THE 50 GREATEST CHURCHES AND CATHEDRALS OF GREAT BRITAIN

Bath’s importance declined when the bishops made Wells their principal seat of residence during the 13th century. The monks found the upkeep of the buildings difficult and by the time of the Black Death in 1398, which decimated their numbers, it had become impossible. The great cathedral descended into decay.

When Oliver King, Bishop of Bath and Wells, arrived in 1495, tradition tells that he had a dream in which he saw angels ascending and descending ladders to heaven and heard a voice telling him to build a new church. This has since been dismissed as a marketing myth, conjured by a desperate fundraiser a century after Bishop King’s death, but building began and the angels keep their secrets on the west front.

The bishop commissioned King Henry VII’s finest master masons, Robert and William Vertue, to build in the Perpendicular Gothic style. They promised him ‘the finest vault in England’ (and went on to work at Westminster Abbey). The building was in use but not completed when Prior Holloway and fourteen monks surrendered it to King Henry VIII in 1539.

By the early 19th century Bath Abbey was again in dire straits. Three restorations took place under the city architect but it was Charles Kemble, appointed Rector in 1859, who really came to the rescue.

He commissioned the noted Gothic Revival architect Sir George Gilbert Scott to draw up plans for a complete restoration – and funded much of it himself. Work began in 1864 and transformed the interior, resulting in the aweinspiring church we see today.

Scott looked to Bishop King’s vision and the work of the Tudor master masons, so meticulously matching the design of their fan vaulting in his nave that you have to look very carefully to see the joins. When the Abbey reopened in 1871, Scott felt he had completed the building as the medieval craftsmen had intended.

Pointed arches and flying buttresses enabled the late Perpendicular builders to maximise window areas. In Bath Abbey they occupy some 80 per cent of the wall space and the Victorian stained-glass artists and glaziers filled them well.

The great east window, which depicts 56 events in the life of Christ, from the Annunciation to the Ascension, rises to the full height of the wall and contains 818 square feet (76 square metres) of glass. Partially destroyed by air raids in 1942, it was repaired by the great grandson of the original designer.

The nave and quire aisles are lined with memorial tablets – 641 of them, only Westminster Abbey has more – and on the floors are 891 grave slabs (ledger stones) dating from 1625 to 1845. As well as recording the name and dates of the person buried there, many of these contain interesting inscriptions about the person, their family and their life in the local community.

Abbey benefactors get their place in the limelight, none more so than John Montague, Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1608, who donated a tidy sum for the nave to be roofed after the king’s commissioners had left it open to the elements. His effigy-topped table tomb is grandly placed behind iron railings between the north aisle and the nave.

In the 18th century, the north transept was where the city housed a fire engine. Now it is home to the renowned Klais Organ, installed in 1997. The delightful frieze of twelve angel musicians, carved in lime wood, was added above the quire screens ten years later.

Do take a closer look. Each angel has its own definite character and the designer, sculptor Paul Fletcher, had a sense of humour. Two violinists face each other as if playing a duet, one using her wings to shield her ears from the bagpipes next to her. Only the cellist is looking towards the conductor, and she has her eyes closed.

The 20th century saw restoration and additions and now Footprint, an ambitious £19.3 million building programme started in 2018, has been designed to bring the Abbey firmly into the 21st century.

BEVERLEY MINSTER

From its sheer size and impressive architecture – it’s said that its beautiful west front was the model for that of Westminster Abbey – you could be forgiven for thinking that Beverley Minster is a cathedral. It is larger than many English cathedrals (and more impressive than some) but in fact it is a parish church, one of three in this busy market town in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Its title of Minster goes back to its foundation as an important Anglo-Saxon missionary teaching church, from where the canons went out to preach among neighbouring parishes.

It is hard to imagine that such a magnificent building was destined for destruction in 1548 during King Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. Thankfully a group of the town’s wealthy businessmen bought the Collegiate Church of St John the Evangelist for its continued parochial use. Best known today as Beverley Minster, it is the Parish Church of St John and St Martin.

The Minster owes its existence to St John of Beverley, who died in 721 and was canonised in 1037. Today his remains lie in a vault beneath the nave. A renowned preacher and evangelist, John was Bishop of York when he founded a monastery to retire to in what was then a remote, uninhabited spot. The town of Beverley grew up around it and thrived.

Miracles were attributed to him, ensuring a constant flow of pilgrims to his tomb and shrine. King Athelstan, grandson of Alfred the Great, credited John of Beverley with his victory at the decisive Battle of Brunanburh in 937. In thanksgiving he granted the Saxon church important rights and privileges and established a college of canons. When King Henry V triumphed at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, he attributed his success to St John and made him one of the patron saints of the royal family.

This is the third church on the site (little remains of its Saxon and Norman predecessors). Construction began in 1190 and continued for the next two centuries, its architecture encompassing the three main Gothic styles: Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular.

You enter through the door of the Highgate Porch, its carved triangular portico watched over by the seated Christ flanked by the twelve Apostles. Light floods the long nave, a vista of white limestone and polished Purbeck Marble, elegant arches, complex arcading and, stretching the full length of the Minster, a pale stone vault with painted tracery highlighting the gilded stone bosses.

Ahead, the high altar can be seen framed by the central arch of the oak screen that separates the nave from the chancel. Richly carved with saints, bishops and musical connotations, it supports the fine organ, its casing equally ornate, its pipes splendidly coloured.

In the medieval period, Beverley was the centre of secular music in the north of England. The Minster’s collection of over 70 medieval musician carvings in stone and wood, believed to be the largest in the world, has been the source of much of our knowledge of early musical instruments.

Many are at the base of the arches in the north aisle and atop pillars in the nave, but they are dotted all around the building as if tempting the visitor to seek them out. They show about twenty different instruments, including bagpipes, fiddles, trumpets, flutes, pipes, shawms and cymbals.

The quire and its early 16th-century carved wood quire stalls are one of Beverley Minster’s great glories. In the back row, tall canopies soar into a forest of pinnacles and crocketed spires while kings, saints and bishops stand proud above a lacy woodland of foliage and faces.

Originally built in around 1340 the quire has had a tortuous history. Mutilated and defaced, plastered over, hidden, then restored and rebuilt in 1826, like a picture gallery its niches are filled with mosaics of the twelve Apostles and saints, flanked at the base by stone figures associated with the life of St John of Beverley. A winding staircase leads to a platform at the top of the reredos where the saint’s shrine, richly embellished in gold and silver, was placed, centre stage for all to see.

The unusual trompe l’oeil floor of the quire, laid in the 18th century, gives the illusion of raised stepping-stones. It leads the eye to the high altar and behind it, the magnificent stone-carved reredos.

Alongside the altar is a plain, polished stone sanctuary chair, or frith stool, that dates from the earliest days of the Saxon monastery and is one of only two still in existence. The right of sanctuary for fugitives, given to the town of Beverley by King Athelstan, was abolished under King Henry VIII.

Adjacent to the high altar in the north quire aisle, the exquisitely carved 14th-century canopy of the Percy tomb is considered the jewel in Beverley’s not inconsiderable crown. The Percys were one of the richest and most powerful families in the north and the tomb is believed to be that of Lady Eleanor Percy who died in 1328.

A masterpiece of the stone carvers’ art – five master masons are said to have worked on it – it rises majestically in a flurry of figures, fruit and foliage. At the pinnacle on the north side, angels bearing the instruments of the Passion attend the risen Christ; on the south side, Christ receives the soul of the dead person into heaven. The whole canopy, a medieval view of paradise, somehow survived the Reformation and the Civil War and remains remarkably intact.

The east window contains most of the medieval glass that survived the Reformation. It watches over the retroquire where pilgrims would have passed to get as close as possible to St John’s shrine. Look for the superb vaulting and splendid use of Purbeck Marble in the fine arcading. A single lancet window and accompanying copper sculptures, designed in 2004 by Helen Whittaker and known as the Pilgrim Window, have created a space for meditation and prayer.

That the Minster is so magnificent today owes much to two periods of restoration. In the early 18th century the church, neglected and decaying, was listing badly, with the north transept wall leaning four feet out into the street. Advice on how to save it was sought from the renowned architect Nicholas Hawksmoor, best known for his work with Christopher Wren and John Vanbrugh, and as the designer of six London churches.

An ingenious way of righting the structure was devised. Using a wooden cradle, ropes and pulleys, over eleven days the entire wall was pulled back upright. Although many of Hawksmoor’s additions and renovations were removed during the 19th century, the fine stone floor in the nave and his dazzling geometric marble pavement in the chancel remain, as does the central tower, which he rebuilt in brick to replace the crumbling stone.

From the mid-19th century massive restoration work took place, much of it under the guidance of Sir George Gilbert Scott, who designed the organ screen (carved by James Elwell of Beverley, who later became the town’s mayor). The stained-glass windows are Victorian and memorable, made by the finest stained-glass artists and manufacturers of the era. The windows in all ten bays of the nave aisles pair an event in the life of Christ with one from the Old Testament and repay a close look.

Continuing its long traditions as a place of sanctuary and great music, Beverley Minster lives up to its promise as ‘a space for the soul and a feast for eyes and ears’.

BRISTOL CATHEDRAL

Founded as St Augustine’s Abbey in 1140, the Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity gained cathedral status in 1542. After the dissolution of the monastery three years earlier, King Henry VIII created the new Diocese of Bristol after, it is said, much lobbying by the citizens of what was by then the most important trading city in England after London. The discovery of a large Anglo-Saxon carved stone during 19th-century rebuilding work, now placed in the south transept, indicates that this had been a Christian site before the Conquest.

The monastery for Augustinian Canons was founded by a wealthy Bristol merchant and landowner, Robert Fitzharding, the first Lord Berkeley. For the next four centuries the Berkeley family continued their patronage, with most of Fitzharding’s successors being buried there. Look for the effigies of Berkeley Lords Thomas and Maurice who were implicated in the rebellion against King Edward II, murdered at their castle.

Built in the early 14th century to replace the Norman abbey, the east end of the cathedral is glorious. The vaulted ceilings of the nave, quire and aisles are all the same height, making it one of the finest examples of a medieval hall church to be seen anywhere. Spacious and light, it was a style favoured in German cathedrals but not often seen in this country. In the quire aisles, the innovative vaulting, its sinuous lines springing from little bridges, is unique to Bristol.

The cathedral has two Lady Chapels. The first, known as the Elder Lady Chapel, was built around 1220 and the carving was the work of masons ‘on loan’ from Wells Cathedral (page 232). There are interesting little figures in the spandrels, including a fox carrying a goose, sheep musicians and numerous little monkeys.

Off the south quire aisle, the little sacristy is full of decorative stonework and one of its niches once held an oven for baking communion bread. An unusual doorway leads to the Berkeley Chapel, which has the finest of all the starburst tomb niches. Here you’ll find a cathedral treasure, a medieval candelabrum from 1460 crowned by the Virgin Mary and Child. Beneath her St George, clad in the armour of the period, slays the dragon. It came from Bristol’s Temple Church, bombed in 1940.

The nave was being rebuilt when the abbey was dissolved by King Henry VIII’s commissioners in 1539 and left in ruins, its stone used to build houses right up to the church. It wasn’t until the 1860s that a new nave was constructed and the cathedral restored to its original size.

This was the work of the Victorian ecclesiastical architect G. E. Street, in the Gothic Revival style. Partly using the original plans, he wished to marry up the nave with the architecture of the east end, so only the sharp-eyed will discern the Victorian from the medieval. The result is long vistas and a beautiful, light-filled cathedral.

New windows were added in the 20th century, some commemorating the roles local people played during the Bristol blitz of 1941. The first 32 women priests in the Church of England were ordained at Bristol Cathedral in March 1994.

BUCKFAST ABBEY

On the edge of Dartmoor, in a gloriously green valley of the River Dart, St Mary’s Abbey at Buckfast is a tranquil oasis just off the traffic-roaring Devon Expressway. The only English medieval monastery to be restored and used again for its original purpose, its story is remarkable.

King Cnut founded the original abbey in 1018. Built of wood, it was smaller than most Benedictine monasteries of the time and, judging from the entry in the Domesday Book survey of 1086, a good deal less prosperous.

It was probably in severe decline by 1136 when King Stephen, who sought to revive English monasteries, gave it to the Abbot of Savigny in southern Normandy. Eleven years later, all the Savigniac houses were absorbed into the mighty Cistercian Order. With it came great change.

In 1215, King John named the Abbot of Buckfast as custodian of the Crown Jewels. In 1297, Edward I stayed at the abbey, accompanied by a large retinue of soldiers, servants, courtiers and advisors.

More buildings were added. By the 15th century there was a guest hall, a luxurious abbot’s lodging where important visitors were entertained and a separate almshouse to care for the needy. The monks ran a school and established fairs and markets to encourage local trade.

After the death of Abbot John Rede in 1535, the last of a long line of abbots all elected by the monks, Gabriel Donne, a close friend of Thomas Cromwell, was imposed on the, by now dwindling, community. He sold off much property, putting in train the process of dissolution.

