Patrick Comerford
‘Durham is one of the great experiences of Europe to the eyes of those who appreciate architecture, and to the minds of those who understand architecture. The group of Cathedral, Castle, and Monastery on the rock can only be compared to Avignon and Prague.’
So wrote the architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (1902-1983) in The Buildings of England.
Pevsner was still in his 20s and on his first English tour, when he wrote about his visit to Durham to his wife Lola (Carola Kurlbaum) in 1930: ‘From the bridge it is a Romantic dream, a fantasy by Schinkel. This morning in the mist it was wonderful … the first thing that has made my heart pound … the cathedral in itself, just like the Matterhorn in itself – gigantic, grey, on its own.’ He fled Nazi Germany three years later and settled in England in 1933.
More recently, Bill Bryson wrote in Notes from a Small Island: ‘I unhesitatingly gave Durham my vote for best cathedral on planet Earth.’
Durham Cathedral has been a place of worship and learning continuously for more than 1,000 years, and through those centuries it has been a centre of prayer and pilgrimage associated with the relics of Saint Cuthbert and the Venerable Bede and the head of Saint Oswald of Northumbria.
It has been described as the ‘largest and most perfect monument of Norman style architecture in England.’ It is generally regarded as one of the finest Romanesque cathedrals in Europe and the rib vaulting in the nave marks the beginning of Gothic ecclesiastical architecture. Durham Cathedral and Durham Castle are both are Grade I listed buildings and together they became a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1986. The site is one of the most powerful symbols of the Norman Conquest of England.
Durham Cathedral is formally the Cathedral Church of Christ, Blessed Mary the Virgin and Saint Cuthbert of Durham. It attracts about 750,000 visitors a year, although my visit last weekend was curtailed and restricted. I was visiting Durham for the first time, and a day of ceremonies and commemorations meant I only had a short visit to the cathedral and never managed to visit the shrine of Saint Cuthbert.
The cathedral story dates back to the seventh century and the foundation of Lindisfarne Priory, founded ca 635. The See of Durham was founded by Saint Aidan as the Diocese of Lindisfarne at the invitation of King Oswald. The see was moved to York in 664, but it returned to Lindisfarne in 678. Saint Cuthbert, whose story is central to the development of Durham Cathedral, was Bishop of Lindisfarne from 685 until his death in 687.
After repeated Viking raids, the monks fled from Lindisfarne in 875, bringing Saint Cuthbert’s relics with them. They settled at Chester-le-Street from 882 until 995, when they moved to Durham. I was recalling the legend of the Dun Cow in a posting on Thursday evening (11 September 2025). Eventually, the monks arrived at a peninsula formed by a loop in the River Wear, and there they built a new shrine that marks the beginning of Durham, both the cathedral and the city.
The first shrine or church was a simple, temporary wooden structure built to house the relics of Saint Cuthbert. A sturdier, wooden building, known as the White Church, was itself replaced in 998 by a stone building also known as the White Church, which was complete in 1018 except for its tower.
The shrine of Saint Cuthbert soon made Durham a centre of pilgrimage, the early pilgrims included King Canute and a town grew up around the cathedral.
The present cathedral was built between 1093 and 1133 under Bishop William de St-Calais. He founded the Benedictine Priory at Durham in 1083, and replaced the secular canons with monks from the monasteries at Wearmouth and Jarrow, appointing Aldwin as the first prior.
Bishop William de St Calais demolished the old Saxon church, and he and Turgot of Durham, Aldwin’s successor as prior, laid the foundation stone of the new cathedral on 11 August 1093. Since then, there have been many additions and reconstructions, but the greater part of the cathedral remains the original Norman structure.
William de St-Calais died in 1096 and was succeeded by Ranulf Flambard, who built Framwellgate Bridge, the earliest crossing of the River Wear from the town.
The remains of Saint Cuthbert were transferred to the new shrine in the new cathedral in 1104. The walls of the nave were finished by 1128, the high vault by 1135, and the chapter house was built in 1133-1140. It is a significant example of the Romanesque architectural style, and the nave ceiling is the earliest surviving example of a pointed rib vault.
