Norwich, Norfolk - Cathedral from air - Aerofilms real photo postcard 1931

Postcard
• Picture / Image:  Norwich Cathedral [from air] Aerofilms Ltd
• Publisher:  Kingsway Real Photo Series (S 15488)
• Postally used:  yes
• Stamp:  George V 1d red
• Postmark(s):  West Lothian 1 Aug 1931 cds
• Sent to:  H. W. Merkles, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh
• Notes / condition: 

Please ask if you need any other information and I will do the best I can to answer.

Image may be low res for illustrative purposes - if you need a higher definition image then please contact me and I may be able to send one. No cards have been trimmed (unless stated).

------------------------------------------------

Postage & Packing:

Postage and packing charge should be showing for your location (contact if not sure).

No additional charges for more than one postcard. You can buy as many postcards from me as you like and you will just pay the fee above once. Please wait for combined invoice. (If buying postcards with other things such as books, please contact or wait for invoice before paying).

Payment Methods:

UK - PayPal, Cheque (from UK bank) or postal order

Outside UK: PayPal ONLY (unless otherwise stated) please.   NO non-UK currency checks or money orders (sorry).

NOTE: All postcards are sent in brand new stiffened envelopes which I have bought for the task. These are specially made to protect postcards and you may be able to re-use them. In addition there are other costs to sending so the above charge is not just for the stamp!

I will give a full refund if you are not fully satisfied with the postcard.

----------------------------------------------

Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

*************

Norwich Cathedral is an English cathedral located in Norwich, Norfolk, dedicated to the Holy and Undivided Trinity. It is the cathedral church for the Church of England Diocese of Norwich and is one of the Norwich 12 heritage sites.

The cathedral was begun in 1096 and constructed out of flint and mortar and faced with a cream-coloured Caen limestone. A Saxon settlement and two churches were demolished to make room for the buildings. The cathedral was completed in 1145 with the Norman tower still seen today topped with a wooden spire covered with lead. Several episodes of damage necessitated rebuilding of the east end and spire but since the final erection of the stone spire in 1480 there have been few fundamental alterations to the fabric.

The large cloister has over 1,000 bosses including several hundred carved and ornately painted ones. The cathedral is on the lowest part of the Norwich river plain with Mousehold Heath, an area of scrubland, to the north.^{[citation needed]}

Norwich Cathedral has the second largest cloisters, only outsized by Salisbury Cathedral. The cathedral close is one of the largest in England and one of the largest in Europe and has more people living within it than any other close. The cathedral spire, measuring at 315 ft or 96 m, is the second tallest in England despite being partly rebuilt after being struck by lightning in 1169, just 23 months after its completion, which led to the building being set on fire. Measuring 461 ft or 140.5 m long and, with the transepts, 177 ft or 54 m wide at completion, Norwich Cathedral was the largest building in East Anglia.

In 672 the Archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore of Tarsus divided East Anglia into two dioceses, one covering Norfolk, with its see at Elmham, the other, covering Suffolk with its see at Dunwich. During much of the 9th century, because of the Danish incursions, there was no bishop at Elmham; in addition the see of Dunwich was extinguished and East Anglia became a single diocese once more. Following the Norman Conquest many sees were moved to more secure urban centres, that of Elmham being

The structure of the cathedral is primarily in the Norman style, having been constructed at the behest of Bishop Herbert de Losinga who had bought the bishopric for £1,900 before its transfer from Thetford.^[3] Building started in 1096 and the cathedral was completed in 1145. It was built from flint and mortar and faced with cream coloured Caen limestone.^[4] It still retains the greater part of its original stone structure. An Anglo-Saxon settlement and two churches were demolished to make room for the buildings and a canal cut to allow access for the boats bringing the stone and building materials which were taken up the Wensum and unloaded at Pulls Ferry, Norwich.^[4]

The ground plan remains almost entirely as it was in Norman times, except for that of the easternmost chapel. The cathedral has an unusually long nave of fourteen bays. The transepts are without aisles and the east end terminates in an apse with an ambulatory. From the ambulatory there is access to two chapels of unusual shape, the plan of each being based on two intersecting circles.^[5] This allows more correct orientation of the altars than in the more normal kind of radial chapel.

The crossing tower was the last piece of the Norman cathedral to be completed, in around 1140. It is boldly decorated with circles, lozenges and interlaced arcading.^[5] The present spire was added in the late fifteenth century.^[5]

The cathedral was damaged after riots in 1272,^[3] which resulted in the city paying heavy fines levied by Henry III,^[4] Rebuilding was completed in 1278 and the cathedral was reconsecrated in the presence of Edward I on Advent Sunday of that year.^[3]

A large two-storey cloister, the only such in England, with over 1,000 ceiling bosses was begun in 1297 and finally finished in 1430 after the Black Death had plagued the city.

The Norman spire was blown down in 1362. Its fall caused considerable damage to the east end, as a result of which the clerestory of the choir was rebuilt in the Perpendicular style.^[5][3] In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the cathedral's flat timber ceilings were replaced with stone vaults: the nave was vaulted under Bishop Lyhart (1446–72), the choir under Bishop Goldwell (1472–99) and the transepts after 1520.^[6] The vaulting was carried out in a spectacular manner with hundreds of ornately carved, painted and gilded bosses. The bosses of the vault number over 1,000. Each is decorated with a theological image, and as a group they have been described as without parallel in the Christian world. The nave vault shows the history of the world from the creation; the cloister includes series showing the life of Christ and the Apocalypse.

