Lincoln Cathedral was once the world's tallest building – and it's still a towering feat

Lincolnshire has some of the greatest architecture of any English county. There are fine houses: Belton, not long ago restored to its full late-17th-century glory; the Elizabethan mansion at Doddington; the William and Mary magnificence of Gunby; and, perhaps finest of all, the Marquess of Exeter’s palace at Burghley. That house stands outside Stamford, one of the most handsome towns in England, whose beautiful churches are not even the best in a county that abounds in them.

In an often flat landscape, the sheer height of so many churches overwhelms the visitor. The sight of Boston Stump as one crosses the fens to the town has an effect almost like an orchestra playing a very loud chord; Louth and Grantham have breathtaking spires, the latter especially when seen from the railway between King’s Cross and Edinburgh; and there are smaller parish churches of the greatest distinction, such as St Peter’s at Barton-upon-Humber, one of the finest surviving Saxon structures in the country, and the 12th-century Theddlethorpe All Saints.

But no building in Lincolnshire is quite so redolent of history, or awesome in its aspect, as Lincoln Cathedral. As one approaches from a distance and sees this massive edifice on a hill, one realises it was designed as an overpowering symbol of God’s glory. And how much more mighty it must have looked until the mid-16th century, with the great central tower capped by an enormous spire that had made it, since 1311, the tallest building in the world, reputedly at 525ft. Our forebears must have felt it reached almost to heaven itself. In 1548, it collapsed, and eventually the spire on the two towers of the west front came down as well. Of medieval cathedrals only York Minster was bigger. John Ruskin thought it the finest architectural achievement in the British Isles, and worth any two of our other cathedrals.

Ruskin was obsessed with the Gothic, which he felt the only truly Christian way to build; and certainly Lincoln is a masterpiece of the Early English style. But the story of the present building begins with Norman work. An earlier edifice was destroyed in 1185 by, of all things, an earthquake. A French Bishop, known to posterity as St Hugh of Lincoln, began to rebuild it.

The earliest work contains the great semicircular arches and ornamentation that recall Norman architecture, notably on the sprawling west front; though the use of statuary there signifies a more transitional period of design. Once one gets inside and sees the nave, one is swamped by Early English, with its pointed arches and ribbed roofing vaults – the latter unique in England, with their irregular pattern. Outside, flying buttresses typical of the Early English help shore up the walls of what was then an ever-expanding building. Such precautions became more obviously necessary after the first central tower collapsed in the mid-13th century.