Two of the king’s commissioners and their lawyers arrived in February 1539 to complete the closure. Abbot Gabriel Donne, who signed the deed of surrender, was well rewarded. Over a period of just four months, the commissioners closed 40 West Country monasteries and delivered one and a half tons of gold, gilt and silver to the Tower of London and into the king’s coffers.

Demolition work began immediately and the shell of the monastery was left to crumble. Some of the smaller buildings in the precincts were put to different uses, the almshouse for wool dyeing and the guest hall converted into cottages and a farm. During the 18th century it was a favourite spot for artists who found the ruin romantic.

When mill-owner Samuel Berry bought the site in 1800, he cleared what remained of the rubble in order to build a Gothic-style, castellated mansion, but kept the tower from the abbot’s lodgings and 12th-century undercroft. The mansion changed hands four times until, in 1882, its owner decided to sell it, preferably to a religious community.

The advertisement he placed in a Catholic magazine described it as ‘a grand acquisition could it be restored to its original purpose.’ It was seen by exiled Benedictine monks, who had fled from persecution in France and were living in Ireland.

They lost no time in buying it and set about improving their new monastery’s buildings, restoring the abbot’s tower and erecting a temporary church (now the chapter house). This was opened in 1884, the year they started work on building a kitchen, refectory and cloister.

In 1903, exactly 365 years after the closure of the original monastery, Boniface Natter was blessed as Abbot. After the ceremony, a cheque for £1,000 was found in the collection basket. This paid for the completion of the west wing, providing much-needed bedrooms.

Tragically, Abbot Natter drowned in a shipwreck in 1906. His successor, the 30-year-old Anscar Vonier, vowed to bring Natter’s wish to fruition. The project leader would be Brother Peter Schrode, who had learned the art of masonry in France, and in January 1907, Abbot Vonier laid the first stone.

For the next 32 years, the builders – usually four monks, never more than six – worked ceaselessly to complete the large church, literally by hand. They began in the traditional way, with the east end, the sanctuary, transepts and two bays of the nave.

Using a horse and cart and stone from a nearby quarry, at first they cut and dressed the stone themselves, using rudimentary tools and mixing mortar in their self-built workshop. Only much later was there enough money to buy the stone ready dressed at the quarry. They made scaffolding by lashing together wooden poles with ropes and chains, lifting the stone manually. The walls were built from platforms 150 feet (45 metres) above the ground, buffeted by the elements and without even the most basic of safety precautions.

The building was financed entirely from donations and funding could be erratic, but work continued throughout the First World War, when the community, two-thirds of whom were German, were prohibited from leaving the monastery except by special licence.

The church was consecrated on 25 August 1932. It was a joyous occasion attended by archbishops, bishops and clergy. The church was packed, so were the precincts, where loudspeakers relayed the service to the crowds outside. The BBC broadcast it to the nation.

Internationally known as a writer, preacher and scholar, Abbot Anscar Vonier had been away on a long lecture tour. He returned, exhausted and ill but happy to see the great work completed. He died three weeks later.

Built from local blue limestone, its window arches, coping stones and turrets in mellow Ham Hill stone, Buckfast Abbey is a beautiful church. In the Norman/Gothic style, with sturdy piers and pointed arches, its interior soars in creamy white Bath stone.

The magnificent nave pavement is an intricate mosaic design of polished marble and granite, designed by Father Charles Norris. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, he painted the stunning lantern tower ceiling in egg tempera and gold leaf in the style of icons and created the spectacular stained glass in the huge east window in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel. Using his innovative method, stainedglass windows have since been made at Buckfast Abbey for churches around the country and abroad.

The high altar and above it the fine Corona Lucis, modelled on medieval versions in German cathedrals, were the work of the German goldsmith, Bernhard Witte in Aachen during the 1920s, as was the bronze baptismal font. Side chapels have intricate designs in gilt and stone; the quire stalls are carved oak in the style of the 15th century. Most of the furnishings for the church were made at the Abbey and donated by individuals.

CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL

The Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and shrine to the rebirth of Christianity in England, the Cathedral of Christ at Canterbury is host to more than a million visitors a year. Every hour, on the hour, they are asked to be still and join in a prayer – a reminder that, spectacular though the building is, Canterbury Cathedral is very much a working church.

Huge and intricate, overpowering and dramatic, it is a multi-layered cathedral, each level reached by steps shaped by centuries of pilgrim feet. It was the brutal murder, at an altar in his own cathedral, of Archbishop Thomas Becket – by four of King Henry II’s knights on 29 December 1170 – and accounts of miraculous healing immediately after his death, that brought the Christian world to its doors in the Middle Ages. Becket’s was one of the holiest shrines in all Europe and pilgrimages continue to this day.

Founded in 597, it was rebuilt in 1070 and then largely rebuilt and extended in creamy white Caen stone in 1178. A devastating fire four years earlier had demolished most of the previous cathedral, though the vast and atmospheric 11th-century crypt with its rounded arches and decorated columns, naves, aisles and side chapels, survives to present us with some of the finest Norman stone carvings on pier capitals in England.

Long, light, tall and graceful, the nave has slim, soaring columns rising to delicate vaulted arches and gilt roof bosses. Looking back you see the glorious west window, its stained glass dating back 800 years; ahead of you, a wide flight of steps leads up to the richly carved, 15th-century stone pulpitum (quire screen) that separates the nave from the quire. Within its niches are original effigies of six English kings that somehow escaped the swords of the Puritans who, during the Civil War of the 1640s, destroyed the accompanying statues of the twelve Apostles during their rampage of destruction through the cathedral. They even stabled their horses in the nave.

Through the screen’s archway you get an inspirational view up to the high altar. Stand under the great Bell Harry Tower, and marvel at the stupendous fan vaulting high above you.

From the north-west transept, steps lead down to the Martyrdom Chapel. The site of Becket’s murder is marked with a simple altar and a dramatic modern sculpture of jagged swords. Nearby, the circular Corona Chapel, built to house the skull fragment of the crown of the head of St Thomas Becket, sliced off by the sword of one of the attackers, is dedicated to saints and martyrs of our own times.

Two years later, as part of the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry closed down the Benedictine monastery that had surrounded the cathedral since the 10th century. Today a solitary burning candle marks the site of the shrine; the flooring, with its beautiful Italian marble paving, survives and dates from 1220.

The chapel houses the tomb and superb bronze chainmailed effigy of Edward the Black Prince, eldest son of King Edward III and father of King Richard II, who died in 1376. His military victories, especially over the French in the Battles of Crecy and Poitiers, made him a popular figure at home (though not, unsurprisingly, in France, where he was considered an evil invader and occupier).

Opposite, lies his nephew, King Henry IV (d 1413), the only king to be buried in Canterbury Cathedral, and his wife, Joan of Navarre, Queen of England. Finely detailed alabaster effigies show them side by side, crowned in gold.

Trinity Chapel is also where you’ll find St Augustine’s Chair, the ceremonial enthronement chair of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Made from one piece of Petworth Marble, it dates from the early 13th century.

Canterbury has a wealth of medieval stained glass. The colours are deep and vibrant and every image tells a story, whether biblical or of the cathedral’s own history. Look especially for the Bible and the Miracle Windows, but all of it will stop you in your tracks.

The west window, also known as the Genealogy Window, contains images of early English kings and royal coats of arms, archbishops and, in the tracery lights, an array of Apostles and prophets, all glass from the late 12th or early 13th centuries. The oldest (c1174), Adam Delving in the Garden of Eden, showing Adam as a peasant tilling the soil, is in the bottom row.

In the north quire aisle, two 12th-century Bible windows tell Old and New Testament stories, from Noah releasing the dove to St Peter preaching, the Magi following the star to the parable of the sower, and Christ’s miracles, including the Marriage at Cana and the miraculous draught of fish.

When Pope Gregory sent St Augustine and his monks from Rome in 597, to restore the Christian faith to the Saxon English, they landed in Thanet and were welcomed by King Ethelbert (who would soon be baptised by Augustine) and his French Christian wife, Queen Bertha. Augustine was the first Archbishop of Canterbury.

The cathedral’s late medieval cloisters and large chapter house are remnants of the Benedictine monastic buildings. Originally set out by Archbishop Lanfranc in the 11th century and rebuilt in the early 15th, with their heavily ribbed lierne-vaulted ceiling they are fine examples of the Perpendicular style – no surprise perhaps because they were remodelled by Stephen Lote, a pupil of the royal master mason Henry Yevele, who created the stunning nave. Roof bosses and heraldic shields tell of people who contributed to the rebuilding of the cathedral back in the 12th century and modern stained glass, installed in 2014, commemorates modern benefactors to the conservation of the building’s fabric.

Lanfranc also built the rectangular chapter house with stone seating for the monks around the walls and a raised chair for the prior. Made from Irish oak, the beautiful early 15th-century wagon-vaulted ceiling was given by Prior Chillenden, as were the stained-glass windows that depict important people in the history of the cathedral.

The top row of the east window shows Queen Bertha, St Augustine and King Ethelbert. King Henry VIII appears second left on the bottom row. The west window depicts scenes from the history of the cathedral, including the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket, the penance of King Henry II and the move of Becket’s bones to his shrine in 1220.

Emerge from the gateway and take time to stand and stare. Of the cathedral’s three pinnacled towers, the central Bell Harry Tower rises supreme. It dates from between 1493 and 1503, is 235 feet (72 metres) high and is named after the original bell given by Prior Henry. Inside, the exquisite fan vault interior of the tower is one of the most glorious sights of this most memorable of cathedrals.

CHELMSFORD CATHEDRAL

St Mary’s Parish Church became the Cathedral Church of St Mary, St Peter and St Cedd in 1914, when a new Church of England diocese for East London was created, with Chelmsford as the seat of its bishop.

From the outside it looks very much the medieval East Anglian parish church, with a square tower, a needle spire and local flint in the walls. That feeling continues as you enter the mid-15th century south porch, its stained-glass windows dedicated to ‘tasks and friendships shared’, a memorial to the American forces stationed in Essex between 1942 and 1945.

Ahead, a powerful sculpture of Christ in Glory, arms outstretched in welcome, hangs above the chancel arch. Made of oak covered in beaten copper and gilded, it is by Peter Eugene Ball. Seek out further work by this English artist and sculptor in the cathedral: his Mother and Child bas-relief in St Cedd’s Chapel at the west end and the cross and candle-stands in the Mildmay Chapel in the east.

In the chancel, the 15th-century roof trusses have been gilded and painted in strong medieval colours, an indication of how brilliantly colourful the old parish church would once have been.

Beneath the east window, which depicts the Virgin Mary and the life and ministry of her Son, there’s a splendid patchwork hanging by the influential embroiderer and designer of church textiles, Beryl Dean. Created from 2,220 squares of silk, its colours are taken from those in the window, with five squares of each shade placed together to form a cross. It stands as a backdrop to the Bishop’s Chair, crafted from Westmoreland slate by the sculptor John Skelton, who also carved the dean’s stall, this time in wood.

The altar is the centrepiece of the chancel, again in Westmoreland green slate. A simple, unembellished design by the architect of the 1983 reordering, Robert Potter (who also made the modern font from the same stone), it weighs one and a half tons.

The cathedral houses some truly superb icons. Four in the chancel fill the high blank windows formed when the south transept was added. They portray the saints to whom the cathedral is dedicated, plus Jesus. Those of the Virgin Mary, St Peter and Christ are traditional representations, but that of St Cedd had to be considered afresh.

The missionary St Cedd arrived in East Anglia from Northumbria. He sailed down the east coast from Lindisfarne in 653, landing his boat at Bradwell in Essex. There he founded a Celtic community and in 654 built a small stone church on the foundations of a Roman fort. That same year he was consecrated Bishop of the East Saxons. Isolated on the southern bank of the Blackwater estuary, during the summer months services are still held at St Peter-ad-Muram, St Cedd’s tiny cathedral.

In the event St Cedd is portrayed in the tradition of St John the Baptist, holding the Bradwell Chapel in his hands. The iconographers, three Orthodox nuns, completed their work in situ, so the halos look round from ground level and the eyes look down to the viewer.

They also wrote the huge icon of the Ascended Christ in the blue, almond-shaped frame of a mandorla, which hangs above the arch in the north transept. It comes as no surprise to learn that the principal writer of the Chelmsford icons was trained by one of the world’s leading authorities on icons.

Above the altar, the stained-glass windows depict St Cedd and St Alban, the first English martyr. The cathedral banner stands close by. With the finest gold thread stitching and exquisite detail, this embroidery masterpiece by Beryl Dean shows the Virgin Mary in Byzantine style on a background of Indian cloth of gold.

The Mildmay family’s prominence in Chelmsford lasted for over 300 years. The brightly coloured Tudor monument to Thomas Mildmay, his wife Avis and their fifteen children stands in the north transept. Having dissolved some of the monasteries in East Anglia for King Henry VIII, Thomas prospered and acquired much land. There’s another Mildmay monument around the corner, this time in ornate Rococo marble from the 18th century.

The contemporary artist Mark Cazalet has filled a blank window in the north transept with a giant Tree of Life. Painted on 35 oak panels it is a thought-provoking piece that warrants a close look at the detail. Beneath it in a specially built cabinet is The Living Cross by British iconographer Helen McIldowie-Jenkins, in which the wood of Christ’s cross sprouts green leaves.

