Fandrich Adventures: Durham - The Cathedral and The Castle

So much fun for everyone today!

We visited Durham, leaving early enough so that we could have a good walk around, spend some time in the Cathedral, have our tour of the Castle and then back to the Cathedral to see the museum there.

This is a story best told in pictures.

Durham Cathedral

We passed an old hospital on the way...If you were able to read latin
this is the place to be (we all know who we're thinking of here)

Durham Cathedral has lovely guides (interpretive facilitator), wearing purple robes.

The chapel space next to the Venerable Bede's tomb.

A beautiful prayer by the Bede. Seriously, you should all listen to the podcast by Undeceptions on the Venerable Bede. The Bede, as he is known, lived from AD 672- 735. He was a monk and a polymath (super intelligent in multiple areas), is considered a Church Father, a doctor (teacher) of the church. He gained the title of "The father of English history" because he wrote it - history that is. He was the first to start dating things from before Jesus birth as BC (Dionysius of Scythia Minor started doing Anno Domini nearly 200 years earlier)

The kind of Christian art I actually like... (don't worry, I won't show the stuff I didn't like)

Organ pipes at Durham Cathedral...the pretty ones from the Middle Ages

The baptismal cover is HUGE! The purpose? To keep the baptism font clean.

Down the middle of the Cathedral

Mini organ pipes

The organ pipes above the choir seats...also pretty (and we heard the organ playing at one point)

What you probably can't see here, but I could see whilst I was kneeling is that there is an artwork hovering above St Cuthbert's grave just behind the altar...and the words that I could see just above the cross:
"Not Mary"...speaks for itself really.

The tomb of St Cuthbert. Christian and I were married in Brighton Presbyterian Church...named after
St Cuthbert. It was good to see his grave here.

So we climbed the tower in the middle...all 350 stairs!

The view was worth it!

A little scary

But well worth the climb.

Since Durham has had a church here since the Anglo Saxons, there is a list of bishops since AD995!

Stopping off for lunch at a quirky cafe...up a squeeze of space between two buildings, where the old saddlery used to be. Christian chose a corn beef pie.

On our way back to the castle from lunch, we took what was meant to be a short cut, but renovations meant that we ended up encircling the entire cathedral before we found the castle. But it was such a lovely wooded track, with the castle on one side, and a steep downhill to the River Wear on the other, and all covered in trees with their autumn leaves.

From this angle the cathedral walls are HUGE.

And so to Durham Castle tour...

The castle was given as a site for the Durham University by the last Prince Bishop in the 1800's. Prince Bishop needs explaining...When William the Conquerer arrived, he went North relatively quickly in an attempt to quell the local populace. He had a fort built at Durham because it's a natural fort - being on a steep hill and surrounded three sides by the River Wear. But the people of Northumbria weren't all that keen and killed the guy he left in charge, and then the next guy...and the next guy. Not a job you would want! So William the Conquerer got his army and went north for revenge. This death and destruction he caused is called "The harrying of the north".

After that he left a prince bishop in charge - prince because he was a military leader, could print his own money, and had political power. Bishop because he was also in charge of the monastery locally, since that also had a lot of money going through it.

This is the altar table at the little Normal chapel under the castle. It was lost for some time, but found again, maybe by a student falling through some stairs.

Cuthbert Tunstall was the Prince Bishop during the reign of Henry VIII. When he had this portrait painted he was holding a rosary - he was very Roman Catholic. Then the reformation, and Henry VIII ordered the dissolution of the monasteries. Cuthbert had his rosary painted out (because being Catholic was not safe), but then Queen Mary...so he painted it back in, and then Queen Elizabeth I and they were painted out.

This is the chapel that Cuthbert Tunstall had built

The organ in Cuthbert's chapel

Outside in the courtyard...

we turned from one side

to the other so you can see all the buildings...and then off to the Cathedral Museum.

Where they had a lego Cathedral - Skipper, when are you going to build me one?

right down to the tiny detail

And a video explaining the history of the cathedral

And what the monks used to do in the monasteries before the Reformation.

This is the kind of "landfill" they have in England. We use rubbish, they have had the luxury of using old stones. This was a "preaching cross". A large cross with pictures carved into it, so that non-readers can see the Christian stories. This one is clearly the lamb of God (Jesus).

Find Christian...this is the cloisters courtyard, used in the filming of Harry Potter

I think I may be in this one.

I stopped in at the Durham Cathedral shop but was so disheartened by the off topic regular books they had, (they had Anne of Green Gables??)...and the off topic trinkets...I had to give it a miss.

Books Christian found at the Durham Cathedral bookshop...with faces to make you laugh.