Gloucester Cathedral

Edward Wilson’s Polar Sledge Flag will be on display in the Cathedral during a special Evensong service on Thursday 5 July.

One hundred years ago, on 17 January 1912, Captain Robert Scott and four other members of his 1910-12 Antarctic Expedition reached the South Pole. Ten weeks later, all five men had perished.

Dr Edward Adrian Wilson (1872-1912), a Cheltenham-born doctor, scientist, naturalist and artist whose watercolours and drawings of Antarctica are arguably the finest ever produced of the southern Continent, was one of the men that perished. Wilson had also produced many fine watercolours and drawings of his native Gloucestershire, including some of Gloucester Cathedral, a building which his widow, Oriana, later told the Dean of Gloucester was “more loved by him than any other church in the world. I think he knew every inch of it”.

On Thursday 5 July Isobel Williams, author of “With Scott in the Antarctic” a first full account of the Antarctic hero’s life from childhood to his tragic death will present a special illustrated lecture for the Friends of Gloucester Cathedral followed by a Special Evensong at 5.30pm sung by the Cathedral Youth Choir and directed by Ashley Grote. The local Arctic hero’s Polar sledge flag will be on display throughout the service, borrowed for the occasion from the Scott Polar Research Institute. The flag was presented to the Cathedral in 1914 where it hung in the Lady Chapel until 1930. Tickets for the lecture have sold out but all are welcome to attend the Evensong service.