Coventry Cathedral in The View from the Terrace

Last Saturday we went to Coventry to a concert put on by friends of ours. It was an afternoon concert, so we decided to go the afternoon before and stay over as it is a 3 hour drive and I never know how I am going to be in the mornings with my migraines. We stayed at a lovely b&b where we have been before. Check out was 10am so that left us with a spare morning.

I wanted to visit Coventry Cathedral. I remember Mum telling me the story of how it was bombed in the war. Mum took in evacuees and she had a family from Coventry who had come up out of the air raid shelter and couldn’t find the house where they had lived, everything had gone. I can’t imagine how that must have felt.

The old cathedral shell has been left, somehow the tower survived and all of the outside walls.

A beautiful new cathedral has been built adjoining it. I remember seeing the opening of this new cathedral on TV in 1962. It seemed very modern and didn’t really appeal to me then, but you have to go there and stand inside to experience it’s beauty. The way the light shines through the windows is amazing.

The thing that got to me most was the atmosphere of the place. Both the old and new cathedrals have been dedicated to peace and reconciliation. This is the window of the new cathedral looking out to the old one.

There was a chapel of unity which told the story of a child who was in Hiroshima when the bomb dropped. It gave her leukaemia. A fellow patient in the hospital told her of the Japanese legend that anyone who folds 1,000 origami paper cranes will have their wish granted. At first her wish was to recover but she realised that was impossible so she wished for peace in the world. She folded 644 cranes before she died and afterwards other children completed the task for her. In the chapel of unity are 1,000 paper cranes, a gift from the children of Hiroshima. It was unbelievably inspiring.

The picture above isn’t mine, I found it on another blog which I found very interesting.
Katyboo1’s Weblog

I came away with a renewed faith in human nature. If the people of Coventry can suffer such a loss and then dedicate their new Cathedral to reconciliation and the children of Hiroshima can send such a beautiful gift to people who were once their enemies there is hope for us all.

Statue of Reconciliation in the old Cathedral.