Walking around the outside of Hereford Cathedral you can find some fascinating views of the architecture. Sir Edward Elgar appears to be enjoying the view but the inscription on the periphery of the base to this statue reads:
“This is what I hear, the trees are singing my music or am I singing theirs?” “Sir Edward Elgar, resident of Hereford 1904 – 1911”
In both shots of this statue I like the other activities taking place in the frame – the woman attending to her child in the pushchair and in the second shot, the men in conversation in the background. These activities seem to fit very well with the pose given to Elgar with his bike, pondering, perhaps, a composition inspired by his cycles around Herefordshire and Worcestershire.
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Lovely shots, Alastair — I was here only Monday, accompanying candidates for their music exams at the Cathedral School — looks like you had similar weather when you were on your walk.
Thank you. It seems like a unique place to me but I am not very familiar with other small cathedral cities. If there are similar places, I would still be looking for those things that inevitably make all places unique.
You’re right, all such places are unique, but there is an ambience about many long-established cathedral cities that marks them out, a kind of comfortable certainty that’s somehow reassuring — Llandaff has it, St Asaph’s too, and Wells and Exeter and many other English sees that I’ve visited over the years. Some may see it as middle class smugness but they nearly always seem to me to be calmly welcoming.
So now I’m going to have to visit some of these places to see if you’re right! I would agree with you based on my walks around Hereford but if I based my view on driving into and around the city, it would be different (lol)