Chester Cathedral: A Benedictine Abbey Church and Church of England Cathedral
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- British, English, Norman
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page27 sections
History
Chester Cathedral, in the United Kingdom, is a former Benedictine abbey church whose surviving medieval fabric was rebuilt mainly in Gothic styles between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. Formerly dedicated to Saint Werburgh, the church became the Church of England cathedral and mother church of the Diocese of Chester in 1541.
Roman and Anglo-Saxon beginnings
The site may have been used for Christian worship during the late Roman period, when Chester was controlled by Legio XX Valeria Victrix, a Roman legion stationed in Britain. A basilica was traditionally associated with Saints Peter and Paul, while evidence points to an early Saxon church whose dedication later changed from Saint Peter to Saint Werburgh, an Anglo-Saxon royal woman venerated as a saint and closely associated with Chester.
Chester was refortified in 907 in response to Viking attacks. Soon afterwards, a minster, an early medieval church serving a broad religious community, was founded or refounded. Saint Werburgh’s remains were transferred there from Hanbury, probably by Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians. In 958, King Edgar granted land to the Minster of Saint Werburgh.
The collegiate church and Benedictine foundation
Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and Lady Godiva restored the collegiate church in 1057. Around 1090 it was demolished, and its secular canons were expelled. Between 1075 and 1082, the cathedral of the diocese had been located at the nearby church of Saint John the Baptist, after which the episcopal see was transferred to Coventry. The church on the present cathedral site was therefore not originally Chester’s cathedral.
In 1093, Hugh Lupus, 1st Earl of Chester, established a Benedictine abbey on the site with assistance from Saint Anselm and monks from Bec in Normandy. Benedictines followed the Rule of Saint Benedict and belonged to a widespread Western monastic order. The earliest surviving parts of the present complex date from this foundation, which established the religious community that shaped Chester’s history for centuries.
Medieval rebuilding
The abbey church was extensively rebuilt in Gothic style during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Lady Chapel was constructed between 1265 and 1290, while the five-bay choir was built between 1283 and 1315. Work on the nave and south transept began around 1323, probably to the design of Nicholas de Derneford. Building stopped in 1375 during a severe outbreak of plague.
The building campaign resumed in 1485 while largely retaining the earlier design. From about 1493 to 1525, Seth Derwall directed the later medieval work, followed by George Derwall until 1537. This phase completed the south transept, central tower, cloisters, and southwest porch in the Perpendicular style, the late medieval phase of English Gothic architecture. The southwest tower, begun in 1508, remained unfinished.
Dissolution and cathedral foundation
The Dissolution of the Monasteries, Henry VIII’s suppression of England’s religious houses, brought the abbey’s monastic life to an end in 1538. The abbey was disbanded and Saint Werburgh’s shrine was desecrated. In 1541, Henry VIII converted the former abbey church into a Church of England cathedral dedicated to Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Thomas Clarke, the last abbot, became the first dean and head of the secular cathedral chapter, and the church became the seat of the Bishop of Chester.
For centuries the building underwent little major construction beyond additions to its furnishings. Until 1881, the unusually large south transept served as the separate parish church of Saint Oswald. The cathedral also retained an active connection with the memory of Saint Werburgh, whose medieval shrine was eventually reassembled from surviving fragments.
War, weathering, and restoration
The red sandstone used throughout the cathedral allowed detailed carving but was highly vulnerable to rain, wind erosion, and pollution. By the nineteenth century, the fabric was severely weathered. Thomas Harrison restored the south transept between 1818 and 1820, and R. C. Hussey carried out further limited restoration from 1844.
At the instigation of Dean John Saul Howson, Sir George Gilbert Scott directed the largest restoration campaign between 1868 and 1876. Scott, one of the leading Gothic Revival architects in Britain, substantially recased the cathedral, altered its external appearance, restored the roof, replaced fittings destroyed during the English Civil War, and added or renewed architectural and decorative features. His proposals were controversial. Samuel Huggins argued in 1868 and 1871 that the work amounted more to rebuilding than restoration, and the debate contributed to the establishment of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. Scott’s proposed spire was never built.