In 1463 the spire was struck by lightning, causing a fire to rage through the nave which was so intense it turned some of the creamy Caen limestone a pink colour.^[4] In 1480 the bishop, James Goldwell, ordered the building of a new spire which is still in place today. It is of brick faced with stone, supported on brick squinches built into the Norman tower.^[5] At 315 feet (96 metres) high, the spire is the second tallest in England. Only that of Salisbury Cathedral is taller at 404 feet (123 metres).

The total length of the building is 461 feet (140 metres). Along with Salisbury and Ely the cathedral lacks a ring of bells, which makes them the only three English cathedrals without them. One of the best views of the cathedral spire is from St. James's Hill on Mousehold Heath.

The cathedral was partially in ruins when John Cosin was at the grammar school in the early 17th century and the former bishop was an absentee figure. In 1643 during the reign of Charles I, an angry Puritan mob invaded the cathedral and destroyed all Roman Catholic symbols. The building, abandoned the following year, lay in ruins for two decades. Norwich bishop Joseph Hall provides a graphic description from his book Hard Measure:

It is tragical to relate the furious sacrilege committed under the authority of Linsey, Tofts the sheriff, and Greenwood: what clattering of glasses, what beating down of walls, what tearing down of monuments, what pulling down of seats, and wresting out of irons and brass from the windows and graves; what defacing of arms, what demolishing of curious stone-work, that had not any representation in the world but of the cost of the founder and skill of the mason; what piping on the destroyed organ-pipes; vestments, both copes and surplices, together with the leaden cross which had been newly sawed down from over the greenyard pulpit, and the singing-books and service-books, were carried to the fire in the public market-place; a lewd wretch walking before the train in his cope trailing in the dirt, with a service-book in his hand, imitating in an impious scorn the tune, and usurping the words of the litany. The ordnance being discharged on the guild-day, the cathedral was filled with musketeers, drinking and tobacconing as freely as if it had turned ale-house.

The mob also fired their muskets. At least one musket ball remains lodged in the stonework.

Only at the Restoration in 1660 would the cathedral be restored under Charles II.

In about 1830 the west front was remodelled by Anthony Salvin.^[7] In 1930–2 a new Lady Chapel, designed by Sir Charles Nicholson, was built at the east end, on the site of its 13th century predecessor, which had been demolished during the Elizabethan period.^[8]

In 2004 the new refectory (winner, National Wood Awards 2004), by Hopkins Architects and Buro Happold, opened on the site of the original refectory on the south side of the cloisters. Work on the new hostry, also by Hopkins Architects, started in April 2007 after the ""Cathedral Inspiration for the Future Campaign"" had reached its target of £10 million. It was opened by Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh on 4 May 2010. The new hostry has become the main entrance to the cathedral. Space has been provided within the hostry for temporary art exhibitions.

There is no entry charge to visit the cathedral; visitors are instead asked to make a suggested voluntary donation to help cover the costs of running the cathedral each year.

Aerofilms Ltd was the UK's first commercial aerial photography company, founded in 1919 by Francis Wills and Claude Graham White. Wills had served as an Observer with the Royal Naval Air Service during World War I, and was the driving force behind the expansion of the company from an office and a bathroom (for developing films) in Hendon to a business with major contracts in Africa and Asia as well as in the UK. Co-founder Graham-White was a pioneer aviator who had achieved fame by making the first night flight in 1910.

Operations began from the Stag Lane Aerodrome at Edgware, using the aircraft of the London Flying School. Subsequently the Aircraft Manufacturing Company (later the De Havilland Aircraft Company), hired an Airco DH.9 along with pilot entrepreneur Alan Cobham. In its early years Aerofilms had links with pioneer cinematographer Claude Friese-Greene.^[1] From 1921, Aerofilms carried out vertical photography for survey and mapping purposes. During the 1930s, the company pioneered the science of photogrammetry (mapping from aerial photographs), with the Ordnance Survey amongst the company's clients. In its earliest days, the main work of the company had been oblique photography, and the images were often sold to postcard manufacturers.^[2]

In 1925, Aircraft Operating Company took over Aerofilms, and expanded its operations, based at Hendon.^[3]

In 1940, the company's staff and state-of-the-art equipment were co-opted into the war effort, forming the nucleus of the Allied Photographic Interpretation Unit at Medmenham. It was at this time that Sir Percy Hunting became interested in the company, which led Aerofilms to become a member of the Hunting Group of Companies in 1942. After the war Aerofilms became responsible for oblique photography whilst Hunting Aerosurveys undertook vertical photography for survey.^[4]

Post-war redevelopment and industrial expansion kept both Aerofilms and Hunting Surveys Ltd hard at work, which has resulted in an expansive library of historic aerial photography.

Unlike other photographic libraries, a significant percentage of Aerofilms photos is already in the public domain, albeit protected by copyright. The company would send out batches of photos to public libraries, and many remain there today. In addition, key images were reproduced as postcards from the 1920s through to the 1980s. In addition to Aerofilms’ own imagery, the firm expanded its holdings with the purchase of two smaller collections – AeroPictorial (1934-1960) and Airviews (1947-1991).

In 1997 the parent company of Simmons Mapping (UK) Ltd acquired Aerofilms Limited, and in 2001 the two companies merged to form Simmons Aerofilms Ltd. In 2005 Simmons Aerofilms was taken over by Norwegian based geographical information and offshore technology company Blom and is now known as Blom Aerofilms / Blom UK. In June 2007 Blom sold their historic oblique library to English Heritage in partnership with The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) and The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales (RCAHMW). This was possible because of generous financial support from English Heritage’s donors and supporters, the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Friends of National Libraries. The vertical historic library is still available through Blom UK.

type=real photographic (rp)

city/ region=norwich

period=inter-war (1918-39)

postage condition=posted

number of items=single

size=standard (140x89 mm)