Dr James Alexander Cameron
@drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
1.3K followers 250 following 820 posts
Art historian/lecturer at weird medieval architectural history projects incorporated. always for hire! www.stainedglassattitudes.com https://ko-fi.com/stainedglassattitudes
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drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
Do I have the same audience here as the Twitter? Probably, but I've put together my first long-form narrated video in over four years! It's very low-budget (I didn't leave the computer to make it) but it's getting rave reviews!*

*a number of people have clicked like

www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2vD...
The great church of Glastonbury Abbey reimagined (animation and commentary)
One of the largest, and final, church buildings demolished in the wake of Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, recreated in its modern environs. Done plenty of G-Earth comps of lost churches before, but this the first where I've made the model myself from scratch, so I've spun out the animation (which takes the laptop I use 15 hours to render the 40-second sequence) into a long-form video, where I compare it the buildings I've stolen elements from. Started as a quick idea of doing like a pre-filmed stream, but then I've developed it in my usual way (putting silly noises on it). It's an experiment! I hope it's mildly entertaining!! Been through the YouTube generated captions now it's been uploaded, they should be readable, will correct them more later (I think the last time I uploaded a long-form narrated video - four years ago - we didn't have this?) LINKS: University of Reading public-facing output from AHRC project: https://research.reading.ac.uk/glastonburyabbeyarchaeology/ Hot stuff from that for nerds: https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/glastonbury_ahrc_2014/ The recent publication on the Glastonbury cathedra at Washington: https://www.sdnq.org.uk/spotlight_on_sdnq/glastonbury-abbey-and-washington-national-cathedral-washington-d-c/ Animation done in Blender. Syncing cameras to G-Earth Studio output with https://github.com/imagiscope/EarthStudioTools And ripping environs with via https://github.com/eliemichel/MapsModelsImporter Screen recording with OBS Studio (did weigh down the laptop a fair bit hence why particularly the Washington sequence I struggle a bit to make Blender behave). Video sequencing also done in Blender, which wasn't a great idea but whatever it wasn't that bad in the end. Will use a different program if I ever do anything like this again though. All photos credited on-screen. If they're not credited I took them (unless I messed up). 0:00 - Rendered animation 1:28 - Intro to the extras 3:06 - History of Glastonbury Abbey up to the fire of 1184 6:42 - Making the great church model 10:10 - Wells Cathedral 19:56 - Gloucester Cathedral 23:54 - Winchester Cathedral 25:57 - Peterborough Cathedral 29:38 - Lincoln Cathedral 32:34 - Washington National Cathedral 37:41 - The Washington Glastonbury bishop's throne 40:06 - Outro
www.youtube.com
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
I say hand-carved, well of course they used tools, just not modern power tools or anything. Stuff like this. Used like that.
Tools lying on the tracing floor. Three axes of various sizes, scribe, auger (for drilling dowel joints), level, bisaigue (for cutting mortices) Carpenter/joiner Adam Lynch demonstrating action of dressing timber with an axe
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
Anyone else in the UK having trouble accessing archive.org? I can only see it via a VPN for a couple days now. If this is more Online Safety Act nonsense, well, I'll be really cross i suppose
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
30x shot from central tower of Chester Cathedral. My current camera is a bit shit but it has a good zoom lens at least
Super-zoom shot of the timber frame resting on four workbenches, hedge in foreground, from the central tower roof of Chester Cathedral. the 3d-printed foam voussoirs we lovingly installed an hour or so before have been removed.
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
A spin-off of the University of Liverpool project Tracing the Past, of which you can download a lot of the 3D scans here.
archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/vie...

And the chapter house vestibule at Chester (monastic dormer over), what beauts those tas-de-charge are eh
The chapter house is to the E (L), the cloister is behind. this structure took the passage from the monastic dormitory to the church. The tas-de-charge is the springer with horizontal masonry joins before the voussoirs go diagonal.
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
Was at Chester Cathedral last week for the Centring the Past project, which sought to understand the lost, poorly-documented timber centres for medieval masonry vaults.

