For the past three month’s as required for the traveling portion of this course my classmates and I have had the opportunity to explore and learn about English,welsh and Scottish history from the comfort of our classroom. With several books books and an interactive DVD in hand we have learned about many different aspects of history and culture throughout the UK. We’ve been asked to decipher through all this new found information and knowledge and pick a topic to expand upon for our readers to either learn something new or just to see some of the exciting things we’ve learned so far this semester. For me, I personally found the most interesting part of this class to be the history and architecture of cathedrals. In past classes involving medieval England I feel like overlooked the importance and significance of cathedrals in the United Kingdom. Traveling across the united states you may see some rather large churches or cathedrals, all of which most likely were built after the 19th century. Its incredible to think that over seven hundred years ago English men were constructing cathedrals larger than many cathedrals here in the United States. Although because of the size and the amount of technology it took many years to even complete these cathedrals, so much so that completion within a century was considered fast. That’s right 100 years was considered speedy for completely a cathedral. The combination of size and the length of which these projects took is awe inspiring, and even more impressive to me is the fact that average life expectancy was not more than 40 years, but funding seemed to never be in question through several different generations of builders.Our interactive DVD features many different cathedrals, monasteries and abbeys and as a class assignment we were required to learn about a specific cathedral abbey or monastery. It was interesting to hear how important these structures are in history. Many of them were important in wars and many times they were destroyed during these wars as well. It was quite interesting to learn that many cathedrals have been upgraded and rebuilt several times since they were originally built. It shows a testament to the storied history of much of the UK, whether it being from the reformation, or one of the several wars that took place on Great Britain soil. While there has been many many interesting and significant experiences learned in this pre travel class, I’ve found that the history of these magnificent cathedrals to be the most intriguing personally, which makes it even more exciting that in less than 18 days we all be across the pond.
Until Next Time,