Truro Cathedral is bent

See? See? It's bent, I tell you.

It was built in the 1880s but deliberately recalled the gothic perpendicular style of its medieval ancestors. So you get these magnificent soaring columns, rows of vertical lines that draw your eye upwards to heaven, converging in perspective on ...

Hang on, you think at this point, the altar's shifted. Except that it hasn't. The place was built with a deliberate kink in it. The east end is about six feet out of kilter.

The cathedral was apparently built on a relatively shoestring budget, on an irregularly shaped piece of land. Which the architect knew. But rather than revise the plan, or make it just small enough to, you know, fit the land available, he went ahead with a full sized cathedral and then squeezed it in. Like trying to stuff an oversized bag into an overhead locker, only bigger and with less danger that it will fall on your head.

But what the hey. A nice feature of the place is that it replaced the original (smaller) parish church, and rather than knock down the original church, they incorporated it - the original aisle of the church is now the north west side aisle of the cathedral. Nice touch. It's tranquil and like all good cathedrals it has lots of nooks and crannies and curtain walls and different levels so that it never really feels the same from any two angles. And you know God is at home, no doubt chuckling quietly to himself as yet another visitor lets their eyes travel inevitably down the aisle towards the altar ... and then a puzzled frown crosses their face.