This hand-carved frame recreating that of the Chester Chapter House vestibule vaults struck quite a profile on the Dean's Field.
Oak timber frame (essentially two intersecting King Post trusses, but apparently calling that bit in the centre a king post gets carpenters very mad) sat on work benches. The stonework is 3D printed and the tas-de-charge are mostly strapped to them. The voussoirs and boss wait to be added Study day attendees have now added the voussoirs and boss to the frame view of the frame from the central tower roof of Chester Cathedral the frame from the northern part of the medieval city walls
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
those photos are from ten years ago actually. It's a difficult building to photograph because it has utterly savage downlighters and I think that's why I took the second photo of the S transept E aisle like that.

Let cathedrals light themselves via their windows I say. Alas
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
find all the Victorian attempts to vault the fabric very funny because they really struggled. but then there's the brutal 16thc vaulting of the cloisters which I really should at least get a post out of (honestly it deserves a feature film)
Scotts early 1870s vaulting to the N nave aisle that doesn't match the springers Blomfield's vaults of 1883 to the S transept, bay meeting the choir aisle. note redundant springer to R
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
well it does lack that awe-factor that Bristol, Peterborough and Gloucester have, but as a monument it's amazing for how much you have left of a big Benedictine Abbey church and its claustral ranges. Sure it's been totally reskinned on the outside but that never put anyone off Westminster
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
before I've even used up my backlog of photos from my Big Trip, I've been cathedral-bothering again today. at a very underrated building!
View from clerestory passage under the sill of E high gable window of Abbey Church of St Werburgh, Chester (Chester Cathedral from 4 August 1541) across to the triforium passage with trefoil-headed arches, arcades below, all of later 13th and early 14thc. also the original timber choir furniture (last quarter 14thc)
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
Oh I did take a picture of the W front in 2018. Top tip: always take pictures of scaffolded fronts!! It's an important record! As you will see with my Wells pics!
W front of Lincoln in Nov 2018. It is about quarter to four so low red sun is cast on it. There's a sizeable steel double staircase up the central vessel to the top of the gable,  jettied out just above the doorways to encloses the S part of the Romanesque frieze with timber sidings.
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
Also there was this impressive mid-13thc sculpture which I haven't seen before and they don't seem to tell you what it is. but I've since worked out it's the Synagoga figure flanking Ecclesia that was shuffled off the great Judgement Porch probably when the flanking chantries were added
13thc near-lifesize sculpture in display case. Replica of Adam and Cain tilling can be seen behind to L The Angel Choir (1256-80) S portal ("Judgement Porch") with much of its original, beheaded sculpture. Flanking it and partly encroaching on the sculptural programme are the Perp chantry chapels of Bishops Longland and Russell. Ecclesia is still in situ on the L/W inner jamb (Christ's R) but confusingly a figure holding a model church has been substituted on the E inner jamb (Christ's L, and the hellmouth). Confusing if you aren't prepared!
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
The S half of the frieze is still largely on the W front, with copies in the pentice museum, except the friable and strange scene of Abel being nursed by Eve and joining her spinning, a weird expansion of the Labours of Adam and Eve
Centre, a recumbent Eve nurses infant Abel, and below she sits seemingly teaching him to spin. The context is to the left, the copy of Adam and Cain tilling the ground (the original is still on the W front)
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
You get to see up-close the Parable of Dives of Lazarus and the sneer of rich man Dives towards poor Lazarus (largely obliterated) with dogs licking his sores. Then Lazarus ascends to bosom of Abraham and Dives goes to the hellmouth.
Original c.1130s carvings of Dives and Lazarus (except part of the hellmouth is which is a copy as the original is carved into the ashlar of the W front).
L: feast of Dives where he taunts Lazarus, R: Angels with the sheathed body of Lazarus and naked bodies being stoked into the hellmouth. Detail of Dives smirking at Lazarus, and his perhaps more cautious guests
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
For the longest time the W front has been scaffolded with boxes over the frieze segments and the 2nd quarter 12thc frieze was mounted inside the Morning chapel. Often gated off. Now you can see it including the Christ in Majesty fragments busted out late 14thc for the King's Gallery
Morning chapel, N wall of the Remigius Cathedral W block, with W front sculptures mounted on now interior wall

