When the Moon came to Exeter Cathedral

It was a rare, cloud-free evening in mid-February earlier this year and I had stopped to gaze up at the sky, by now a deepening dark blue.  Although the sun had set nearly an hour previously, vestiges of light lingered in the west and only the brightest stars were visible.   Almost directly above me, though, it was the Moon that captured my attention.  It was bright and well defined that evening and just over half illuminated.  I gazed upwards for a while and this set me thinking about our relationship with this celestial body. 

The Moon is the Earth’s only natural satellite and the only place away from the Earth where humans have set foot.  It orbits our planet at a distance of 384,400 km and although that may seem a long way away, the Moon influences life on Earth to a surprising extent.  It is the main driver of tides on the Earth setting up important rhythms that dominate lives lived near the sea.  It can also influence the timing of migration and reproduction in the non-human world.  Its prominence in the Earthly sky and its regular phases (new Moon, full Moon etc) have given the Moon great cultural significance influencing ancient religions as well as many artists, musicians, poets and writers. 

Before the advent of widespread street lighting, the Moon was the only source of night time illumination.  Travelling in the dark, without moonlight, was hazardous and evening social gatherings were often planned to take advantage of a full Moon.  Nowadays, darkness features less in our lives and awareness of the phases of the Moon and the night sky is minimal.  Despite this, everyday speech still contains references to the Moon in terms such as “once in a blue moon”, “over the moon”, “honeymoon” and “lunacy”.

The Moon was uppermost in my mind that evening because, the following day, we were booked to visit the Museum of the Moon exhibition in Exeter Cathedral.  This exhibition featured UK artist Luke Jerram’s massive travelling artwork depicting the Moon.  Jerram’s artwork had already been exhibited in several other places locally including Bournemouth, Sherborne, Taunton and Wells.

The view upon entry to the Cathedral

When we arrived in the Cathedral Close that morning, a small queue of people, each wearing a mask, had formed at the entrance door.  After a short delay we were ushered in and were immediately confronted by the huge pale sphere.  It hung between the roof and floor of the Cathedral, almost filling the vast space, dominating the view and capturing our attention. Most people reacted with surprise and there were audible exclamations of “Wow! or Gosh!”

Luke Jerram’s Museum of the Moon is a massive blue-grey globe, seven metres in diameter with a mottled surface, depicting the geography of the moon.    The artwork is a 1/500,000 scale model based on precise lunar imaging from NASA combined with modern printing techniques and with internal lighting to create as realistic a representation as possible.  In Exeter Cathedral, it was accompanied by a soundtrack specially created by composer Dan Jones. 

We walked around the installation, looking from different directions, trying to take it in, not quite sure what to make of it.  We weren’t alone, though, as there were quite a few people about that morning making it feel busy.  Small children were running here and there, lying down beneath the huge sphere to look up, shrieking.   School children, some in uniform, were drawing, colouring in shapes. Adults were standing, looking, holding their phones up to capture images.  Some adults also wanted to lie down and “moonbathe”, but adults don’t, do they?

Luke Jerram’s Moon is a great concept but I wasn’t as impressed by it as I thought I would be.  Perhaps in today’s culture where we are barraged with so many graphic images it is difficult to impress?  Perhaps having witnessed the first Moon landings half a century ago it is hard to better those moments?  I also found it difficult to concentrate on the artwork with all the other people, noise and movement around me.  Despite these comments, it was good to see the children running about, enjoying the installation and engaging with its ideas.   Perhaps that’s what we should all have been doing?

It’s also difficult for any artwork to compete with the splendour of Exeter Cathedral and I couldn’t help being drawn away from the Moon to gaze at the architecture, the medieval vaulted ceiling, the colourful roof bosses, the stained glass and some of the memorials and chapels.  It felt as though having the Moon artwork there made me look afresh at the Cathedral.  In the end, we stayed for more than an hour suggesting that we were very engaged with the totality of the experience.

One of my favourite artefacts in Exeter Cathedral is the Astronomical Clock.  Dating from the 15^th century but still in use, the main face of the clock shows the hour in its outer dial and on the inner dial the days of the lunar month (the time between successive new Moons).  The sphere representing the Moon also rotates to show its phase.  When we visited, the Moon on the clock was roughly half illuminated, very similar to what it had been in reality the night before.  Despite these obvious references to the Moon, I noticed no attempt to link the Astronomical Clock to the artwork and, for the visit of the Moon to Exeter Cathedral, this was a missed opportunity.

Overall, though, Luke Jerram’s Museum of the Moon has been a huge global success having been presented more than 250 times in more than 30 countries (there are several Moon artworks circulating) and experienced by more than 10 million people.  The Museum of the Moon is still on the move inspiring different creative responses wherever it appears.  One of its notable recent outings has been at WOMAD 2022 where it was accompanied by an immersive sonic experience inspired by the ethos of the Festival and composed by Yazz Ahmed. 

For many who have witnessed the artwork, this will have been their most intimate interaction with the Moon generating considerable new interest in this celestial body.  Hopefully, this will have gone some way towards reconnecting people with their only natural satellite.

The Museum of the Moon

The Great East Window in Exeter Cathedral

The Astronomical Clock with the Moon (half illuminated) in the inner ring.