At the west end of the cathedral, two chapels are separated by the organ loft beneath the tower.

St Peter’s Chapel is a memorial to those who suffer in this world. At its heart is ‘The Bombed Child’, a poignant bronze sculpture by Georg Ehrlich who fled his native Austria for England following the Nazi invasion in 1938. Essex militia and regimental colours hang here and the west window features the patron saints of the armed forces.

Here, Mark Cazalet’s engraved glass window shows St Cedd, a bearded man with a furrowed brow, amid the building stones of Bradwell. It marked the centenary of the cathedral and diocese in 2014 and the granting of city status to Chelmsford by the Queen two years earlier.

As you leave, take a walk around the church and seek out a very modern stone-carved St Peter, perched on a buttress with his nets and catch, wearing fisherman’s boots and holding a Yale key!

Chelmsford Cathedral may not be big (it claims to be the second smallest cathedral in the country) but thanks to the astute and beautiful artwork commissions by a previous dean, it’s a gem.

CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL

The joy of Chichester’s Cathedral of the Holy Trinity is the way that modern works of art have been incorporated, to great effect, amid Norman arches, Romanesque stone-carved panels and fine medieval effigies.

Look for the simple memorial to composer Gustav Holst (1874–1934), who had a close association with the cathedral, and the charming 14th-century table tomb with the effigies of Richard FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel, and his second wife Eleanor holding hands. It inspired Philip Larkin’s poem ‘An Arundel Tomb’. Don’t miss the expressive, wonderfully detailed stone-carved reliefs of the Raising of Lazarus that probably date from the 12th century or the stunning baptismal font in polished Cornish stone with its bowl of beaten copper, designed by John Skelton in 1983.

Outside, the freestanding medieval bell tower, the only one still remaining at any English cathedral, houses the cathedral shop.

The irascible missionary bishop St Wilfrid, in exile from Northumbria, brought Christianity to Sussex in 681, founding an abbey on the coast near Selsey. The Normans transferred the bishopric, establishing the See of Chichester in 1075, and built a cathedral on the site of a Saxon church, using stone from the Isle of Wight. It was consecrated in 1108 but fires and the effects of foundations set on boggy ground resulted in much rebuilding into the 13th century.

The elegant nave, essentially Norman in style, has creamy limestone piers with dark, polished Purbeck Marble shafts that lead the eye to the controversial Arundel screen and through its narrow central arch to glimpse the vivid colours of the highlight tapestry behind the high altar.

Created in the 15th century, a whole bay deep and superbly carved from Caen stone, the screen divided the quire, where the services were held, from the nave used by the laity. It was dismantled in 1860 to remove this separation but in the process cracks in the crossing piers were revealed, leading to the collapse of the tower and spire a year later. The return to its original position in 1961 was no less controversial than its removal by the Gothic Revivalists of the mid-19th century.

Behind it, the quire has original 14th-century misericords under the seats and from here you can get the full impact of John Piper’s stunning Holy Trinity tapestry, so rich in colour and symbolism. Woven in Felletin, near Aubusson in France, where Graham Sutherland’s Christ in Majesty had been made for Coventry Cathedral (page 59), it consists of seven panels, each five metres high and one metre wide, and was installed in 1966.

Both transepts are Norman in origin and the window in the south transept is superb. It tells the story of salvation, from Adam and Eve to the Resurrected Christ, revealing events from the Old Testament (on the right) that foreshadowed those in the New Testament, which are shown on the left. The glass is 19th century, set in 14th-century stonework.

Look for the monkey with a wedding ring at its feet in the left scene. This is believed to be a metaphor for Katharine of Aragon, who was known to have a pet monkey, and the discarded ring shows Bishop Sherborne’s disapproval of Henry’s abandonment of his queen. As the Bishop had travelled to Rome twenty years earlier to persuade the Pope to allow the marriage of Henry and Katharine, the divorce was deeply upsetting to him. Not only that, the impending Reformation threatened his beloved cathedral.

Butler’s paintings of the Bishops of Chichester and Selsey line a wall of the north transept. All of the paintings have the same face – that of the artist’s patron, Bishop Sherborne.

The shrine of St Richard is given pride of place in the retroquire behind the high altar. The saintly bishop, Richard of Chichester, died in 1253 and his shrine attracted thousands of pilgrims until it was desecrated and destroyed in 1538 during the Reformation, its riches transferred to the Tower of London. Canonised in 1262, he is the patron saint of Sussex.

His shrine area is a model of modern simplicity. On a raised platform, a powerful tapestry designed by Ursula Benker-Schirmer in 1985 forms a backdrop to the Purbeck Marble altar and tall cast-aluminium candlesticks. Woven partly in Germany and partly at nearby West Dean College, it is known as the Anglo-German tapestry and symbolises reconciliation. A 1970s icon of St Richard by Sergei Fyodorov adds further inspiration.

Ahead is the large and peaceful 14th-century Lady Chapel, restored in 2009 to include some of the colour that would have been seen in medieval times. Flanking it, two chapels have modern altar paintings: Graham Sutherland’s depiction of the newly resurrected Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene and Patrick Procktor’s image of the Baptism of Christ in the Chapel of St John the Baptist.

Then there is Marc Chagall’s gloriously uplifting window to ponder. On a vibrant red background, the design is a visual interpretation of Psalm 150: ‘Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord’.

Chichester Cathedral is unusual in having two aisles on each side of the nave, a popular feature of churches in France, but not on this side of the Channel. Memorial chapels in the outer aisles pay tribute to members of the Royal Sussex Regiment, the Royal Air Force and the people of Sussex who lost their lives at sea in the Second World War.

This is a popular and much-loved cathedral, happily blending the ancient and the modern, with stories from every century to discover and enjoy.

CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL, OXFORD

In honey-coloured Cotswold limestone, the building dates from the late 12th century. However, its story goes back to the 8th century when St Frideswide, an Anglo-Saxon princess, established a nunnery on the site.

Legend tells that Frideswide hid in the woods to escape the attentions of the powerful and debauched King Algar. When she emerged three years later and found he was still waiting, a thunderbolt blinded him, and he got the message. Several miracles were attributed to her, she was canonised and went on to become the patron saint of both the city of Oxford and the University.

Frideswide’s nunnery was destroyed by Danes in 1002 but was later re-established for Augustinian Canons. Their priory church was built around 1180, with the saint’s bones translated with much pomp and ceremony to a shrine, where over the years many miracles were noted. Among the pilgrims who visited was Katharine of Aragon, who came to pray for a son, sadly to no avail.

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (1474–1530) was at the height of his wealth and power when he determined to create a magnificent new college in Oxford, equal in splendour to his palace at Hampton Court and named in his honour. It would have a vast chapel that would outdo King’s College Chapel in Cambridge (page 112). The Canons were ejected and three bays of the nave of their church and part of the cloister demolished to make way for Tom Quad and the new college.

The massive piers and arcades in the nave, chancel and transept are decisively Norman but unusual in their split capitals, double arches and positioning of the triforium to give an illusion of height. Also unusual, the quire stalls are in the nave, rather than the chancel, and the pews face each other across the aisle, college style. (One further quirk – the cathedral keeps the old ‘Oxford time’, being five minutes behind GMT, which can be confusing to visitors attending services.)

The colourful Jonah Window to the left as you enter was the work of a 17th-century Dutch artist, Abraham van Linge. Only the figure of Jonah under a gourd tree is made from stained glass. The rest of the window, with the city of Nineveh shown in great detail, was painted.

The cathedral’s biggest stained-glass window is in the north transept. It is Victorian and shows the Archangel Michael leading his army of angels to defeat the Devil, illustrating a scene from the apocalyptic New Testament Book of Revelation.

Ahead is the Early Gothic Latin Chapel, so called because services there were defiantly held in Latin right up to 1861. It holds the reconstructed shrine of St Frideswide, covered in stone-carved foliage and faces. The original shrine, which held the relics of the saint, was smashed in 1538 during the Reformation. Over 300 years later, fragments were found lining a well and it was meticulously reassembled.

Nearby, a small chapel is dedicated to the memory of Bishop George Bell, a former member of the college. A strong opponent of Nazism, he campaigned against the bombing of German civilians in the Second World War and worked tirelessly for reconciliation. The altar is made from a single piece of 17th-century oak from Windsor Great Park, given by the Queen, with a cross cut from its underside standing nearby.

As you step into the chancel, look up and marvel at the beautiful vaulted ceiling. Its stone ribs splay out from gravity-defying pendants, small intersecting ribs create eight-pointed stars and carved stone bosses reflect personages of the church from Frideswide and the Virgin and Child, through bishops and archbishops and finally, above the Victorian high altar, Jesus. This sensational architectural feat was created in 1500 by Oxford master mason William Orchard.

The Becket Window in St Lucy’s Chapel in the south transept dates from around 1320. It contains a rare panel showing the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral (page 37). King Henry VIII ordered that all images of the ‘turbulent priest’ should be erased, but this one survived due to quick thinking – the saint’s face was replaced with plain glass. To find it, look for the small central blue panel in the upper tracery.

The monuments in the chapel are to men who died fighting for Charles I in the English Civil War of the 1640s. Oxford was the king’s headquarters and he lived in the Deanery at Christ Church, attending services and holding some of his parliaments in the Great Hall. During his stay the cathedral silver was melted down to pay for his army.

Steps from the south transept lead down to the cloister and chapter house. Built in 1150, its Romanesque doorway with distinctive carvings is the oldest part of the cathedral and the interior is splendid, but as it now houses the cathedral shop, very few visitors notice!

The best view of the cathedral’s spire is from the cloister garden. The oldest surviving stone spire in England, it dates from 1230.

COVENTRY CATHEDRAL

The German Luftwaffe’s prolonged bombing raid on Coventry on the night of 14 November 1940 devastated the historic city. As the incendiary bombs rained down, its cathedral burned with it. The next morning, Richard Howard, the visionary Provost of the time, put his hand in the ashes and wrote the words ‘Father forgive’ on the blackened wall of the sanctuary. He vowed to rebuild the cathedral as a sign of faith, trust and hope for the future of the world and to work for reconciliation.

Before it was designated Coventry’s cathedral in 1918, St Michael’s, dating from the 14th century, had been the largest parish church in England, a wonder of Perpendicular Gothic architecture. Its windows were painted by John Thornton who went on to work on the glass in York Minster (page 258).

While most of the building lay in ruins, the splendidly carved 15th-century tower and spire stood their ground, and together with the shell of outer walls and skeletal tracery form a dramatic, thought-provoking ensemble framed against the sky. The 295-foot- (90-metre-) spire is still the tallest structure in the city.

In 1950, over 200 architects submitted drawings in the competition held to design a new cathedral. Basil Spence, later knighted for his work, won with his plan to keep the ruins as a garden of remembrance and to incorporate them into the design of the new building.

Queen Elizabeth II laid the foundation stone in March 1956 and the new cathedral was consecrated in her presence in May 1962. To mark the occasion, Benjamin Britten’s specially composed ‘War Requiem’ received its premiere in the cathedral.

At the entrance, a monumental porch and steps link the old and new structures. A 70-foot- (21-metre-) high clear glass screen, engraved with Old and New Testament figures, saints, martyrs and angels, allows visitors to view the inside of the new cathedral with a reflection of the old.

Guarding the steps, a powerful bronze sculpture, ‘St Michael and the Devil’, symbolises the strength of good over evil. Depicting the archangel standing triumphant and victorious over a cowering Lucifer, it is by Sir Jacob Epstein, one of several leading British artists and sculptors of the time to contribute fine work to the new cathedral.

Stained-glass windows angled in zigzag walls direct light down the nave towards the altar and the immense tapestry, Christ in Glory. Designed by Graham Sutherland, who in the preceding years had worked as an official war artist recording the effects of German bombing on Britain, it measures 75 feet by 38 feet (23 metres by 11.5 metres), and weighs over a ton. Woven near Aubusson in France and using about 900 colours, it is said to be the largest tapestry in the world to be woven in one piece.

An entire wall of stained glass, its vivid colours moving from the outer reds, blues and greens to a sunburst of gold and white at the centre, each of the 195 individual windows contains an abstract design and the overall effect is mesmerising. A large boulder brought from a hillside near Bethlehem forms the font at its feet.

Following the aisle from the Baptistry to the altar brings you to the serenely beautiful Chapel of Christ in Gethsemane. Seen through a crown of thorns made from iron, it shows a kneeling angel in gold mosaic offering the cup of suffering to Christ as he prays.

Provost Richard Howard’s vision back in 1940 was for a new cathedral that would be at the heart of a movement for peace and reconciliation between all people of all faiths. Seeing how in wartime Christians of all denominations came together to pray, he conceived the idea of an ecumenical space within the new cathedral – a revolutionary idea at the time. It came to fruition in the Chapel of Unity, a star-shaped building attached to the cathedral. Its colourful mosaic floor, donated by the people of Sweden, represents the nations of the world and is lit by shafts of light from narrow, stained-glass windows.

It was a controversial building from the start, and still divides opinion, but a national poll in 1990 showed Coventry Cathedral to be the UK’s favourite 20th-century building and it is listed as one of 21 British landmarks for the 21st century.

