Jeff Vinter
The Winchester Diver
The great alone do not possess this place,
though tableaux, tombs and chantries might suggest
that benefactors viewed eternal rest
as more the gift of wealth than holy grace.
The sons of nameless clay may have no face
preserved in sculptured stone, yet they possessed
the will to save the Cromwell-shattered west
front glass, when arms would raze it without trace.
They matter still. A diver made his name
by stealing the cathedral from a grave
of water, peat and bone. In liquid earth
for sightless years he toiled, and though his fame
felt undeserved, his hands had helped to save
a treasured house. His work revealed his worth.
From 1906 to 1911, the diver William Walker underpinned with concrete the walls of Winchester Cathedral, threatened with collapse as the beechwood raft under it rotted: thus, working six hours a day in darkness, he saved the building, as King Edward VII exclaimed, "with his own two hands".
Page(s) 5
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The