Cathedrals are well worth the entrance fee

Philip Larkin, with his usual mixture of brilliance and grumpiness, wondered whether, when churchgoing ceased and the buildings were put to new uses, “we shall keep a few cathedrals chronically on show”.

He’d have felt a twinge of vindication at the news that the number of tourists visiting English cathedrals has declined – possibly because of entrance fees.

Familiarity can blind us to the lapidary miracles that have taken shape in our 42 diocesan cathedrals, many of them built in out-of-theway towns. Tramping about their vast interiors, we miss the sheer wonder of what their architects achieved: the way they sculpted massive stones to create an illusion of delicacy.

Each is glorious in its own way: Durham, martial and austere atop its mound; Ely, looming across the flatlands; Salisbury, its stone shifting colour according to the light; Lincoln, home to the finest copy of Magna Carta, its splendour overwhelming the town; Wells, whose inverted Gothic arches form curved crosses; Canterbury, grandest in rank, made wealthy by its gruesome murder.

Every cathedral tells the story of its locality.

My local, Winchester, where Jane Austen is buried, was knocked about a bit by Roundheads during the civil war, one of whom, an old boy of Winchester, stood with drawn sword before the tomb of William of Wykeham, defending his school’s founder from his iconoclastic comrades.

If entry fees are the issue, go during Evensong.

Even the most determinedly unimpressed of us will be lifted by such blended beauty.

The English are not a notably spiritual people but here, at least, they have created something transcendent.