DURHAM CATHEDRAL

On its peninsula ridge above the wooded cliffs that rise up sheer from the fast-flowing River Wear, the Cathedral of Christ, Blessed Mary the Virgin and St Cuthbert, Durham stands rock solid, a golden sandstone elegy to power and strength. Inside, that show of strength pervades in the unforgettable pillars that line the 11th-century nave. They are almost 22 feet (6.6 metres) round, the same distance high, and deeply carved in bold geometric patterns.

Full of architectural achievements way ahead of its time, the cathedral’s early monastic history is revealed not least in the slab of black marble set in the nave’s floor that marked the point beyond which no women were allowed to step.

There’s vibrant, modern stained glass that reflects the local community’s involvement in a church for today; its interest in the wider world is revealed by a beautiful banner from Lesotho in Southern Africa, woven to commemorate the cathedral’s 900th birthday.

Prior Castell’s glorious Tudor clock in the south transept dates from the early 16th century and survived the Civil War. It is huge, ornate, brilliantly colourful and tells the time of day, the day of the month and the phases of the moon. Look carefully at the face – it has 48 (instead of the usual 60) minute markings.

Much of the cathedral’s colour comes from nature, from the swirls of cream, gold and orange in the sandstone walls and clear fossil patterns of the local Frosterley stone in the pillars, to the boldly patterned marble floor of the quire.

The magnificent, intricate Neville Screen behind the high altar was carved from Caen stone in the 1370s. Behind that screen is the tomb of the gentle, holy St Cuthbert, the shepherd boy who became Bishop of Lindisfarne and brought the Christian faith to this area of North-east England. He died in 687 and is the reason the cathedral was built.

After the Norman Conquest in 1066, King William I chose Durham as his preferred location from which to administer the north of his kingdom and protect it against invasion by raiding Scots. Seeing the defensive value of the position of the church holding the relics of the saint, which had by then become a popular pilgrimage site, he ordered the building of a castle, a monastery and a cathedral for the shrine of St Cuthbert.

Work began on the cathedral in 1093 under the command of William of St Calais, whom William the Conqueror had appointed to be the first prince-bishop. For the next almost 800 years, Durham’s prince-bishops carried out a secular, as well as religious role, governing and protecting England’s northern frontier, often more warriors than churchmen, living like kings and wielding significant power.

William’s cathedral was constructed in a mere 40 years, although he did not live to see it, his work being completed by his ambitious successor, Bishop Ranulf Flambard. Although building continued into the 13th century, with the central tower rebuilt in the 15th, the interior of the cathedral we see today remains essentially Norman, a masterpiece of Romanesque architecture.

It’s the nave with its avenue of powerful columns, dogtooth arches and decorative zigzagging that remains long in the memory of visitors, but look upwards and you will see one of the most daring innovations of the time.

English cathedrals of this period were built with wooden roofs but Durham’s vault is stone, with ribs forming pointed arches to support it, giving the effect of soaring lightness. It was an engineering achievement that marked a turning point in church architecture.

During the Civil War some 3,000 Scottish prisoners, captured by Oliver Cromwell, were held in the cathedral following the Battle of Dunbar in 1650. The conditions were appalling and all the woodwork in the great building was damaged or disappeared at this time. It’s likely it was burned as firewood by the prisoners, at least half of whom died during their captivity. A mass grave was discovered during construction work on Palace Green, near the cathedral, in 2013.

After the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, it was Bishop John Cosin who replaced the quire stalls and towering cover of the marble baptismal font in a style that’s a flamboyant mix of Gothic and Jacobean carving.

The Right to Sanctuary was abolished around this time. Under it, a person who had committed a great offence could rap the sanctuary knocker on the cathedral’s northern door and be given refuge for 37 days, during which time they would try to reconcile with their enemies or arrange their exile on board a ship from the nearest port.

The original 12th-century sanctuary knocker with its lionlike face and bulging eyes is housed among the cathedral treasures; the one you see at the door now is a bronze replica.

Across the green stands William the Conqueror’s great motte-and-bailey castle, founded in 1072, the principal seat of Durham’s prince-bishops for almost 800 years and now used by Durham University. Together with Britain’s finest Norman cathedral, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

ELY CATHEDRAL

Seen from a far distance across the flat Cambridgeshire fenland, Ely’s Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity seems almost ephemeral. Up close it is triumphant. The beautiful simplicity of the nave, the dizzying fan vaulting of the Octagon and Lantern Tower (one of the world’s great architectural marvels), the sumptuous painted ceiling, glorious woodcarving and exquisite stone tracing make it a joy to visit.

Etheldreda’s abbey was sacked by the Danes then refounded as a Benedictine monastery for men in 970. It became one of the richest monasteries in England but was demolished in 1081 by the elderly Abbot Simeon, a relative of William the Conqueror, in order to build an impressive church in the Norman style. It would be a brilliant beacon of faith amid the lawless fens. Before it was even completed it had been designated a cathedral, with the first Bishop of Ely appointed in 1109.

Built from stone brought from Peterborough Abbey’s own quarry at Barnack, and Purbeck Marble from Dorset for decorative detail, it is renowned as an outstanding example of English Gothic architecture. A tall (215 feet, 66 metres) castellated and imposing tower with top-to-toe blind arcading dominates the west front; the two turrets of the south-west transept would not look amiss on a fairy tale castle.

Entrance to the cathedral is through the elegant Great West Door in the Galilee Porch. A pavement labyrinth lies boldly beneath the tower. Added in the 19th century, the only one to be found in an English cathedral, it is twenty feet (6.1 metres) across and, unlike a maze, there are no confusing dead ends. To your left, look for ‘The Way of Life’, a contemporary sculpture in cast aluminium commissioned for the millennium. To your right, the south-west transept is a feast of Romanesque decoration.

There’s a wonderful space at the top of the nave and its style is unique to Ely. In 1322, the Norman central tower collapsed, taking with it the crossing and three bays of the quire. It was a disaster that led to the cathedral’s most famous and celebrated feature, the Octagon.

Through the imagination of the monk/architect Alan of Walsingham, working with the royal master carpenter William Hurley, the replacement of the old square tower with a stone octagon crowned by a lantern in wood, lead and glass to suffuse it with light, was not only revolutionary, it was a masterpiece of medieval engineering. It took eighteen years to build and the method of its construction still enthrals architects and engineers. To take a tower tour and get the view down onto the cathedral below is a memorable experience.

On either side of the Octagon, the north and south transepts are the oldest part of the building and contain fine stonework. Look up – the hammer-beam roofs, installed in the 15th century, are decorated with colourful flying angels.

King Henry III and Prince Edward were in attendance when the presbytery behind the quire was dedicated in 1252. The Victorian architect, George Gilbert Scott, designed the Italianate reredos of the high altar during his major restoration of the cathedral, which by the 19th century had fallen badly into disrepair. The delicate quire screen is his, too, and became a model for his work in churches and cathedrals around the country.

The far eastern end of the cathedral is dedicated to St Etheldreda. Elaborate, highly ornate chantry chapels grace the quire aisles, and a millennium project, Processional Way, in the north quire aisle restored the pilgrims’ direct link to the Lady Chapel.

EXETER CATHEDRAL

A row of angels seems to be supporting two tiers of kings, knights, bishops, Apostles and prophets in the niches above them. Imbued with individual character and energy these sit, stand, turn and pray. Two with their legs crossed appear to be having an argument. All around them are decorative plants and animals. This image screen on the west front of the Cathedral Church of St Peter in Exeter, carved in stone in the 14th century, just hints at the glories to be experienced within.

Stand in the nave and you’ll understand why even the pickiest of historians and architects heap praise on Exeter Cathedral. Light floods through windows on to a forest of honey-coloured stone in this most graceful of cathedral interiors.

From west to east it’s a vista of lively Decorated Gothic piers, moulded arches and clusters of blue Purbeck Marble shafts, then above in the triforium, an arcade of coloured trefoil arches. Ribs spring from a single capital in each bay, fanning out like palm branches to meet in a central ridge of painted and gilded bosses. At around 315 feet (96 metres), it’s the longest uninterrupted medieval vaulted ceiling in the world.

As you approach the altar, cast your eyes upwards to the minstrels’ gallery above the nave’s north arcade. Built in 1350 it has twelve brightly coloured stone angels enthusiastically playing musical instruments, including a viol, trumpet, tambourine, bagpipes and a recorder.

The screen, or pulpitum, dates from 1325. In pale Purbeck limestone, its three arches are topped by an openwork arcade filled with a dozen 17th-century painted panels depicting scenes from the life of Christ. Human and animal faces peer out from a riot of foliage in the intricately stone-carved decoration.

A colourful astronomical clock from the late 15th century graces the north transept. The earth is shown in the centre of the dial and the moon revolves around it, turning on its axis to show its phases. A fleur-de-lis depicts the sun and revolves around the earth, pointing to the hour on the outer circle. The small upper dial with a single hand shows the minutes and was added in 1760. A small bell chimes the quarter hours. From high in the tower above, the huge Peter Bell strikes the hour. Look for the round hole in the door below – it’s a medieval cat flap.

Also in the north transept is one of Exeter’s three early 16th-century chantry chapels. This is the Sylke Chantry from 1508 and has Tudor carving and wall painting. The highly ornate Speke Chantry (known as the Chapel of St George) is in the north quire aisle. Opposite, in the south quire aisle, the Chapel of St Saviour commemorates Bishop Oldham, founder of Manchester Grammar School. Look for the tiny owls amid the carving.

The bishop’s throne (cathedra) in the quire, carved from Devon oak in the early 14th century and towering to a pinnacled height of 60 feet (eighteen metres), is a masterpiece of the skilled woodcarver’s art.

The quire stalls are a good Victorian reconstruction but the carved canopies, ornate sedilia (clergy seats) and the misericords – a collection of fantastical creatures, sirens, centaurs, dragons, even an elephant (with horses hooves) – are original, from the late 13th and early 14th centuries.

Behind the high altar, two arches give a glimpse into the retroquire and form the base of the great east window. Much of the glass is medieval, with nine of the figures dating from 1304. At the cathedral’s east end, the glorious Lady Chapel has modern glass depicting the life of the Virgin Mary.

The diocese of Devon and Cornwall, with Exeter as its bishop’s seat (cathedral), was established in 1050. There had been a Saxon minster on the site, which the Danes destroyed in 1003 and King Cnut rebuilt in 1019.

When William the Conqueror’s nephew, William Warelwast, became Bishop of Exeter in 1107, he built a large Romanesque cathedral. Its turreted twin towers were incorporated into the cathedral that replaced it, the one we see today. About halfway down the building they flank its north and south sides and their interiors form the transepts – a unique arrangement in English cathedrals and a defining and much celebrated feature at Exeter.

By the time construction of the current cathedral started in 1275, the latest style in architecture was English Decorated Gothic, hence the rich carvings and large windows, their tracery some of the most innovative in existence.

Exeter Cathedral has a grand collection of elaborate tombs with brightly coloured effigies and many memorials. The most recent of these, unveiled in 2017, is the memorial to the Polish airmen of 307 Squadron. Heavily outnumbered night fighters, they defended the city during the revenge bombing blitz on Exeter by the Luftwaffe in 1942.

One bomb reduced the Chapel of St James to rubble; 2,000 tons of masonry came crashing down and made the quire unstable. On a post-war visit to see work on its reconstruction, King George VI called it ‘the greatest jigsaw puzzle in the world’.

Its design follows that of the medieval original, with a few 20th-century additions in the carvings. The master mason at the time, George Down, is depicted with his stonemason’s tools and the carved head of a rugby player commemorates a match in 1951 between Exeter Rugby Club and Oxford University to raise funds for the cathedral’s restoration.

It’s the balance and symmetry of the architecture that makes Exeter Cathedral so special: each window and chapel on one side has its counterpart on the other. The Norman tower transepts, too, mirror each other, while the whole nave seems to flow seamlessly into the distance. Add to this its setting, a wide grassy green close untroubled by traffic, and should there be such a thing as the perfect English cathedral, Exeter might just fit the bill.

FOUNTAINS ABBEY

The largest and probably the best-known monastic ruins in England, Fountains Abbey presents a dramatic, wonderfully atmospheric sight. The setting, on the floor of a wooded valley with the River Skell flowing through it, is beautiful.

Medieval monasteries in England followed the Benedictine Rule, written by St Benedict in the 6th century and reformed in the 10th century. By the 12th century, however, many abbeys had moved away from the discipline and simplicity of the rule and embraced a wealthy lifestyle.

A new order, the Cistercians, formed in Burgundy and committed to returning to the austerity demanded by St Benedict, reached England in 1128. Their emphasis was on prayer, manual labour and self-sufficiency.

Survival there was difficult and they sent to France, to Bernard, the Abbot of Clairvaux, asking to join the Cistercian family. With the first Cistercian abbey in Yorkshire established at Rievaulx a few years earlier, Bernard offered support and sent a skilled builder (architect) to help. In the meantime, the Dean and two Canons of York, all wealthy men, arrived to join the little community at Fountains.