This article appeared in the August edition of the Marshwood Vale Magazine.

Still ticking after all these years – the Ottery St Mary Astronomical Clock

Ottery St Mary is a small town in East Devon in the south west of the UK. The town has several claims to fame: not only is it the birthplace of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge but Harry Potter fans will know it as the inspiration for Ottery St Catchpole, home of the Weasleys. Then there is St Mary’s Church, a magnficent building, a mini-cathedral. There is much to see within the church but one of its more unusual features is the ancient astronomical clock. As well as telling the time, it also shows the age and phase of the moon, and it has done so for more than five centuries. This beautiful clock is a rare example of medieval craftsmanship and gives us a unique insight into life many centuries ago.

St Mary’s Church, Ottery St Mary

 

Perhaps there is a chiming clock in the town where you live that insists on telling you the hour. You probably also wear a wristwatch and, failing that, your computer or phone provides minute by minute updates of the time. But it hasn’t always been like this, so how were clocks developed and how did time come to rule us?

The earliest clocks

In Western Europe, the first rudimentary clocks began to appear only during the medieval era. They were the preserve of monasteries and their purpose was to provide a signal to the sacristan who then rang the cloister bell, calling the monks to prayer at regular intervals. These simple timepieces were probably water clocks, where time was measured via the flow of water in to or out of a vessel. Although they were not very accurate, they were a great improvement on sundials in a cloud-prone country.

Then, in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, a major breakthrough in clock development occurred. Reports of new mechanical clocks began to appear from various places in Europe including Exeter (1284) and Salisbury (1306) and, most likely, this coincided with the invention of the escapement. These new clocks would probably have been driven by a weight attached to a rope wound round a drive shaft. The escapement was a device that enabled the weight to descend in a stepwise manner, each step representing the passing of time which could be displayed on the clock face. The familiar “tick, tock” of these clocks is the sound of the escapement. So began a new era of mechanical clocks composed solely of metal wheels and gears. These clocks were enthusiastically installed in church towers and other public buildings allowing a bell to be rung at intervals throughout the day, broadcasting time to the inhabitants of the town and, for example, signalling the opening of trading at the market.

As these mechanical clocks became more sophisticated they were elaborated to show not only time but also the age and phase of the moon. The south west of England has four well preserved examples of these ancient astronomical clocks that have survived for at least five centuries, perhaps because of their novelty or their beauty. They are to be found in Exeter Cathedral, Wells Cathedral, Wimborne Minster and in Ottery St Mary Church.

The Astronomical Clock in St Mary’s Church, Ottery St Mary

The clock hangs high above the south transept and below the bell tower. Its bright blue face, about a metre and a half square, is liberally decorated with gold and red and topped with a gold angel blowing a trumpet. Unashamedly beautiful and garish at the same time, it dominates the scene.

The astronomical clock in St Mary’s Church, Ottery St Mary

 

The clock has two circular dials. The outer dial shows the hour with two sets of twelve Roman numerals. A golden sphere, representing the sun, moves to show the time. The inner dial contains thirty Arabic numerals with a gold star moving between them to show the age of the moon. Within the inner dial is a sphere painted half white, half black which rotates on its axis once every 29.5 days depicting the moon and its phases; the moon sphere also moves around the dial once every 24 hours. A black sphere at the centre of the clock shows the earth as the centre of the universe. The clock mechanism is visible behind the face.

The clock mechanism

 

The exact age of the clock is not known but we may get a hint from the strong similarity between the Ottery St Mary clock and the astronomical clock in Exeter Cathedral, which dates from the 15th century. Also, both timepieces depict a medieval view of the structure of the universe where the sun rotates about the earth. This model was only superseded in 1543 when Copernicus proposed that the earth actually rotates about the sun, so we can be fairly sure that both are older than this date.

The astronomical clock in Exeter Cathedral. The Latin inscription translates as “The hours pass and are reckoned to our account”.

 

Why astronomical clocks?

It is easy to understand the purpose of a clock that broadcasts the time of day to a busy town but why would the medieval clockmaker go to the trouble to include information about the age and phase of the moon and the apparent movement of the sun about the earth? One possibility may have been a desire of the contemporary Church to create a model of God’s celestial universe but perhaps there were secular reasons as well. For example, knowledge of the phases of the moon would have been useful in planning a long journey at night or a meeting in winter. Also, because of the influence of the moon on tides, knowledge of the state of the moon would have been useful for seafarers.

When they first appeared, these clocks must have seemed miraculous: man had constructed a machine that would predict the motion of the sun and moon and show the hours of the day. Possession of such a clock would have been a source of civic and ecclesiastical pride and conferred distinction on a town. For Ottery St Mary, perhaps it was considered fitting to install such a clock in its “mini-cathedral” of St Mary’s church.

The 21st century observer, surrounded by technology and gadgets, might, however, simply view the Ottery St Mary clock as an ancient curiosity. This would be a mistake: the clock is a rare example of advanced medieval craftsmanship as well as offering considerable insight into how life was lived so many years ago. It is a true medieval marvel.

 

This article appeared in the November edition of the Marshwood Vale Magazine.