Durham Cathedral
Durham Cathedral's builders raised a stone roof on ribs and pointed arches around 1128, just before Gothic took shape in France. Its saint's coffin took over a century to arrive.
Published
Quick Facts
- Location
- On a wooded rock above the River Wear, Durham, County Durham
- Built
- Begun 1093; the main Norman building was largely complete by about 1133
- Founded by
- William de St Calais, Bishop of Durham, with Benedictine monks
- Central tower
- About 66 metres (218 ft) high, rebuilt in the 15th century after a lightning strike
- Architectural landmark
- Among the earliest large-scale uses of rib vaulting in Europe, in the nave roof of the 1120s
- Shrine
- St Cuthbert, whose body settled here in 995
- Also buried here
- The Venerable Bede, in the Galilee Chapel
- World Heritage Site
- Inscribed in 1986, together with Durham Castle
The coffin that wouldn't stay put
Durham exists because of a dead man who wouldn't stay put. St Cuthbert died in 687 and was buried on Lindisfarne. When Viking raids threatened the island in 875, his monks lifted his coffin and fled, carrying him around the north of England. After some years on the road, the community settled at Chester-le-Street around 883, and Cuthbert rested there for over a century. A brief refuge at Ripon followed, before the monks settled on a steep, river-ringed rock at Durham in 995. The old story says they were guided by a milkmaid hunting for her lost dun cow, which was found at a place called Dunholm. A carving of the milkmaid and her cow still decorates the cathedral's exterior. A stone church went up to house the saint, and pilgrims followed. That gave Durham its wealth and its power.
A fortress of God, built to be seen
The present cathedral was begun in 1093 under Bishop William de St Calais, a Norman appointee of William the Conqueror's family circle. Durham sat near the troublesome Scottish border, so its bishops later became Prince Bishops, with rights close to those of a king. The castle sits just across Palace Green. The church was meant to impress. Inside, the massive nave piers are carved with deep zigzags, diamonds and spirals, so the walls look almost tattooed. It is some of the boldest Norman decoration anywhere in Britain. The main structure was substantially finished within about forty years, which is remarkably quick for a building on this scale. That speed is a large part of why it feels so unified today.
The roof that changed cathedral building
Look up. The stone vault over the nave, completed around 1128 to 1133, uses ribs and pointed arches to carry the weight of the roof. Builders elsewhere had used ribs before, but not on a high vault of this size. It was an important precursor to Gothic architecture, which emerged in France in the 1130s and 1140s. Sens Cathedral was begun around 1135, and the Gothic choir of Saint-Denis was built in 1140 to 1144. The technique let masons build lighter, taller and more daring interiors, and became one of the building blocks of the Gothic style that swept across Europe. That is why architectural historians treat Durham as a turning point rather than just a beautiful survivor. It is Romanesque in its bulk and forward-looking in its engineering.
Sanctuary, Scots and a Hogwarts cloister
On the north door hangs a fierce bronze lion's-head knocker. Anyone fleeing the law could grab it and claim sanctuary, and the cathedral's records list 331 people who did so between 1464 and 1524. The knocker on the door now is a replica, and the original is kept in the cathedral's collections. The building has also been a prison. After the Battle of Dunbar in 1650, thousands of captured Scottish soldiers were marched south and held here. Many died, and in 2013 archaeologists found mass graves near the cathedral that were linked to them. In happier moments, the cloisters stood in for Hogwarts in the first two Harry Potter films, and the cathedral appeared in the film Elizabeth (1998).
Saints, shrines and a line women couldn't cross
Cuthbert's shrine was the glory of medieval Durham. In 1539 Henry VIII's commissioners stripped it of its treasures, but the saint's remains were reburied in the same spot, which is marked by a plain slab inscribed CUTHBERTUS. Items found in his coffin, including a small portable altar and a gold and garnet pectoral cross, are now displayed in Durham Cathedral Museum. According to tradition Cuthbert disliked the company of women, and a line of dark Frosterley marble in the nave marks where they were once not allowed to pass. The Galilee Chapel, at the west end and decorated in the 1170s, was where women could worship. That chapel also holds the tomb of the Venerable Bede, the Jarrow monk who wrote the first history of the English people.
What to look for when you visit
Start outside, on the riverbank path below the rock. The cathedral rises from the trees in a way few English buildings do. Inside, stand in the nave and take in the patterned pillars and that groundbreaking vault. Then look for Cuthbert's slab behind the high altar, Bede's tomb in the Galilee Chapel and the cloisters. If your legs are up to it, the climb up the central tower is about 325 steps. At the top you get the view that medieval pilgrims could only imagine.
Notable people
- St Cuthbert
- The Venerable Bede
- William de St Calais
- Hugh du Puiset
- Henry VIII