Now they had the funds and the knowledge, building of the abbey began in 1134, using timber from the surrounding trees and sandstone from the steep valley sides. A fire in 1147 destroyed the wooden buildings and damaged the church, which was immediately rebuilt. The great Abbey Church with its imposing west front and the cloister with its beautiful rounded arches were completed around 1160.

The Cistercians built all their abbeys according to a similar plan – stark, functional and undecorated – which reflected their strict and austere way of life. They were also unusual in having lay brothers, who worked in agriculture, building and the trades and crafts essential to the day-to-day running of a monastery, while the monks devoted their days to prayer. Beginning with a vigil at 2am they attended seven services a day, from daybreak to dusk.

The monks wore simple white habits made from rough, undyed sheep’s wool. Underwear was forbidden, food rations were sparse and with long periods of enforced silence, communication was mainly by sign language.

It was mainly thanks to them that during the 13th century, Fountains Abbey became one of the richest and most influential religious houses in England, its wealth coming mainly from the sale of wool to Flanders and Italy. Income also came from cattle rearing and horse breeding, quarrying and mining.

As the abbey’s wealth and power grew, so did the building work. Wealthy patrons who donated sizeable parcels of land were accommodated in two-storey guesthouses in the abbey grounds. Ordinary visitors would have stayed in the large aisled hall.

The eastern arm of the church was rebuilt in the mid-1200s, becoming more ornate with nine altars or small chapels. The great window and carvings were the result of a programme of rebuilding under Abbot Darnton in the late 1400s.

Unusually for a Cistercian abbey, a 167-foot- (51-metre-) tall bell tower, its windows decorated with stone carvings and statues, was added to the north transept around 1500. Known as Huby’s Tower, it was built in local limestone by the reforming Abbot Marmaduke Huby and is a dominating feature of the ruins today.

The Abbey was at its peak in the 13th century but then disaster followed. Mismanagement of funds led to debts, there were raids by Scots ravaged by famine, harvests failed and the sheep that provided so much of the wealth succumbed to disease. Then the Black Death in 1349–50 carried off many of the monks and a large number of lay brothers. With not enough labour to work the farms, much of the land was rented out.

So it remained until the 1760s when William Aislabie, MP for Ripon, took ownership. Combining his own estate at Studley Royal with that of Fountains, he incorporated the abbey ruins into the spectacular gardens he and his father were creating.

One building escaped the closure of the abbey and that was Fountains Mill. Built in the 12th century to grind grain for the monastery, it was in use right up to 1927. Restored, it houses an interactive exhibition.

The ruins today are a vision of towering walls and soaring Early English Gothic arches; of solidly crafted, round-arched doorways and long arcades. Beneath the lay brothers’ range, a spectacular vaulted cellarium stretches to over 300 feet (91 metres).

An award-winning interpretation centre in the Porter’s Lodge, inside the original gatehouse, tells the story of Fountains and contains a model of how the Abbey would have looked before the dissolution of the monasteries.

In the care of the National Trust, Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Water Garden is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Also on this vast estate: Fountains Hall, an Elizabethan mansion partly built from stone from the abbey ruins and, at the highest point of the Deer Park, the magnificent Victorian church of St Mary, decorated in the richly coloured Gothic Revival style of the 1870s.

GLASTONBURY ABBEY

Steeped in myth and legend, Glastonbury is probably England’s most famous abbey. It was the richest at the time of the Domesday Book in 1086 and second only to Westminster Abbey by the time it was dissolved by King Henry VIII in 1539. Abbot Whyting was one of the few in England who resisted the king’s command and he and two monks came to a very nasty end at the top of nearby Glastonbury Tor.

Today the ruins give some indication of its size and grandeur. Archaeological excavations have resulted in many fascinating discoveries, revealed in the well-designed and informative museum that you pass through before stepping out into the 36 acres of parkland with its trees, orchards, herb garden and fishponds.

Piecing together its history isn’t easy. Tradition has it that Joseph of Arimathea, who provided the tomb in which Christ was buried, arrived in Glastonbury with two vials containing drops of Christ’s blood and the chalice used at the Last Supper (the Holy Grail), and founded a small wattle and daub church there in AD 63. An alternative story is that it was Christian missionaries from Rome who built a church in the 2nd century.

That there were early settlements here is not in doubt. Glastonbury Tor had been a sacred site before the arrival of Christianity. Before the Somerset Levels were drained, this was a watery region of islands and marsh, which attracted hermits. A sacred well, fed by a spring that never ran dry, was named the Chalice Well in Christian times.

Finds within the site have included Iron Age pottery and Roman objects, there’s archaeological evidence for timber structures dating to around AD 500, while excavations in the 1920s revealed three phases of stone churches associated with a Saxon monastery, the earliest dated to around 700.

History becomes a little clearer in the 10th century, when the abbey’s most famous abbot, St Dunstan (909–88), created a Benedictine monastery modelled on that at Cluny in Burgundy, making it a noted centre of learning and manuscript production. That it gained royal favour is witnessed by the burial there of three kings of Wessex between 946 and 1016. A noted reformer, Dunstan went on to be Bishop of Worcester, Bishop of London and in 960, Archbishop of Canterbury.

It was under the fourth abbot, the powerful Henry of Blois, grandson of William the Conqueror, nephew of King Henry I and younger brother of King Stephen, that the abbey reached its greatest prestige.

During his long tenure he was made Bishop of Winchester and with his passion for architecture built castles and extensions to palaces. He loved literature, too, commissioning the history of the abbey from the chronicler William of Malmesbury and sponsoring the Winchester Bible (page 245). After his death, disaster struck. In 1184 a raging fire destroyed his beloved abbey.

The Lady Chapel was built immediately after the fire, ready for use in 1186. It stands on the site of the wooden ‘old church’, placing it to the west end of the Great Church rather than the traditional east end. The most sacred part of the medieval abbey, and the most complete of its ruins, it is considered one of the finest late 12th-century monuments in England.

Its walls survive to full height and some of the delicate sculpted stone can still be seen. The Romanesque rounded arch above the north door is superb, with five orders of decorative carving depicting scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary between bands of richly-detailed foliage.

The ruins of the once magnificent Great Church, built in the Early Gothic style, are more fragmentary but do give an indication of its vastness. With a total internal length of 580 feet (176 metres), only Old St Paul’s in London was longer.

The intact Abbot’s Kitchen is the finest of the monastic buildings and gives an indication of the wealth and prestige of the abbey in the mid-1300s. A square stone structure, it has an eight-sided stone roof rising to an ingenious octagonal lantern, allowing smoke from the four fireplaces below to escape from a central vent.

The contemporary historian Gerald of Wales recorded that in 1191 the monks had discovered the grave of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. Given the timing, so soon after the disastrous fire, when money was needed to rebuild their church, modern historians consider that the exhumation was probably faked.

It wasn’t until 1278, when the nave of the Great Church had been completed, that the bones were reburied in a marble tomb and placed in the quire before the high altar, in a ceremony attended by King Edward I and Queen Eleanor. It survived until the dissolution of the abbey.

The abbey may have crumbled but the legends continued to evolve and flourish. The story of the Glastonbury Thorn was strong in the 17th century. It tells that when Joseph of Arimathea arrived in Glastonbury he rested on Wearyall Hill, thrusting his staff into the ground, where it sprouted into a thorn tree.

The tree, and others grafted from it, blossom twice a year, in spring (Easter) and winter (Christmas), thus it was considered a Holy Thorn. The tradition of presenting a sprig to the reigning monarch on Christmas Day was revived in the 1920s and continues to this day.

After the execution of Abbot Whyting, the riches of Glastonbury Abbey were quickly carted off to further enrich the King, and stone from its walls was plundered by the townspeople. The site passed through several owners until 1906, when it returned to the Church, bought on behalf of the Bishop of Bath and Wells.

GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL

Boasting the finest cloisters in England with the first fan vaulting ever built, one of the largest and most spectacular of medieval stained-glass windows anywhere in the country, and the pinnacled tomb of a murdered king, Gloucester’s Cathedral Church of St Peter and the Holy and Indivisible Trinity is a story book on history and architecture.

It saw the coronation of the boy-king Henry III in 1216, when he was just nine years old – the only English king since the Norman Conquest not to be crowned in Westminster Abbey – a scene beautifully depicted in a Victorian stained-glass window. William the Conqueror spent the Christmas of 1085 at Gloucester and it was in the chapter house that he formulated the idea of the Domesday Book.

The Abbey of St Peter at Gloucester was founded in 679 by Osric, ruler of the Hwicce tribe. When Serlo, the first Norman abbot, arrived from the Benedictine abbey of Mont St Michel in Normandy in 1072, he found a very depleted monastery – just two monks and six novices.

The rather splendid organ case above the screen blocks the view to the quire and beyond. Strangely this does the visitor a favour, as the surprise is even greater as you leave the brooding nave and unexpectedly find yourself in a space of soaring lightness.

It was the murder of the deposed king, Edward II, at Berkeley Castle in 1327 that was to trigger the rebuilding of the east end of the abbey church. When his son, King Edward III, seized power from his mother Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, he determined that his father should have a fitting memorial. With its canopy of towering, intricately fashioned pinnacles and the king’s effigy exquisitely carved in alabaster, it is surely one of the most beautiful royal tombs anywhere.

The King may have been unpopular in life but in death he attracted a vast number of pilgrims and their offerings funded a massive building project in the radical new Perpendicular style of architecture, undertaken by skilled royal masons.

Slender columns soar to a magnificent lierne vault 88 feet (27 metres) above the floor. In the sumptuous quire, bosses on the vault above the high altar show Christ surrounded by an angel choir playing musical instruments.

Then there’s the great east window, a wall of medieval glass the size of a tennis court, in colours of cool blue and silver with judicious use of red, so very different from the rich colours usually associated with the Middle Ages.

The 15th-century Lady Chapel with its high vaulted roof on a series of stone arches, lit by large stained-glass windows, feels like a church within a church. The series of early 20th-century windows by the Arts and Crafts artist Christopher Whall are considered to be the finest glass of the period in England.

Its two chantry chapels have much more recent windows: one in memory of Gloucester musicians and the composer Herbert Howells, the other a Tom Denny installation from 2014 commemorating the local First World War poet and composer Ivor Gurney. The Norman lead font, dating from around 1140, is still in use today.

In the south transept, look for the medieval bracket thought to be a memorial to an apprentice who fell from the vault above. L-shaped, like a mason’s set square, it shows the master mason looking up in horror. Then do step into the brilliantly colourful St Andrew’s Chapel. It was decorated in high Victorian neo-Gothic style by Thomas Gambier Parry, who painted the lantern of Ely Cathedral (page 68).

The tomb-like memorial to King Osric, depicted holding a model of his abbey church, stands close to King Edward II’s magnificent tomb while on the other side of the quire there’s the colourful effigy of Robert, Duke of Normandy, eldest son of William the Conqueror. In life he was in constant conflict with King Henry I, his youngest brother, and here he is depicted about to draw his sword.

You can still see the long stone basin that was the monks’ communal washing place (lavatorium), complete with recesses for their towels, and a row of twenty carrels where the monks would sit and study, with windows looking out onto the garden. Step into this calm oasis and enjoy its peace – and view of the very fine 15th-century tower.

GREAT ST MARY’S, CAMBRIDGE

Known as The University Church Cambridge, town and gown have been meeting at Great St Mary’s for over 800 years. A parish church just off the market square in the very heart of the city – in the first written record of 1205 it was named ‘St Mary’s-by-the-market’ – it has always been a place of learning, teaching, debate and dispute. With its iron railings smothered in a colourful array of posters and flyers for concerts, talks and events, if you want to know what’s going on in Cambridge, this is the place to browse.

Affectionately referred to around town as GSM, Great St Mary’s dates from a major rebuilding project in the Perpendicular Gothic style begun in 1468, with the tower being completed much later in 1608. Bishops, abbots and academics contributed to the cost, as did two royal rivals, the Yorkist King Richard III and the Lancastrian King Henry VII.

Henry gave 100 oak trees for the nave roof. Unfortunately they weren’t his to give, and the King had to write a letter of abject apology to the Abbot of Westminster who actually owned the forest.

Meanwhile King’s College Chapel (page 112) across the road was taking shape and it’s likely that the fine tracery in Great St Mary’s was the work of its master mason, John Wastell. The stained glass created by the craftsmen working on the Chapel, however, did not survive the iconoclasm of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Even before King Henry VIII’s break with Rome in 1533 over the matter of his divorce from his wife, Katharine of Aragon, which sparked the English Reformation, Martin Luther’s reforming ideas had spread widely and Cambridge was becoming a hotbed of Protestantism. It was in Great St Mary’s in 1549 that Divine Service was performed in English for the first time.

As the University Church, Great St Mary’s attracted some of the most illustrious thinkers, theologians, scholars and philosophers of the time. Of the many reformers who preached here, 35 were burned at the stake as heretics under the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary I between 1553 and 1558.

During the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I’s five-day visit to Cambridge in 1564 she came to the church twice to hear scholarly debates and gave her own long speech in fluent Latin.