Hugh de Puiset added the Galilee Chapel at the west end of the cathedral in the 1170s. The five-aisled building occupies the position of a porch and functioned as a Lady Chapel with the great west door being blocked during the mediaeval period by an altar to the Virgin Mary. The west towers also date from the early 13th century and were built ca 1200.
Richard le Poore, Bishop of Salisbury, moved to Durham in 1228 after rebuilding Salisbury Cathedral in the Gothic style. He commissioned Richard Farnham to design the east end of the cathedral as a place where the monks could say the Daily Office together. The east end was expanded in the Early English Gothic style in the 1230s, and the building that was erected became the Chapel of the Nine Altars.
The Shrine of Saint Cuthbert was at the east end of the cathedral. The shrine was said to be one of the ‘most sumptuous in all England, so great were the offerings and jewels bestowed upon it, and endless the miracles that were wrought at it’.
The original roof was replaced in 1250 by a vault that is still in place. The central tower was damaged by lightning and was replaced by the Perpendicular Gothic central tower, built in two stages in the 15th century.
The cathedral is notable for the ribbed vault of the nave, with some of the earliest transverse pointed arches supported on relatively slender composite piers alternated with massive drum columns, and lateral abutments concealed within the triforium over the aisles.
The skilled use of the pointed arch and ribbed vault made it possible to cover far more elaborate and complicated ground plans than before. Buttressing made it possible to build taller buildings and open up the intervening wall spaces to create larger windows.
The main entrance to the cathedral is now on the north side, facing onto Palace Green and Durham Castle.
The relics of Saint Bede were brought by a monk to Durham from Jarrow in 1022. At first they were placed with Saint Cuthbert’s remains, but they were moved to the Galilee Chapel around 1370. The simple Latin inscription on his tomb reads, ‘Here lie the bones of the Venerable Bede’.
The Galilee Chapel in front of the former great west door was home to the chantry, which Cardinal Thomas Langley opened in 1414 to provide free grammar and music lessons to children who could not afford them.
The Great West Door was blocked by Langley’s tomb after he died in 1437 and so the two doors were built to the north and south in the 19th century.
During the Tudor Reformation, Saint Cuthbert’s tomb was destroyed in 1538 and the monastery’s wealth was transferred to the crown. When Saint Cuthbert’s body was exhumed, it is said, it was discovered to be uncorrupted. It was reburied under a plain stone slab now worn smooth by the knees of pilgrims, but the ancient paving around it remains intact.
The Benedictine monastery at Durham was dissolved on 31 December 1540, and the last Prior of Durham, Hugh Whitehead, became the first dean in the cathedral’s new chapter.
After the Battle of Dunbar in 1650, Durham Cathedral was used by Cromwell as a makeshift prison to hold Scottish prisoners of war. As many as 3,000 were imprisoned in inhumane conditions, without food, water, or heat.
The prisoners destroyed much of the cathedral woodwork for firewood, and 1,700 of them died inside the cathedral. It is said the dead prisoners were buried in unmarked graves, and the survivors were shipped as slave labour to the American Colonies. The remains of some prisoners were identified recently in a mass grave uncovered during building works outside the cathedral precinct near Palace Green.
After the Caroline restoration, Bishop John Cosin was Bishop of Durham in 1660-1672. He set about restoring the damage and refurnishing the cathedral with new chapter and choir stalls, the litany desk, and the towering canopy over the font, while an oak screen replaced a stone screen pulled down in the 16th century. Dean John Sudbury founded a library of early printed books on the remains of the old refectory.
George Nicholson, who had completed Prebends’ Bridge across the Wear, persuaded the dean and chapter in 1777 to allow him to smooth off much of the outer stonework of the cathedral, altering its character. His successor William Morpeth demolished most of the chapter house.
James Wyatt drew up plans to transform the cathedral in 1794, including the demolition of the Galilee Chapel. But the chapter later rejected many of his proposed changes. Wyatt renewed the 15th century tracery of the Rose Window, inserting plain glass to replace glass that had been blown out in a storm.
