I feel an urge to link to my own Lincolnshire town's church, too, because it has the third highest spire in England. A significant feat for such a small town's church: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_James%27_Church,_Louth
I’m from Grimsby and I stumbled upon your newsletters a few years ago when learning to code and was shocked when I noticed that they were made by someone in Louth! And now I’ve stumbled upon the man behind the emails on HN!
The article doesn't mention that the spire was possibly the first building to be taller than the Great Pyramid (there's dispute over exactly how tall the spire of Old St. Paul's Cathedral in London was), and was not surpassed by any structure until the Washington Monument.
Yes, I expected to see something about that. Being from Lincolnshire one of my pet facts is that Lincoln cathedral was the tallest building in the world for over 200 years, until the spire collapsed and wasn't rebuilt.
I visited this in 70s as a kid with family as my father was trained for priesthood in CofE here. I was born in Cleethorpes but grew up in NZ and now reside in HK. An amazing site worthy of several days of exploration. Greta article.
Beautiful place - and "next door" in the castle, history buffs can find (or could, I'm not sure how easy it is to see now) the cathedral's original copy of Magna Carta.
It is not currently on display but gets brought in and out of the archives on some sort of schedule I don't understand.
There are plenty of other reasons to visit the castle though, including the (very much active) courtroom and (no longer active) prison, or just to walk along the battlements for the view.
I had a tour around this cathedral a few months ago which was really interesting. The cathedral is built very similar to a castle. There are window slits for archers to defend, murder holes at the doors and also two big quarters for soldiers. I think the guide said at one point two hundred soldiers lived there (along with the clergy) in medieval times.
