Durham Cathedral

Cathedral in the city of Durham, County Durham, northeastern England. A fine example of Norman architecture, it was begun in 1093 by Bishop William of St Carileph and remains largely as he conceived it. It was one of the earliest vaulted cathedrals in Europe and the first to employ rib vaults. These, combined with massive cylindrical piers, strikingly ornamented, create one of the most impressive of all English cathedrals.

Features The interior is as originally built except for the choir. This was complete by 1104, but in 1225 its highly experimental vault was already weak. The nave, built from 1104 to 1128 and vaulted by 1135, contains some of the earliest pointed arches used in vaulting. It was extended westwards around 1170-75 by a late-Norman Lady Chapel. From 1242 to 1280 the Norman east end was replaced with the unusual Chapel of Nine Altars, and the chancel, except for its aisles, was revaulted at the same time. The culmination of building at Durham also produced the visual climax, the tall Perpendicular crossing tower, built from 1465 to 1490. The rose window at the east end is a replacement of an earlier one, and is by James Wyatt (1795).

Monastic buildings The cathedral housed a Benedictine monastery in its precincts until 1540. Of the monastic buildings remaining, the most interesting are the kitchen, its octagonal vault of 1366-70 strongly reminiscent of Moorish architecture, and the dormitory, built about 1400 and with the original oak roof still intact. This room is now used as a library and museum and contains various ancient manuscripts, the Conyers falchion, fragments of Anglo-Saxon crosses and other objects of interest. Leading from it is the ‘loft’, in which are kept the Cuthbert relics, fragments of the coffin made for the saint in 698, his own portable altar and pectoral cross, and the oldest needlework in England, a stole and maniple presented to St Cuthbert's shrine by King Athelstan in 934. In the Galilee Chapel is the tomb of the Venerable Bede, historian and monk of Jarrow.