe it WAS the tallest in the world. notre-dame de rouen has a spire of similar dimensions to that of lincoln still standing by the way.

Just to add further to this discussion, the supports for the spire still exist in the tower today and you can see them on the tour of the central tower. They indicate from their dimensions and the weight they can carry that the spire was indeed around 160m tall. --Gothicform 07:01, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I have very serious doubts too that the Lincoln Cathedral was over 160metres high. That would make that the spire-construction itself should have been about 77metres high on a floorplan of about 15 by 15 metres. To add to the story, the suggested spire-construction was standing for almost 250years(!). I cant take those claims serious unless someone with an engineering and construction background shows me how it could have been done in 1311 and maintained. No matter what the old documents until 1549 say, this matter needs in my POV serious recalculations nowadays to proof it, before it can enter the wikipedia as a solid fact. 06:29, 28 January 2008 (UTC)sonty567 (architecture student for 5years) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.83.104.161 (talk)

Addon to my above comment : it seems the roofplan of the centraltower is nowadays roughly about 70metres above ground. This would make the suggested wooden spire on that central tower even more doubtfull because that would result in an approximate 90metres high wooden spire on the central towers rooffloorplan of roughly about 15 by 15metres. 83.83.104.161 (talk) 17:19, 28 January 2008 (UTC)sonty567

Having read the above I've moderated the recent qualifications regarding building height to a more neutral tone. The previous remarks of "but this height is regarded as doubtful" imply quite clearly that a consensus exists against the 525ft height, whereas the most basic research reveals the opposite to be true, with widespread agreement on the world record height with the notable exception of Kendrick's opinion. I would suggest the prevalence of references is a better indicator of the truth than a comparative analysis of engineering techniques. As others have said, it collapsed because it was too audacious rather than eminently achievable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.141.235.97 (talk) 11:14, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

It was reputedly the tallest building in the world for 249 years (1300–1549). cites Kendrick's book (which is still under copyright, possibly explaining why it no longer appears in Project Gutenberg, so I shall replace the link with reference to the book.) I cannot, however, find anywhere in the book which makes this or a similar statement. Could someone please find the relevant passage? Longwayround (talk) 08:36, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

For reference, the link I have replaced is [2] Longwayround (talk) 08:41, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Original source for the 525 feet claim

I think the claim for the highest building since the Pyramids of Giza deserves some better sources than we have now.

Are there any other books or papers on historical research into the Lincoln Cathedral that assessed the credibility of this claim? Because so far we only have the A.F. Kendrick, who calls it doubtful, but gives no further explanation. We also have the other sources that were given in the Wikipedia article but I doubt the authors really verified the claim themselves, since the websites/books are not dedicated to the Lincoln Cathedral.Ckiki lwai (talk) 17:20, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

And we are left with "some historians claim", not "all relevant contemporary historians stated, but some guy on wikipedia with '5 years engineering experience has doubts'" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.86.7.57 (talk) 01:59, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

The article History of the world's tallest buildings has

The 159.7 m (524 ft) height of Lincoln Cathedral is disputed by some, but accepted by most sources. The completion date for the spire is given as 1311 rather than 1300 by some sources.

Some of those are books I can't access, one one of them 404s, and none of them may be particularly good, I'm just laying them out here. Herostratus (talk) 04:54, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

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References

Tower, spire

What confusion!

Lincoln, from a distance

LIncoln was the tallest building in the world, for several hundred years, with Strasburg, Old St Paul's (gone in the 1600s) and a church in Finland(?) coming in behind it. Salisbury was about 150 feet shorter that Lincoln. But Salisbury had the tallest solid masonry spire ever constructed. Not lead over wood and not open latticework but big lumps of stone, perfectly cut and laid, for 404 feet. Salisbury's spire has survived, with some resurfacing, and remortaring, but not reconstruction. It is the supreme masterpiece of 13th century engineering. Most big spires now date from the 1800s.

Lincoln's spire was wood covered with lead. It blew down in a gale. But it had stood for about 300 years. It came down in the 1500s, and there is no picture. But the enormous tower that the spire stood on, 270 feet high, still stands as the tallest church tower in England. It is probably the tallest "central tower" on any church in the world.

Think of this: most towers stand on four solid walls, with a door or two at the bottom. But the great central towers on England's Cathedrals do not stand on four walls. They stand on four feet! In other words, under each of these towers are four big arches, up about 75-80 feet high, and between the arches are piers. The piers are like four huge columns which carry the four corners of the tower. The English were so expert at this that they built huge central towers at Norwich, Durham, Wells, Salisbury, Canterbury, York, Lincoln, Worcester, Gloucester, Lichfield, Chichester, and towers that were not quite so spectaclarly high at some of the others. All these towers are still standing. However, Chichester has a rather nasty mishap- its stone spire suddenly collapsed inwards on itself like an old telescope folding up. It had been standing for about 450 years, before it gave up.

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  Lincoln, with the ruins of the bishops palace in front
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  The largest church tower in England is carried on four arches.
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  Canterbury
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  And here we are looking up the tower of Canterbury.
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  Salisbury
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  This shows the dark Purbec marble shafts under the tower. One of them has bent under the weight.
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  The tower at Peterborough is only 143 feet high
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  Peterbough. A tower with windows like this is called a "Lantern tower".

Lincoln Mystery Plays

There's an AfD-merge (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lincoln Mystery Plays), not actioned for many months, with an outcome of merge to the Lincoln Cathedral page. Looking at Lincoln Mystery Plays, though, it seems that the content would be out-of-place and unbalance this page. Rather, I think that a better target for hte merge would be N-Town Plays, with Lincoln Mystery Plays having a distinct section there as a modern adaptation of a traditional collection. That would seem to place the material better in context. Klbrain (talk) 18:32, 20 January 2024 (UTC)