The nave roof is original, carved from King Henry VII’s gift of oaks. When it was showing signs of decay in the 19th century, a local architect decided to conserve it by building a new roof above and tying the two together. Being so high up, the large carved bosses depicting religious scenes escaped the wrath of the reformers.

Below the roof, the Victorian stained-glass windows in the clerestory are based on verses from the ‘Te Deum’ hymn of praise. Portraying 60 figures, they take the viewer through the history of Christianity, from Old Testament prophets to the Apostles and martyrs.

From the same era, the octagonal pulpit has an unusual feature. After complaints that the preacher could not be seen from some parts of the church, a rail was installed so it could be moved into the centre of the chancel arch for university sermons.

Unusually for a parish church, Great St Mary’s boasts two fine pipe organs and is one of the few places where double organ concertos can be heard. With its five choirs and the Academy of Great St Mary’s symphony orchestra, music here is always of the highest standard.

There are two interesting things to look for outside the church. Near the west door, a disc marks the official centre of the city. It was from this datum point that between 1725 and 1727 Dr William Warren, a Fellow of Trinity Hall, measured three roads out of Cambridge using a 66-foot surveyor’s chain. He marked each mile with a stone, which the plaque claims were the first true milestones in Britain since Roman times.

Above the west door, the lovely dial of the church clock is dated 1679. The mechanism is from the late 19th century, but the tune of its chimes, known as the ‘Cambridge Quarters’, was composed in 1793. It may sound familiar. It was copied in 1859 for the ‘Westminster Chimes’ of Big Ben on the Houses of Parliament.

GUILDFORD CATHEDRAL

An imposing sight atop Stag Hill, Guildford’s red-brick Cathedral Church of the Holy Spirit watches over the University of Surrey, the city that spreads out below and the countryside beyond. The only English cathedral to be dedicated to the Holy Spirit, it’s also the only Anglican cathedral built to be approached by car, with copious free parking when you arrive. The word ‘Welcome’, painted in white on the road up the hill, is a nice touch.

When the Diocese of Guildford was created in 1927 the town’s parish church was deemed too small to fulfil the role of the Mother Church, so a competition was launched to find an architect ‘desirous of erecting a cathedral’. From the 183 submissions, Edward Maufe’s Gothic Revival design was chosen.

With the country in severe economic depression and a war looming, the 1930s were hardly a good time to consider such a major building project. Undeterred, planning and fundraising went ahead, boosted when Lord Onslow gave six acres on Stag Hill – so named because it once formed part of royal hunting grounds – for the site of the new cathedral. A cross, made from teak timbers from the battleship HMS Ganges, was erected as a marker in 1933. It still stands today, outside the eastern end of the building.

In an early example of crowdfunding, people of all ages came from near and far to buy a brick for two shillings and sixpence (12.5p) and inscribe it with their name. By 1961, about 400,000 bricks had been sold. Ever since, the cathedral has been known as ‘the people’s cathedral’.

Physically, Guildford Cathedral grew out of the land on which it stands. Almost 780 wooden piles had to be driven up to 50 feet (fifteen metres) into the hillside to secure its foundations, but the soft clay that caused headaches for the contractors also provided the material for many of the 4 million bricks used in its building.

Some of the best British sculptors and artists from the 1950s and 1960s were engaged to work on the cathedral and it is well worth walking around the exterior of the building to experience their creations. Look up to the top of the tower. The fifteen-foot- (four-and-a-half-metre-) high golden angel weather vane, gilded with 22-carat gold leaf, discreetly hides a mobile phone mast.

Standing sentinel, ethereal angels engraved on glass welcome people through the west door entrance. Larger than life-sized, they were created by John Hutton, renowned for his magnificent glass screen of saints and angels in Coventry Cathedral (page 59).

In contrast to the red-brick exterior, inside all is light. In a soaring space of calm simplicity, slim columns rise unimpeded to a great height in the nave and slender arches flow elegantly along the length of the lofty side aisles. Tall lancet windows pierce the walls.

The long, slim windows are glazed with handmade translucent glass, ‘to simulate the colour of the stone’. While he stipulated that very little stained glass was to be used, in 1939 he commissioned a renowned artist of the time, Moira Forsyth, to create a small rose window above the high altar. It depicts the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord.

Don’t miss John Hutton’s superb angel musician, engraved on glass in the St Ursula Porch, where the door reflects Maufe’s early links with the Arts and Crafts Movement and five bricks, signed by the Queen and members of the royal family on a visit in 1957, are displayed.

The architect’s wife, Prudence, was a designer and a director of Heal’s, the department store famed for promoting good modern design. Her input can be seen in the fabrics and furnishings of the cathedral, in the painted panels on the ceiling of the Lady Chapel, but especially in the 1,468 individually designed and hand crafted kneelers in the nave.

The kneeler project began in 1936 with the formation of the Cathedral Broderers’ Guild. Volunteers were given her plan for the background – a rectangle divided diagonally into blue and beige halves – and asked to choose a subject for their design that would reflect what they felt it was important to chronicle. The result is three decades of work, involving over 700 crafters, and a social history of the time.

Many churches have areas set aside for children but Guildford Cathedral has a dedicated Children’s Chapel. Outside, the unique Seeds of Hope Children’s Garden, designed to help young people explore loss of all kinds, has bronze sculptures and a maze.

The cathedral was consecrated in 1961, with the building work completed in 1966. The cost was £900,000. Much furnishing, statuary and stained glass have been added over the succeeding years without losing the architect’s concept of light and space.

Above the whalebone arches of the main entrance, Charles Gurrey’s figures of the Transfigured Christ and men and women whose lives reflect the Holy Spirit, were consecrated in 2004. Within the cathedral, the work of this talented sculptor and carver includes the striking font with its blue bronze bowl.

A bust of Sir Edward Maufe (he was knighted in 1954) stands next to the Lady Chapel. It was placed there because looking west towards the nave was his favourite view.

HEREFORD CATHEDRAL

The traditional date for the founding of Hereford Cathedral is AD 696 and it boasts the shrines of two saints: St Ethelbert, to whom it is dedicated, and St Thomas Cantilupe, Bishop of Hereford from 1275 to 1282.

When in 794, Ethelbert, the young Christian King of the East Angles, travelled west in the hope of marrying the daughter of King Offa of Mercia, he was murdered on the King’s orders.

Immediately there were stories of miracles in his name. It was said that when his body was taken to the cathedral to be interred, his severed head fell from the ox-cart and the blind man who retrieved it regained his sight. Another was of how healing waters gushed from springs and a well at stopping points along the way.

Ethelbert’s shrine became a focus for vast numbers of pilgrims and in 1020 Bishop Athelstan began rebuilding the Saxon cathedral. It did not stand for long. In 1055, rebel Welsh forces burned it down and most of the relics were destroyed. The saint’s head was translated to Westminster and his veneration continued right up to the dissolution of the monasteries. An 8th-century illuminated Gospel Book, known as the Hereford Gospels, survived from this time and remains one of the cathedral’s precious treasures.

In the north transept, Peter Murphy’s exquisite icon showing the Virgin Mary surrounded by saints associated with Hereford, and two angels holding the Mappa Mundi, adorns the apex of the colourful canopy of the restored tomb shrine of St Thomas Cantilupe.

Known as St Thomas of Hereford, he was an academic, Chancellor of Oxford University, a high-ranking politician and trusted advisor to King Edward I. Excommunicated in 1282 after a dispute with the Archbishop of Canterbury, he travelled to Rome to plead his cause with the Pope and died while in Italy. His bones were returned to Hereford for burial in his cathedral.

With his tomb a site of pilgrimage that reached cult proportions, the number of miracles of healing was said to be second only to those associated with the shrine of Archbishop Thomas Becket at Canterbury (page 37). Over 400 were certified for his canonisation in 1320. Income from the offerings of pilgrims funded great building improvements, notably the elegant central tower with its distinctive ‘ballflower’ decoration.

Consecrated in 1142, Hereford was one of the last English cathedrals to be rebuilt by the Normans following the Conquest. Its sturdy Romanesque pillars lining the nave lead the eye to the stunning corona above the central altar under the tower.

Installed in 1992, it was designed by the acclaimed British silversmith Simon Beer and holds fourteen candles, which represent the fourteen deaneries in the diocese. Symbolising Christ’s Crown of Thorns and his Crown of Glory, its design echoes the chevron patterning in the nave arches.

The 14th-century stalls in the quire still have their carved misericords, though the pew ends were part of the Victorian restoration, which included the ornately patterned tile floor and the addition of a jewelled metal screen. This was removed in 1967 and can be seen, splendidly restored, in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

In the north quire aisle, don’t miss the little chantry chapel of Bishop John Stanbury, confessor to King Henry VI. Dating from around 1350 and roofed with fan vaulting, it has very fine stone carving and brilliant Arts and Crafts stained-glass windows showing scenes from the bishop’s life and his enthronement in the cathedral.

The spacious, light and lovely Lady Chapel (1220–30) is considered among the finest expressions of Early English architecture. On one side is the gloriously painted Audley Chapel screen, a reminder of how colourful cathedrals were before the Reformation.

For much of its history, the 13th-century crypt below the Lady Chapel, now reserved as a quiet chapel, was used as a charnel house for bones dug up in the cathedral close.

While Hereford suffered during the Reformation, the Civil War of the 1640s wrought greater destruction. Never properly restored, disaster struck on Easter Monday 1786, when the entire west front collapsed, taking with it several bays of the nave.

The famous but chaotic architect, Thomas Wyatt, rebuilt it, not to everyone’s approval. With the building’s fabric continuing to deteriorate into the 19th century, it was left to the Victorians to come to the rescue. A major restoration project spanned the years from 1841 to 1863, when the cathedral reopened for worship.

John Oldrid Scott replaced Wyatt’s west front facade in 1908, decorating it with statues of saints and personages associated with Hereford. At night, architectural lighting shows it to best effect.

The cathedral’s greatest treasures are the Mappa Mundi and extensive Chained Library, both displayed along with an interpretative exhibition in the award-winning purpose-built New Library building adjoining the cloisters.

Drawn on a single sheet of vellum and depicting the known world in the late 13th century from a Christian perspective, the extraordinary Mappa Mundi, the largest map known to have survived from the Middle Ages, is full of fascinating detail and imagery.

Over 220 medieval manuscript books, together with around 1,500 books dating from the year 800 through to the early 19th century, are held in Hereford’s Chained Library. It’s the world’s largest surviving chained library, with its volumes displayed on early 17th-century shelves. The building also contains the cathedral’s archive collection, which includes the 1217 revision of the Magna Carta, plus a large collection of music manuscripts.

Before you leave the Cathedral Close, look for the statue of Sir Edward Elgar and his bicycle. Although usually associated with Worcester, Elgar lived in Hereford for several years and the charming statue is a delightful tribute to the much-loved British composer.

HOLY TRINITY CHURCH, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON

Affectionately known as ‘Shakespeare’s church’, Holy Trinity is where the Bard was baptised, where he worshipped and where he and his wife Anne are buried.

On the banks of the River Avon, it’s a lovely old church dating from 1210, although there’s been a place of worship on the site since a Saxon monastery was founded there in the early 8th century. With around a quarter of a million visitors a year, it is surely the most visited parish church in the land.

The transept and the nave pillars at the crossing that support the tower are the oldest parts of the church and date back to 1210. There are faint remnants of pre-Reformation wall painting on a pillar in the crossing. The south aisle was added in the 1300s and the chancel in the late 1400s.

From the nave you can see that the chancel is set at a slight angle. Known as a ‘weeping chancel’ it represents the drooping head of the crucified Christ and is often seen in medieval churches, including the University Church in Oxford (page 228).

It seems that William Shakespeare had bought the right to be buried in the chancel of the church and that his family inherited it. His wife Anne Hathaway, daughter Susanna, son-in-law Dr John Hall and Thomas Nash, the first husband of his only granddaughter Elizabeth, are buried alongside him.

Their graves are marked by simple stone slabs and as was the way in those times, their bodies were buried directly into the earth. The memorial to William Shakespeare on the wall was made a few years after his death, but still during Anne’s lifetime, so the bust is considered to be a good likeness.

There was a charnel house attached to the church in Shakespeare’s time, where the bones of those buried in the churchyard were placed when it was necessary to make room for more interments. Its entrance door was very close to his own burial place before the altar, which he didn’t like at all, hence the inscription, which tradition says he wrote himself: ‘Good frend for Jesus sake forbeare, To dig the dust encloased heare; Blest be ye man yt spare thes stones, And curst be he yt moves my bones.’

Do look at the misericords in the quire stalls, a wonderful collection of carvings depicting the sacred and secular. They span everything from angels to mythical beasts and a woman beating up her husband.

The screen that divides the crossing from the chancel is a fine example of 15th-century carving. The original 14th-century rood screen now seals off the north transept but is rather hidden by storyboards that explain Shakespeare’s life and connections with the church.

There’s a small chapel dedicated to St Peter in the south transept where the stained-glass window, installed in 1896, was ‘The Gift of America to Shakespeare’s Church’.

In 1331 when John de Stratford was Bishop of Winchester (he went on to be Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor of England), he founded and endowed a chantry chapel dedicated to St Thomas of Canterbury in the south aisle, which he enlarged and rebuilt for the purpose.

