Gloucester cathedral whispering gallery

The whispering gallery (or tunnel) runs behind the magnificant Great East Window

1 Star, yawn2 Stars, OK3 Stars, interesting4 Stars, worth a detour5 Stars, worth a journey
(1 Votes, average 5.00)
Loading...

Doubt not but God who sits on high,

Thy secret prayers can hear;

When a dead wall thus cunningly

Conveys soft whispers to the ear.

Plaque in the gallery

Classic whispering galleries usually have obvious curved surfaces to allow sound to travel long distances without getting too quiet. This isn’t what is happening here. As the video shows you have a tunnel within which the sound can’t escape, and so travels easily from one side of the cathedral to the other.

Great demo of the whispering gallery

The first documentation of this comes a meeting of the Royal Society in 1662. Such scientific luminaries as Robert Boyle (a founder of modern chemistry) had been discussing echoes and sounds and sought further information about the whispering gallery from politician Henry Powle.

Logistics

See Gloucester Cathedral website. While you’re there, you can also enjoy the reverberation in this huge cathedral (reverberation time about 8 seconds apparently).

Photo Credits

© Julian P Guffogg (Creative Commons Licence)

Whispering Gallery, St Paul`s Cathedral

One of the most famous whispering galleries.

1 Star, yawn2 Stars, OK3 Stars, interesting4 Stars, worth a detour5 Stars, worth a journey
(12 Votes, average 4.08)
Loading...

St Paul’s Cathedral is an iconic building in the centre of London. High up in the central dome is a Whispering Gallery, which I remember visiting as a child. Climb 259 steps inside the dome, stand on one side of the circular gallery and talk very quietly and your speech can be heard quite clearly on the other side some 30m away.

St Paul’s is a circular whispering gallery. In this case, sound hugs the walls, allowing it to move from one side of the room to another without getting a lot quieter – the diagram shows some of the paths that the whispers take around the perimeter of the gallery.

Diagram showing sound in a circular whispering gallery
Sound paths in a circular whispering gallery

Location and Logistics

St Paul’s Cathedral, St Paul’s Churchyard, London, EC4M 8AD.  It’s worth arriving early in the morning and going straight to the Dome, because once the space gets busy it’s hard to pick out the whispering gallery effect amongst the hubbub.

Credits

[*] Picture Nanonic Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License