Arthur Blomfield and his son Charles continued restoration and additions from 1882, including the reassembly of Saint Werburgh’s shrine. Giles Gilbert Scott worked on the complex between 1891 and 1913, and F. H. Crossley carried out further work in 1939. The cathedral and surviving former monastic buildings received Grade I listed status in 1955.
Memorials, music, and later development
A war memorial was installed in the cathedral grounds in 1922 for those killed in the First World War, and it later also commemorated the Second World War. Other memorials honor the Cheshire Regiment, the Cheshire Yeomanry, the Royal Air Force, the Free Czech Forces, and casualties from HMS Chester at the Battle of Jutland in 1916, including John Cornwell VC.
The cathedral’s library, inherited from Saint Werburgh’s Abbey after the Dissolution, became neglected and had been dispersed among five locations by the 1980s. Following repair, cataloguing, refurbishment, and relocation, it reopened in three rooms in 2007 for researchers and organized groups. A new Song School was added in 2005 on the site of the former monastic dormitory.
Chester’s choral tradition is traced to the foundation of the Benedictine monastery. The cathedral choir includes adult lay clerks, choral scholars, boys, and girls, while the mixed-voice Nave Choir, founded in the 1860s, is described as Britain’s longest-running voluntary cathedral choir. John Brycheley was the first recorded cathedral organist, appointed in 1541. The musical history of the cathedral also includes the first recital of Handel’s Messiah heard in Chester in 1741 and the work of musicians such as Robert White, John Sanders, George Guest, and Roger Fisher.
The need to overhaul the bells in the central tower led to the suspension of bell-ringing in 1963. A detached bell and clock tower was built in the southeast corner of the grounds between 1973 and 1975 to designs by George Pace. Named the Dean Addleshaw Tower, it was officially opened by the Duke of Gloucester on 25 June 1975. The cathedral is also associated with the early medieval veneration of Barloc of Norbury, a Celtic hermit saint whose feast was held on 10 September and whose historical record is linked principally with the Old English Secgan hagiography and a litany preserved in the Bodleian Library manuscript MS Tanner 169.
Important burials associated with the cathedral include Hugh d’Avranches, 1st Earl of Chester; the earls Ranulf le Meschin, Ranulf de Gernon, Hugh de Kevelioc, and Ranulf de Blondeville; the chronicler Ranulf Higden; Bishops John Pearson, Samuel Peploe, and John Graham; George Clarke of Hyde, former governor of New York; and Frederick Philipse III, a loyalist landowner from New York.
Remains
Chester Cathedral has an east-west plan with the chancel at the east and the principal facade at the west. Its cruciform arrangement is markedly asymmetrical. A small, largely Norman north transept contrasts with the unusually large south transept, while the nave, choir, and south transept have aisles and clerestories, the upper windowed levels that illuminate the main interior. The building is chiefly made from New Red Sandstone, including Keuper Sandstone from the Cheshire Basin and, during Scott’s restoration, sandstone from Runcorn. The stone’s workability enabled elaborate carving, but its friability accounts for extensive later refacing and repair.
West front and central spaces
West facade and towers
The west facade is dominated by a deeply recessed eight-light Perpendicular window above a recessed doorway and ornate porch. Probably designed by Seth and George Derwall in the early sixteenth century, the porch formed part of the same programme as the south transept, central tower, southwest tower, and cloister. The north west tower retains the lower stage of a Norman tower, while the south tower was begun in 1508, probably by the Derwalls, and remained below the roofline after the Dissolution.