The architect Anthony Salvin removed Cosin’s wooden organ screen in 1847, opening up the view of the east end from the nave, and he restored the cloisters in 1858.
The cathedral tower was restored in 1859-1860 by George Gilbert Scott, working with Edward Robert Robson. Scott was responsible for the marble choir screen and pulpit in the crossing in 1874. Scott’s pupil Charles Hodgson Fowler rebuilt the chapter house in 1892 as a memorial to Bishop Joseph Barber Lightfoot.
The great west window, depicting the Tree of Jesse, was the gift of Dean George Waddington (1867). It is the work of Clayton and Bell, who were also responsible for the Te Deum window in the south transept (1869), the Four Doctors window in the north transept (1875), and the Rose Window of Christ in Majesty (1876).
Dean Cyril Alington began restoring the Shrine of Saint Cuthbert behind the high altar in the 1930s, and the work resumed after World War II. The four candlesticks and overhanging tester (1950) were designed by Sir Ninian Comper. Two large batik banners by Thetis Blacker depicting Saint Cuthbert and Saint Oswald were added in 2001. Several stained glass windows by Hugh Ray Easton in the cathedral were added in the 1930s and 1940s.
The artwork behind Saint Bede’s tomb in the Galilee Chapel is a wooden memorial with glistening gold writing and quotes from his commentary on the Book of Revelation: ‘Christ is the Morning Star who, when the night of this world is past, brings to his saints the promise of the light of life, and opens everlasting day.’
It was designed by Frank Roper (1914-2000).and George Pace (1915-1975) in 1971 as a memorial to Cyril Alington, Dean of Durham in 1933-1951, and his wife Hester.
A wooden statue of the Annunciation (1992) in the Galilee Chapel is by the Polish artist Josef Pyrz and Leonard Evetts’s Stella Maris window was added the sane year.
A window by Alan Younger was installed in the Galilee Chapel in 1973 to commemorate the 1300th anniversary of the birth of the Venerable Bede in 672/673 AD.
At the beginning of the 21st century, two of the altars in the Nine Altars Chapel at the east end were re-dedicated to Saint Hild of Whitby and Saint Margaret of Scotland. Two wooden sculptures by Fenwick Lawson, Pietà and Tomb of Christ, were placed in the chapel in 2004, and a new stained glass window of the Transfiguration by Tom Denny was dedicated in 2010 in memory of Michael Ramsey, former Bishop of Durham and Archbishop of Canterbury.
The 17th century Smith organ was replaced in 1876 by ‘Father’ Willis (Henry Willis & Sons). Harrison & Harrison worked on the organ from 1880. It was restored in 1905-1935, rebuilt again in 1970, and there were more changes in 1981 and 1996.
The organists have included the composers Thomas Ebdon and Richard Hey Lloyd, editor of the Ancient and Modern Revised hymnbook John Dykes Bower, and the conductor David Hill. present Master of the Choristers and Organist is Daniel Cook. The Sub-Organist is Joseph Beech. There are ten bells in the central tower hung for change ringing in the English style.
Sir Walter Scott in his poem ‘Harold the Dauntless’ wrote in 1819:
Grey towers of Durham
Yet well I love thy mixed and massive piles
Half church of God, half castle ’gainst the Scot
And long to roam those venerable aisles
With records stored of deeds long since forgot.
Other listed churches and former churches I managed to see during my short visit to Durham include Saint Margaret of Antioch, Crossgate; Saint Mary-le-Bow, now Durham Heritage Centre; Saint Cuthbert’s Roman Catholic Church; and Saint Nicholas Church. But more about them another day, hopefully.
• The Very Revd Dr Philip Plyming has been the Dean of Durham since 2023. The chapter includes the vice-dean and precentor, treasurer, chancellor, canon pastor and the Van Mildert Professor of Divinity at Durham University, the Revd Canon Professor Simon Oliver. The Sung Eucharist on Sundays, the main service of Holy Communion, begins at 10 am. The cathedral church and the cloisters are open to visitors throughout the year.
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