What is it about tall church spires that make me weak in the knees? When I first saw the Salisbury Cathedral spire in England six years ago, I couldn’t get it out of my head. I had the eeriest feeling that I had seen (dreamt of?) it before. It inspired me to read The Spire, a dark little novel by William Golding about the building of the cathedral—not the uplifting paean to Early English architecture I was hoping for, but then again he also wrote Lord of the Flies.… 

The day we arrived in Cobh, we crested a hill, descended into the heart of the town, and there it was: the ridiculously tall and blatantly gothic spire of St. Colman’s Cathedral, perfectly framed by the buildings on either side of the street and the water of Cork Harbor as a backdrop. As luck would have it, our apartment is right around the corner, with a balcony and double French doors that look out over the cathedral and harbor.

Salisbury’s spire rises 404 feet above flat marshland. The vertical rise is astonishing, but you get that perspective best from a distance.

In Cobh, the spire is a mere 325 feet high, but the cathedral is built on the side of a hill. Its foundation is another 121 feet above sea level. So the spire looms 446 feet above the harbor just beyond it.

And (did I mention?) it’s right outside my window!

St. Colman’s is the first thing I look for each morning—even before my first sip of coffee (there’s not much I look for before coffee)—and the last thing I gaze upon each night. We leave the lights off in our apartment at night and watch the sky darken and the cathedral illuminate itself. What is handsome and regal by daylight becomes drop-dead gorgeous at night. I’m besotted!

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