Nave
The six-bay nave is relatively wide and high, with widely spaced piers and an uninterrupted view towards the east because it has no substantial pulpitum, the screen that traditionally separates nave and choir. It has no triforium gallery, while its elaborate stellar vault is wooden and imitates stone. The nave contains a stone pulpit by R. C. Hussey, a lectern made by Skidmore in 1876, a mosaic floor designed by John Howson, and mosaics made by Burke and Company between 1883 and 1886 depicting Abraham, Moses, David, and Elijah.
The west nave window contains stained glass designed by W. T. Carter Shapland in 1961. Its central lights depict the Holy Family, while the flanking lights show Saints Werburgh, Oswald, Aidan, Chad, and Wilfrid, together with Queen Ethelfleda. Other later windows reflect damage suffered during the English Civil War, the Second World War, and subsequent restoration campaigns.
Norman and Gothic eastern fabric
North transept and baptistry
The Norman north transept retains blind wall arcading and a heavily moulded arch leading to the sacristy, formerly a chapel. Its early sixteenth-century coffered ceiling has carved bosses, including two bearing the arms of Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey, a leading churchman and statesman under Henry VIII. The Norman northwest tower now functions as the baptistry and contains a black marble font dated 1697, shaped as a bowl on a large baluster. The lower part of the nave’s north wall is also Norman and can be seen from the cloister; inside the cathedral it is covered by later mosaic.
Chapter house and adjacent rooms
The rectangular chapter house was built between 1230 and 1265 in the Early English phase of English Gothic. It opens from a vestibule connected with the north transept and has grouped lancet windows without tracery. The adjoining slype, a covered passage, is also Early English. The warming room retains two large former fireplaces.
Lady Chapel and Saint Werburgh’s shrine
The Lady Chapel at the east end of the choir was built between 1265 and 1290. It has three bays and the cathedral’s only stone vault. Its carved bosses depict the Trinity, the Madonna and Child, and the murder of Thomas Becket. The chapel also contains a sedilia, a group of seats for clergy beside the altar, and a piscina, a basin used for washing sacred vessels.
Saint Werburgh’s fourteenth-century shrine is made from the same red sandstone as the cathedral. Its lower section has deep niches, while the upper part resembles a miniature chapel with statuettes. The shrine was dismantled during the Dissolution and reassembled by Arthur Blomfield in 1888 from pieces recovered in 1873. Joseph Pyrz added a carving of Saint Werburgh in 1993.
Choir and aisles
The five-bay choir was built between 1283 and 1315 to the design of Richard Lenginour and is an early example of Decorated Gothic. Strongly modelled attached shafts, deeply moulded arches, and a triforium with four cusped arches in each bay give structure to the interior. Its sexpartite vault, divided into six sections per bay, was restored in the nineteenth century.
The choir stalls date from about 1380 and have tall canopies, crocketed arches, spirelets, poppyheads, and figurative carving. They include 48 misericords, small supports beneath folding seats that allow a person standing during long services to rest discreetly. Forty-three of the misericords are original, and their subjects range from humorous to grotesque.
The choir also contains a wooden eagle lectern from the first half of the seventeenth century, seventeenth-century candlesticks, and a screen designed by George Gilbert Scott with gates by Skidmore. The bishop’s throne was made by Farmer and Brindley in 1876. Other features include a 1876 reredos, an ornamental structure behind an altar, a mosaic floor, and an east window with stained glass made by Heaton, Butler and Bayne in 1884.
The south choir aisle was shortened by Scott around 1870 and given an apsidal east end, forming the Chapel of Saint Erasmus. It contains stained glass made by Clayton and Bell in 1872, a fresco from 1874, a mosaic by Salviati, and glass by William Wailes and Hardman and Company to designs associated with Pugin. The aisle also contains the tomb of Ranulf Higden and a monument to Thomas Brassey.
The north choir aisle contains the Chapel of Saint Werburgh. Its features include a two-bay vault, a fourteenth-century piscina, and an east window depicting the Nativity, made by Michael O’Connor in 1857. A stone screen designed by R. C. Hussey separates the aisle from the nave, and an iron gate from Guadalajara dated 1558 forms part of the interior.
