Durham Cathedral

Yesterday, Heather and I took Grammy up to the Durham Cathedral. We sprang for the guided tour, and it was well worth the money. The cathedral, an Anglican Church, is primarily the shrine for St. Cuthbert's bones. He was a monk and later bishop near the (current) Scottish border dating from the 7th century. The monastic community on the coast kept getting raided by Vikings (who, by the way, controlled a quite a bit of NE England in the 7th-11th centuries), so they moved away from the coast. They eventually ended up in Durham, where the Wear river creates a peninsula that is easily defended. They eventually built the cathedral in the 12th century. According to the tour guide, it is the first building to use pointed arches which became the halmark of gothic architecture. The bones of Venerable Bede, an English historian/theologian who lived in the late 7th century, are also buried within the cathedral. It is all quite impressive to think people 900 years ago could build such a grand building. As a side note, NT Wright is the current Bishop of Durham, and he is quite a good biblical scholar.

Grammy and Silas in front of the Cathedral