He endowed the chantry with lands and in 1352 an impressive house was built for the priests by his nephew, Ralph de Stratford, Bishop of London. The house was known as a college and the church became The Collegiate Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, a title it still holds.

During the period 1480 to 1520 the college was responsible for the complete rebuilding of the nave with its elegantly Perpendicular clerestories, the tower, the north porch and the enlargement of the chancel to include the quire stalls and its misericords.

The splendid Clopton Chapel in the north aisle is packed with the elaborate tombs of the wealthy and politically-important 15th- and 16th-century Clopton family. Look carefully at the stained-glass window. The top lights are pre-Reformation in origin, the lower lights with the figures of Faith, Hope and Charity in much brighter colours, are late Victorian.

Stained glass, installed between 1897 and 1909, fills every window in the nave and chancel, and it’s all by nationally acclaimed designers of that period. With strong colours and intricate detail, they tell many stories.

Suitably for ‘Shakespeare’s Church’ there’s a Poets Window (located above the shop). It depicts Cædmon, the earliest known English poet who lived at Whitby (page 241) in the 7th century; Geoffrey Chaucer, considered to be the father of English poetry, best known as the author of The Canterbury Tales; and John Milton, whose Paradise Lost has been deemed the greatest epic poem in the English language.

KING’S COLLEGE CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGE

Painted by Turner and Canaletto, praised in verse by William Wordsworth, King’s College Chapel is a gem in a city of standout architecture. Begun in 1446, it took nearly 100 years to build, involving five successive kings, four master masons and countless skilled craftsmen.

Entering through the north porch you are immediately immersed in the spacious vastness of the Chapel. The long, exquisitely beautiful fan vaulting – that intricate lacework of stone that was a uniquely English contribution to Gothic architecture – seems to float above the spectacular stained-glass windows. Measuring 289 feet (88.5 metres) in length, it is 40 feet (12.6 metres) wide and was completed in a mere three years, from 1512 to 1515.

The finely sculpted side walls are decorated with heraldic carvings and Tudor symbols, the boldest being the Tudor rose. Incorporating the red rose of the triumphant House of Lancaster and the white rose of the House of York, it’s the symbol of the union of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, the marriage that brought together the two factions in the civil war that became known as the Wars of the Roses.

Look too for the lattice grille portcullis and greyhound, emblems of the Beaufort family, Lady Margaret Beaufort being King Henry VII’s mother; the Welsh dragon of Henry VII’s father’s family and the fleur de lys, a reminder that English kings had also been kings of France. The Royal Arms of King Henry VII appear frequently. Worshippers would have been left in no doubt of the power and importance of the Tudors.

Ahead, the triumphal, heavily carved and decorated quire screen in dark English oak was the gift of King Henry VIII. A superb example of Tudor woodwork, it is filled with stylised flowers, masks, strange creatures and heraldic badges, all studded with the king’s initials (HR, Henricus Rex) and those of his second queen, Anne Boleyn (AR, Anna Regina). In places their initials are intertwined, bound up in a lovers’ knot. As they were married in 1533 and Anne was executed three years later, this boldly romantic declaration gives a clear indication of the period the screen must have been designed and installed. Above it, angels trumpet from atop the gilded pipes of the great organ.

A splendid double-sided and beautifully engraved brass lectern greets you as you enter the quire. The gift of Robert Hacumblen, Provost of King’s College in the early 16th century and much involved with the building of the Chapel, it is topped with a statuette of the chapel’s founder, King Henry VI, bearing an orb and sceptre.

The long rows of quire stalls were probably installed around the same time as the screen but their canopies and the heraldic carved panels behind them date from the 17th century. The magnificent painting of The Adoration of the Magi by Sir Peter Paul Rubens is the focal point of the high altar. The quire was the first part of the chapel to be built and, lacking the Tudor bombast of the antechapel, reflects King Henry VI’s plan for simplicity.

Packed with detailed figures the windows depict scenes from the Old and New Testaments, many emphasising events that link the two by prefiguring or symbolising the coming and life of Christ. The east window gives the narrative of the Passion and Crucifixion. They were all completed between 1515 and 1547, except the Great West Window, which shows the Last Judgement and dates from the mid-19th century.

The Chapel is one of the finest and most complete late Perpendicular Gothic buildings in Britain, constructed in three separate phases between 1446 and 1515, a tumultuous period in England’s history that spanned the Wars of the Roses (1455–87). Installing the stained-glass windows took a further 30 years.

After his murder in the Tower of London in 1471, building work continued sporadically under King Edward IV and more intensely under King Richard III. By the time of Richard’s death at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, the first five bays of the Chapel were already in use.

Two Tudor kings completed and made their mark on this glorious work of art and craftsmanship. Building work began again in earnest in 1508 under King Henry VII, who sent some of the money to pay for it in the strong wooden chest bound with iron that’s now on display in the Chapel Exhibition. He left generous funds in his will to cover the cost of the stonework, including master mason John Wastell’s superb fan vault, and some of the glazing. Finally his son, King Henry VIII, made his contribution with the magnificent carved oak quire screen, the quire stalls and the immense glass windows.

An excellent exhibition in the north side chapels charts the construction stages and methods, shows how the glass was made, makes sense of the period and puts everything into context.

LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL

Tiers of life-sized statues, 113 in all, give the west front a powerful presence. Here beneath Christ in Glory are angels and archangels, saints and martyrs, patriarchs, prophets, Apostles and disciples, bishops, kings, scientists and theologians, a storyboard of biblical characters and English social history. Walk around the building and you’ll find 40 more perched on buttresses, around doors and in arcading. They are mainly Victorian replacements and include a statue of Queen Victoria, sculpted by her daughter, Princess Louise.

In soft pink-grey sandstone, the 13th-century nave is a masterpiece of Gothic symmetry, its pointed arches and high ceiling vaulting leading the eye eastwards to the glorious windows of the Lady Chapel.

Suspended above the nave altar, the life-sized icon of Christ Crucified, Risen and Lord of All was created in 2018 by students and tutors from the Bethlehem Icon Centre and School. It followed on from their first visit to Lichfield in 2016 when they wrote two icons depicting the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary, together known as The Lichfield Annunciation. These are placed on nave pillars, a meditative focus at services.

The impressive quire, which is a similar length to the nave, is introduced at the crossing by a magnificent wrought metalwork screen. A gem of High Victorian craftsmanship, its design echoes that of the high altar, which it seems to frame. Across the top, gilded musical angels enthusiastically trumpet their praise.

The windows, soaring to a height of 36 feet (eleven metres) and containing some of the finest medieval Flemish painted glass in existence, are the highlight and dominating feature of the Lady Chapel. Installed in 1803 they date from the 1530s and were rescued from Herkenrode Abbey in Belgium, dissolved during the Napoleonic Wars. A £3.7 million, five-year restoration project has revealed their true vibrant colours and extraordinary detail.

The late 19th-century altarpiece, a triptych in blue and gold, comes from Oberammergau. Richly carved and gilded, the central panel depicts the Nativity (one of the three kings wears a Tyrolean hat) and associated scenes.

Bishop de Langton spent the astonishing sum of £2,000 on a sumptuous shrine for the bones of St Chad. Cast in gold and richly bejewelled, in medieval times this was on display in the Lady Chapel. An icon now marks the spot. Nearby, up some stairs, is St Chad’s Head Chapel, where the skull of the saint was kept.

St Chad was the Anglo-Saxon missionary bishop of Mercia who founded a small monastery and church at Lichfield, making it the centre of a diocese that stretched from the Welsh border to the North Sea and from Northumberland to the River Thames. His brother, St Cedd, became Bishop of the East Saxons in 654 and is one of the saints to whom Chelmsford Cathedral (page 43) is dedicated.

Cannon fire destroyed the tall central spire, causing devastating damage as it fell; all the stained glass was smashed, altars desecrated, arcading and statues defaced and lead stripped from the roof in an orgy of ransacking, looting and vandalism.

By the time of the Restoration of the monarchy to the throne in 1660, there wasn’t too much left of Lichfield’s once-great cathedral. Yet under the guiding hand of Bishop John Hacket (and monetary support from King Charles II) rebuilding commenced. In seven years the roofs and towers had been replaced and the cathedral was rededicated on Christmas Eve, 1669 – a story strikingly depicted in a south aisle window.

The first services after the war were held in the 13th-century chapter house, the only part of the building with a roof. Situated off the north transept it is reached via a very rare example of a pedilavium, used for the washing of feet on Maundy Thursday.

Renovations in the 17th and 18th centuries were not all good, and the Victorian architect, Sir George Gilbert Scott, righted many wrongs. Scott took charge in 1857 and work continued after his death in 1878 under his son, John Oldrid Scott. Considered some of his best work, much of the beautiful cathedral we see today is due to Scott’s restoration.

Where possible he retained the medieval work; where he could not, he imitated it. Fragments found during the building work informed the design of the stalls in the quire and the very fine floor tiles, made by Minton Hollins & Co.. He commissioned the finest makers of stained glass for the windows and the best sculptors, metalworkers and craftspeople of the period. By 1908 the cathedral was back to the form Scott believed it would have taken in the Middle Ages.

LINCOLN CATHEDRAL

Crowning the city, its three vast towers visible for miles, Lincoln’s hilltop Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary is one of the finest medieval buildings in Europe. It is huge – in terms of floor area, among English cathedrals only St Paul’s in London (page 193) and York Minster (page 258) are bigger – and it presents a dramatic and elegant face to the world.

The towers today are an impressive height, but when the central tower collapsed in 1237 its replacement was topped with a spire, reputedly making Lincoln’s cathedral the tallest man-made structure in the world, topping even Egypt’s Great Pyramid at Giza. It held that record for 238 years, until the 525-foot (160-metre) spire blew down in a raging storm in 1548 and wasn’t replaced.

William the Conqueror ordered a cathedral to be built on the hill in Lincoln, sited next to his castle for security, and sent Bishop Remigius to supervise it. Constructed of locally quarried Lincolnshire limestone and consecrated in 1092, it commanded a vast diocese that stretched from the Humber estuary in the north to the River Thames in the south, spanning nine counties and encompassing several notable and wealthy monasteries.

After a devastating earthquake in 1185, Hugh of Avalon, a Carthusian monk of character, began the rebuilding of the cathedral, greatly enlarging it in the Early Gothic style, incorporating pointed arches, ribbed vaults, lancet windows and flying buttresses. Consecrated Bishop of Lincoln in 1186, he died in 1200 and was canonised in 1220 – in good time for the completion of the new cathedral, which saw pilgrims flocking to his shrine.

The long nave is soaring and lyrical, a space of beauty and light – especially when sunshine pours through the fine Victorian stained glass and dapples the limestone floor and piers with patterns of rich colour. Graceful arched stone ribs draw the eye heavenwards.

At the nave’s end, the elaborate quire screen is a tour de force of early 14th-century carving, alive with beasts, heads and fantasy creatures among leaves and flowers.

Ornate 13th-century doorways lead to the quire aisles – look for dragons hiding behind foliage and the sword-bearing men seeking them out – and bring you towards a forest of exquisite wood and stone carving of heart-stopping delicacy.

The angels, carved on the quire desks around 1370, play harps, pipes and a drum; etched in gold above the canopied and pinnacled quire stalls with their secretive misericords are the first lines of psalms each canon was appointed to read.

The Treasury is located in the north side quire aisle. It was the first open Treasury in an English cathedral and as well as Lincoln’s own silverware it contains other sacred pieces from churches around the diocese. The highlight is a medieval chalice hallmarked 1489.

Behind the high altar, the Gothic Angel Choir has a feast of stone carving and impressive stained-glass windows. It was created to hold the shrine of St Hugh, whose following was so large that the cathedral had to be extended 80 years after his death to accommodate all the pilgrims. King Edward I and Queen Eleanor were among the great and the good that were there to see his body translated to the site prepared for him.

The infamous Lincoln imp has his place here among the host of presiding angels. The legend goes that the mischievous imp caused mayhem in the cathedral and when he started throwing rocks at the angels they turned him to stone. He may be quite difficult to spot high up in his spandrel, but his image has long been a symbol of the city.

Among the many small chapels, some very poignant like the Airmen’s Chapel that especially remembers the men of Bomber Command who flew from nearby airfields in the Second World War, the Russell Chantry stands out for its murals painted by Bloomsbury Group member Duncan Grant in the 1950s.

Although never a monastic foundation, the cathedral has a fan-vaulted chapter house (1220) and relatively small but attractive cloisters (1295) with Gothic arches and a wooden ceiling. King Edward I conducted meetings of Parliament in the chapter house on three occasions and the stained-glass windows tell of events in the cathedral’s history.

For centuries it was where one of the only four surviving copies of Magna Carta, signed by King John in 1215, was held. The then Bishop of Lincoln, Hugh of Wells, was one of those present for the sealing at Runnymede. It is now on permanent loan to nearby Lincoln Castle, but a facsimile copy can be seen near the cloisters.

The Victorian writer John Ruskin wrote: ‘I have always held that the cathedral of Lincoln is out and out the most precious piece of architecture in the British Isles.’ In its shadow, over Minster Yard, is the Medieval Bishop’s Palace while across the square William the Conqueror’s castle, dating from 1068, affords splendid views over the lower town and surrounding countryside.