June 2009 Romanesque frieze fragments in same position nearly a decade later, Nov 2018 This formerly was the Christological centre of the W block remodelling under Bishop Alexander in the 1130s. It shows Christ in a Mandorla (intersection of two circles) with foliage around, so perhaps part of a Jesse tree showing his lineage from the kings of Israel. Remigius's W block last month, free of scaffolding. The central arch has been heightened with a pointed arch but the two flanking ones are original 1070s work. The doorways and frieze date to 1130, under Bishop Alexander. The Gothic work around must date to the completion of the nave before the beginning of the Angel Choir campaign beginning after 1255 when the canons get permission to extend beyond the Roman city wall.
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
I was covering the Cathedrals of England tour designed by the late Jon Cannon for Martin Randall Travel.
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
i didn't get in any high roofs this time (the clients did the octagon at Ely and the tower at Salisbury) but I have been in the high roof at Lincoln. Limits of handheld cameras 16 years ago
view down lincoln cathedral E arm roofspace to E gable. fire extinguisher panel to R. Part of a truss over the high vaults of St Hugh's choir (1192/3-) Part of a truss over the high vaults of the "Angel Choir" 1256-80 Interior of E gable window of Angel Choir
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
A welcome surprise in my last-minute cathedral guiding was the new visitor centre at Lincoln Cathedral, with exhibition pentice on the back of the Wren library and cloister linking to the 1840s Deanery building by Simpson and Brown, completed in the Pandemic and opened in Spring 2021. Tremendous!
Limestone-clad front of window reveal standards linking the Wren Library of the N cloister walk to the 1840s deanery building which now houses the main cathedral café New gift shop immediately inside the W face of new building, with tapering trusses supporting a glazed skylight toward the N transept "Cloister" between the Wren library and Old Deanery, with pierced metal cladding to exhibition pentice. Cathedral behind with NE transept gable and the chapter house under heavy scaffolding. The pentice exhibition against the outer wall of the Wren Library, showing the panels of the 2nd quarter of the 12thc frieze from the W front, some original panels, and some limestone copies of are still kept in-situ
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
Love the sextuple mouchette wheel on the blind tracery of the top storey
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
🤫 Northern Province complete?! via some further Sketchfab trickery, seems so

Loads of drone videos of Lichfield out there but no one seems to fly round it comprehensively to make a good photogram of it. Maybe I can cobble something together from some of them.
Ripon and Southwell as drone-shot photogrammetry models alongside the G-Earth rip of Beverley, behind their mother church at York, and the other dioceses of York province, Carlisle and Durham (all latter G-Earth rips).
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
source: sketchfab.com/3d-models/ch...

Yeah before I publish any YouTube animations using this data I will ask them permission because I used a certain amount of 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑑𝑖𝑜 𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 to rip this out the backdoor. as it were. But original Romanesque build reconstruction on the way!!!
Chichester Cathedral - West Sussex, UK - 3D model by Arena 360 (@www.arena360.co.uk)
Chichester Cathedral, formally known as the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Chichester. It is located in Chichester, in West Sussex, England. It was founded...
sketchfab.com
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
after much wrestling with procedures to get it down to a manageable size from a million+ verts I now have a Chichester Cathedral photogram in my 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛

Only Lichfield left to grab for England (and also Southwell and Ripon, and then also the Welsh cathedrals other than Llandaff)
Broadly the SW of England with Chichester highlighted among Hereford and Worcester, Salisbury, Bath and Wells, Exeter, and Winchester. Canterbury gets a look in. Full English Cathedrals old style collection from NW (this isn't my main working doc for storing them, it's based off old ground plans which aren't necessarily very accurate)
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
gave a big-up to the late John McNeill's guidebook in the gift shop at the ticket office which informed most (nearly all) of my guiding up there and I think I might have shifted quite a few copies

www.english-heritageshop.org.uk/guidebook-ol...
Guidebook: Old Sarum
www.english-heritageshop.org.uk
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
there are no public toilets connected to Canterbury Cathedral, they're in a separate block to the SE of the inner precinct. Can't tell if the archives building N of the chapter house has a soil pipe or they have to pop over there on their breaks like everyone else.
drjacameron.stainedglassattitudes.com
yeah was thinking Durham's needed a refurbish and how they could go about it. the masonry is appropriately part of original toilet block for the dormitory (which was over the W side of the cloister, unusually). Later became stables, presumably the modern conveniences were put in 1960s. G1 listed.