South transept and later glass
South transept chapels
The large aisled south transept was begun with the nave around 1323, probably to the design of Nicholas de Derneford. Its windows include examples of Flowing Decorated tracery. Four chapels occupy the east wall, each with a reredos. Giles Gilbert Scott designed two, Charles Eamer Kempe designed one, and W. E. Tower designed the fourth. The transept also retains a piscina and sedilia, while its south window was made by Heaton, Butler and Bayne in 1887 to a design by R. C. Hussey.
Consistory court
The area beneath the unfinished southwest tower became the bishop’s consistory court in 1636. Its seventeenth-century furnishings survive, making it the only surviving ecclesiastical court interior of its kind in England. The last recorded case was heard in the 1930s and involved a priest’s attempted suicide.
Stained glass
The cathedral’s later stained glass includes William Wailes’s 1859 windows in the Lady Chapel, the 1853 glass in the north transept, the 1884 east window, and the 1887 south-transept window. Three windows by Alan Younger in the south aisle replaced glass damaged during the Second World War. Donated by the 6th Duke of Westminster for the cathedral’s nine-hundredth anniversary, they express the theme of continuity and change and include the dates 1092 and 1992.
Monastic buildings
Cloister
The cloister, a covered walkway around an open courtyard, is Perpendicular Gothic and is entered from the north aisle through a Norman doorway. Its south wall is the later Norman external wall of the cathedral’s north aisle and includes blind arcading. The cloister was restored in the twentieth century, when its windows were fitted with images of approximately 130 saints.
Undercroft and abbot’s passage
The undercroft beneath the west cloister range dates from the early twelfth century and was used by the monks for food storage. It has two aisles with groin vaults supported by short round piers with scalloped capitals. The abbot’s passage, dating from around 1150, leads south from the undercroft and has two bays with rib vaulting.
Above the passage is the three-bay Chapel of Saint Anselm, also from the twelfth century. Its Gothic-style plaster vault dates from the nineteenth century, while its chancel was remodelled in the early seventeenth century. The chapel retains seventeenth-century screens, altar rails, a holy table, and a plaster ceiling.
Refectory
The thirteenth-century refectory, or communal dining hall, was built by Simon de Whitchurch. It contains an Early English pulpit approached by a stair with an ascending arcade, a rare arrangement with one comparable English example identified at Beaulieu Abbey. The roof dates from 1939 and was designed by F. H. Crossley. Giles Gilbert Scott designed the reticulated tracery of the east window in 1913, while the west window contains Ros Grimshaw’s Creation glass from 2001.
A seventeenth-century Mortlake tapestry depicting Elymas struck blind hangs on the west wall, and heraldic paintings on the north wall represent the Earls of Chester. The cloister garth contains Stephen Broadbent’s modern sculpture The Water of Life.
Organ and detached bell tower
Cathedral organ
The cathedral organ originated with an instrument made by Gray and Davison in 1844, replacing an earlier organ containing parts dating from 1626. Whiteley Brothers enlarged it in 1876, William Hill and Son extensively rebuilt it in 1910, and Rushworth and Dreaper overhauled it in 1969. David Wells has maintained it since 1991. The organ has 71 stops, four 61-key manuals, and a 32-key pedalboard, while its case was designed by George Gilbert Scott.
Addleshaw Tower
The detached Addleshaw Tower is built of concrete faced with sandstone at its base. Its twelve-bell ring was cast by John Taylor and Company in 1973, while two older bells dated 1606 and 1626 were retained. A memorial garden for the Cheshire Regiment lies between the tower and the south transept.
The cathedral also contains monuments, memorial tablets, cenotaphs, mosaics, paintings, and sculptures commemorating bishops, clergy, local families, military personnel, and other individuals associated with its history.
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