LLANDAFF CATHEDRAL

The seat of the Archbishop of Wales, Llandaff’s Cathedral Church of Saints Peter and Paul, with Saints Dyfrig, Teilo and Euddogwy, stands on the site of a 6th-century monastery founded by the Celtic saints to whom it is dedicated. Between the River Taff and a tranquil conservation area on the edge of Cardiff, this was one of the earliest Christian sites in Britain.

The cathedral’s fragmented and dramatic history is revealed in its architecture. Begun in 1120 under the Norman Bishop Urban, here you’ll find Romanesque and Gothic arches, Early English lancet windows, Pre-Raphaelite stained glass and 20th-century modernism.

Step through the 13th-century west doorway with its strange dipping pendant and enter the nave. Here, spanning the bays of Gothic arches, Sir Jacob Epstein’s 1950s aluminium sculpture of Christ in Majesty towers above a sweeping, double wishbone concrete arch. This divides the nave from the quire without breaking the vista of the entire length of the cathedral, right through to Geoffrey Webb’s beautifully coloured Tree of Jesse Window in the Lady Chapel at the east end.

Known as ‘The Majestas’, Epstein’s stunning sixteen-foot-(4.9-metre-) tall sculpture of the risen Christ is mounted on a concrete cylinder that was built to encase part of the organ. This is surrounded by 64 small gilded Pre-Raphaelite figures depicting winged angels with musical instruments and the seated forms of characters from the Old Testament. It is just one of the innovations at Llandaff that caused consternation at the time but have since proved to be highly appreciated features.

Over the centuries much change has been wrought to the fabric of the building but apart from the decoration, the lovely light Lady Chapel has remained largely undisturbed since it was built around 1280.

It was during the first half of the 20th century that the renowned stained-glass artist, Geoffrey Fuller Webb, designed the windows and stencilled patterns over the walls. The main window shows the Tree of Jesse, the others show scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary, whose image he modelled on his daughter.

At times the damage to the cathedral had been so extensive that it seemed beyond repair. It remained neglected for 300 years after the forces of Owain Glyndwr had wrecked it during the Welsh Rebellion of 1400 and the Parliamentarian troops had done their worst during the English Civil War in the 17th century. After severe storm damage a century later, when the roof collapsed, only the Lady Chapel was left in any shape for services to be held.

Work began on a new cathedral in 1734. Leaving the western part in ruins, Bath architect John Wood the Elder’s design for the eastern portion was described as ‘an Italianate temple’. It was not appreciated and his work disappeared when the next restructuring took place in 1841. This revealed that Wood had not torn down ancient remains but covered them up, hiding them behind walls.

Thus was discovered the beautifully carved Norman arch that now frames the high altar. It dates back to the cathedral begun by Bishop Urban, where it was the chancel arch, and has five bands of carving patterned with medallions enclosing flowers. Above the ‘Urban arch’ is John Piper’s vibrant 1959 window depicting three disciples walking with Jesus to Emmaus.

Fortunately it was removed for safekeeping before the cathedral was severely damaged by a parachute mine in 1941, when the roof was blown off the nave and 13th-century chapter house, windows were shattered and general devastation wrought to much of the fabric. Among Britain’s Anglican cathedrals, only Coventry (page 59) suffered more war damage than that inflicted on Llandaff.

After the war the triptych found a new, better lit, home in the Illtyd Chapel. A memorial to the 53rd Welsh (Infantry) Division and furnished in the style of 18th-century Dutch churches, it recognises the part played by the Division in the liberation of Holland in 1944.

Ecclesiastical architect George Pace of York oversaw the post-war reconstruction of the cathedral, which was finally completed in 1960. Among his many legacies are the striking wishbone arch and gilded black pine pulpit, the Processional Way linking the Prebendal House with the cathedral and the creation of four chapels in the north and south aisles, all named after Celtic saints.

Saints Teilo, Tydfil and Elfan are depicted in a window in the Dyfrig Chapel, where a series of six pottery panels designed by Edward Burne-Jones show Pre-Raphaelite angels holding roundels illustrating the Six Days of Creation.

The David or Welch Regimental Chapel is George Pace’s extension to the cathedral. Entered through a Romanesque doorway off the north aisle, it is a peaceful space in which to remember those killed in many wars. The outer walls are faced with traditional Taff River-washed pebbles, as are the walls of the Processional Way with its arcade of pointed arches reminiscent of ancient churches in the Vale of Glamorgan.

Outside above the windows, look for the long panels filled with the carved heads of sovereigns from Richard III to Elizabeth II. To the west of the chapter house, seek out Pace’s illustrated phases of the building over the centuries.

A story of construction, destruction and reconstruction, Llandaff Cathedral has survived the ravages of Owain Glyndwr, the Reformation, Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarian troops, the great storms of the 18th century and the Cardiff Blitz of the Second World War, to emerge and remain a much-loved place of worship.

MALMESBURY ABBEY

The great Abbey was drastically reduced in size even before the Reformation when the magnificent spire, which was even taller than that on Salisbury Cathedral (page 197), collapsed in the late 15th century, taking the crossing tower with it. The damage was so profound – 116 feet (35 metres) of nave and its wide transept were reduced to rubble – that the wall was erected to save the remains of the building. A hundred years later the west tower came crashing down, demolishing three bays of the nave.

Dedicated to St Peter and St Paul, the Abbey we visit today is about a third of its original size, but it still presents an imposing sight on its hill just off Malmesbury’s High Street. It’s an intriguing mix of ruins and active parish church, that’s also a much-loved venue for concerts and theatrical productions.

It was on this site that Maildulph, an Irish monk, established a hermitage in the 7th century and founded a school for local boys. It is said that one of his pupils was St Aldhelm, a relative of King Ine of Wessex, who went on to be a great scholar, poet, traveller and advisor to royalty.

In 676 he was made the first Abbot at Malmesbury, where he oversaw the construction of a complex of stone churches in what is now the Abbey’s graveyard, and then became the first Bishop of Sherborne. On his death in 709, his body was returned to Malmesbury for burial. St Aldhelm’s Chapel, a place for quiet prayer, is at the far end of the south aisle.

The present Abbey dates from 1180 and was added to in the following 200 years. The truncated, late Norman nave is still splendid, with cylindrical piers, scalloped capitals and beady-eyed grotesques and dragons above the slightly pointed arches.

There’s an oddity on the nave’s south side: the box-like structure, added in the 13th century, is a ‘watching loft’. From here a monk could keep a keen eye on the pilgrims passing below. They came in large numbers, often from a great distance, to see and be close to the holy relics in the church.

High above, the soaring lierne vault has a collection of ceiling bosses, repainted in their original colours. There’s foliage and a Green Man, but who the faces represent has been lost in the mists of time. A trolley mirror helpfully brings them, and high points of the architecture, into focus.

From the 11th to the 13th century the monastery and its abbey were noted throughout Europe as an important seat of learning, with a famous library and scriptorium. The four volumes of a 15th-century Bible on display in the church are a reminder of the beauty of illustrated manuscripts and the awe-inspiring skill of their artists.

The Bible was written in Latin on vellum in a Belgian monastery in 1447. The monks used handmade tools, writing with goose feather quills, creating their own inks from natural substances. Known as a ‘Refectory Bible’ it was intended to be read aloud to the monks while they ate.

The tomb of King Athelstan stands in the north aisle. A grandson of Alfred the Great, a wily politician and military leader, he was crowned King of Wessex in 925. By 927 he had created the kingdom of all England, then ten years later defeated the Scots, Danes, Norse and Irish at the bloody Battle of Brunanburh. The inscription on his coins read ‘ruler of the whole of Britain’.

A stained-glass window depicting a quartet of early monks from the abbey’s history is tucked away above the crèche in the restored west end. There’s the Irish Maildulph bearing a book of learning and next to him is Eilmer, shown holding the wings that sent him into history as ‘the flying monk’.

In around 1010, Eilmer, who was skilled in mathematics and astrology, made a daring attempt at flight. He made himself wings and jumped from the top of the tower. That he broke his legs as he crash-landed he attributed to failing to make himself a tail.

Next to a suitably impressive St Aldhelm, complete with bishop’s crozier and halo is the renowned historian William of Malmesbury (c1095–1143). Educated in the monastery, William spent most of his life there as monk, librarian and precentor. Known for his attention to detail and accuracy, his use of documentary evidence and eyewitness accounts, his work has been an invaluable source of knowledge for historians down the centuries.

Abbot Richard Selwyn surrendered Malmesbury Abbey to King Henry VIII’s commissioners in 1539. It was sold, together with all its considerable lands and property, to a rich merchant and clothier, William Stumpe, who returned what was left of the abbey church to the town for use as its parish church, which it remains to this day.

The monumental carvings on the walls of the inner porch show the Apostles at Pentecost, six seated on each side, dressed in flowing robes and with an angel in flight overhead. A tympanum of Christ in Majesty, seated on a rainbow and supported by angels, his right hand raised in blessing, crowns the church’s entrance door.

It’s an amazing sight as you enter the church and repays a closer look when you leave.

Walk around the outside of the church and you’ll notice the pockmarked walls, injuries sustained during the English Civil War. The town is said to have changed hands seven times during that tumultuous period and the Abbey was at the heart of it.

Churchyards often reveal some strange tales but surely few can match the poetic gravestone of young Hannah Twynnoy. A local barmaid who died in the jaws of a tiger in 1703, she was said to be the first person to be killed by a tiger in England.

METROPOLITAN CATHEDRAL OF CHRIST THE KING, LIVERPOOL

The decision to build a cathedral for the newly created Catholic Diocese of Liverpool came in the early 1850s, when the city’s Catholic population was increasing dramatically as a result of the devastating Irish potato famine. Edward Welby Pugin’s bold High Gothic design with a 300-foot (91-metre) spire would be built on the grounds of the seminary at St Edward’s College, set on a ridge in the Everton district with a commanding view over the River Mersey.

After three years, with only the Lady Chapel completed, funds were required elsewhere. Further construction was halted and for over a century the chapel served as the Parish Church of Our Lady Immaculate.

The wish for a cathedral did not go away, however, and the project was revived when Archbishop Downey purchased the former Brownlow Hill Workhouse site at the top of Hope Street in 1930. Sir Edwin Lutyens was appointed as architect.

Lutyens envisioned a vast, classical cathedral that would not only outdo the great neo-Gothic Anglican cathedral being built further down the road, but its dome was to be even larger than that of St Peter’s in Rome. Construction began in 1933 and continued into the early years of the Second World War but ceased in 1941, recommencing in 1956. The crypt was structurally finished when the project was cancelled. Escalating costs had made the grandiose scheme far too expensive.

Of the 300 entries received, Sir Frederick Gibberd’s plan for a Modernist church-in-the-round that could seat 2,300 people, with an unobstructed view for all, was accepted. Construction began in 1962 and lasted just five years.

Shaped like an inverted funnel, with concrete boomeranglike buttresses, a central cone and stained-glass lantern tower crowned by thorn-like pinnacles, it could hardly look more different from the other 20th-century cathedral on the appropriately named Hope Street.

Set on a plateau above the city, the approach is via a wide flight of 56 banner-lined steps and across the open piazza that forms a roof over Lutyens’ crypt. Four bells hang high on a soaring concrete facade, decorated with a carved relief symbolising the three crosses on Calvary. The main doors resemble bronze but were made from fibreglass.

Bathed in vivid light from John Piper’s lantern tower, the interior is dramatic. At its heart, raised on a sanctuary platform surrounded by semicircles of seating, is the high altar. It took local stonemason Leslie Rumsey two years of searching before he found this ten-foot- (three-metre-) long, nineteen-ton block of white marble near Skopje in Macedonia. Elizabeth Frink’s slim bronze crucifix hovers above the altar while high overhead, suspended from the roof, there’s a huge crowning baldachin formed from aluminium rods.

Gibberd interpreted perfectly Archbishop Heenan’s demand that ‘the attention of all who enter should be arrested and held by the altar’.

The Pontifical Hall, which initially served as the cathedral while building work was taking place overhead, contains exhibitions and the cathedral’s gleaming Treasury. Its most striking feature is the huge rolling stone gate, a six-ton fretted marble disc opening to the Chapel of Relics. Lined with travertine marble, the chapel houses the tombs of three former Archbishops of Liverpool.

Lutyens planned the 130-foot- (40-metre-) long Crypt Hall as a sacristy where 100 priests could robe. Today it is used for dinners, conferences, exhibitions, and the Liverpool Beer Festival.

Daily services take place in the chapel dedicated to St Nicholas, the city’s patron saint, which has beautiful wall hangings and evocative sculptures. Mirroring it in size, a former chapel now hosts chamber concerts.

Lutyens created a twelve-foot- (3.6-metre-) high architectural model of his planned masterpiece. You can see it, beautifully restored, at the Museum of Liverpool.

Archbishop Heenan wanted a cathedral for our time, a modern cathedral for a modern city. Gibberd’s design has had it detractors, but today is much loved by both the people of the city and its many thousands of visitors.