Lincoln Cathedral: The Seat of the Bishop of Lincoln
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval
- Civilizations
- English, Norman
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page21 sections
History
Lincoln Cathedral is the Church of England cathedral of Lincoln, United Kingdom, the seat of the Bishop of Lincoln and the mother church of the Diocese of Lincoln. Its foundation began under Norman rule in 1072, and the building developed through Anglo-Norman and successive English Gothic phases. The cathedral follows an Anglo-Catholic tradition within Anglicanism, while before the Reformation it belonged to the Roman Catholic Church.
The Norman foundation
Bishop Remigius de Fecamp moved the episcopal seat from Dorchester-on-Thames to Lincoln between 1072 and 1092. Lincoln stood more centrally within the extensive diocese, which stretched from the Thames to the Humber. Remigius is traditionally credited with founding the cathedral in 1072, and the earliest parts of the present building date from that year.
Remigius appropriated Lincoln’s parish church of St Mary Magdalene, although its precise role is uncertain. Before Lincoln became the episcopal centre, St Mary’s Church at Stow was regarded as Lincolnshire’s mother church, while the diocesan seat remained at Dorchester Abbey. William the Conqueror granted the parish of Welton to Remigius to provide an endowment for six prebends, foundations supporting six cathedral canons. William II and Henry I later confirmed the arrangement.
Remigius completed the first cathedral in 1092 and died on 7 May, shortly before its consecration on 11 May. A fire in 1124 destroyed its timber roof. Bishop Alexander, who held office from 1123 to 1148, responded by rebuilding and enlarging the cathedral.
Earthquake and rebuilding under St Hugh
On 15 April 1185, a major earthquake, estimated at magnitude 5 or greater, severely damaged or almost destroyed Alexander’s cathedral. Contemporary descriptions say that the building split from top to bottom. Only the lower part of the west end and its two attached towers survived from the pre-earthquake structure. The collapse may have been worsened by defective construction or design, possibly involving the failure of a vault.
After the earthquake, Hugh de Burgundy of Avalon became bishop of Lincoln and began a large rebuilding and enlargement programme. A French-born bishop and Carthusian religious leader, he later became known as St Hugh of Lincoln. Work began with St Hugh’s Choir and the eastern transepts between 1192 and 1210, followed by the nave in the Early English Gothic style.
Lincoln also became an important educational centre for a time under St Hugh. William de Montibus served as master of the cathedral school and chancellor, and writers including Samuel Presbiter and Richard of Wetheringsett were associated with it. The school’s importance declined after William’s death in 1213.
Expansion, pilgrimage, and medieval commemoration
The central tower collapsed in 1237, apparently because of a structural or design defect. In 1255 the cathedral petitioned Henry III for permission to remove part of the city wall so that the building could be enlarged. The small apsidal chapels constructed under St Hugh were replaced by a larger eastern end, accommodating the growing number of pilgrims visiting his shrine.
Lincoln’s pilgrimage tradition was also shaped by the story of Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln. In 1255, the body of an eight-year-old boy was found in a well after he had been missing for nearly a month. A false accusation of ritual murder led to the arrest and execution of numerous Jews, including eighteen who were hanged. The boy was never canonised, but was treated as a martyr, and a cult around his memory attracted pilgrims to the cathedral for centuries.
The cult reinforced anti-Jewish prejudice and was later condemned. Geoffrey Chaucer referred to the story in The Prioress’s Tale, and a ballad about it appeared in 1783. In 1955, a plaque near the former shrine rejected the false ritual-murder legends and acknowledged the deaths of innocent Jews.
Hugh of Wells, Bishop of Lincoln, was one of the signatories of Magna Carta, the 1215 charter that placed limits on royal authority and became an important symbol in the development of constitutional government and legal rights. For centuries the cathedral held one of the four surviving original copies. The Lincoln copy is now displayed at Lincoln Castle. It was shown in the British Pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, proposed unsuccessfully as a wartime gift to the United States in 1941, and lent to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in 2009.
Royal burials and later medieval additions
Queen Eleanor of Castile died at Lincoln in 1290. Edward I arranged for her viscera to be buried in the cathedral and installed a duplicate of her Westminster Abbey tomb. The original stone chest survives, but the medieval effigy was destroyed in the seventeenth century and replaced by a nineteenth-century copy. Two heavily restored exterior statues traditionally identified as Edward and Eleanor may originally have represented different subjects.
John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford founded a chantry in the cathedral in 1398 for continuing prayers and masses for their souls. During the fifteenth century, construction increasingly focused on chantry and memorial chapels. Bishop Richard Fleming enlarged the cathedral with a chapel in which he was later buried. The building’s burials and memorials came to include medieval and early-modern bishops of Lincoln, Eleanor of Castile, Katherine Swynford, Joan Beaufort, Robert Grosseteste, William Hilton, Bishop Christopher Wordsworth, and Bishop Edward King.
The cathedral’s architectural development continued through Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular Gothic phases. The Angel Choir, an elaborate carved screen, fourteenth-century misericords, and Perpendicular chapels beside the Angel Choir belong to the later medieval additions. A misericord is a projecting support beneath a choir-stall seat, often decorated with carved imagery.
Towers, war, and conservation
Between 1307 and 1311, the central tower was raised to its present height. A lead-covered timber spire brought the total height to a reputed 525 feet, or about 160 metres, and the cathedral was regarded as the world’s tallest structure from 1311 until the spire was blown down in a storm in 1548. The reported height is uncertain. The western towers were heightened around 1380 and received lead-covered timber spires in 1420; those spires were dismantled by 1807.
During the Second World War, Lincolnshire became known as “Bomber County” because of its many Bomber Command airfields. The cathedral served as a landmark for returning Royal Air Force aircraft and housed the only United Kingdom memorial to Bomber Command losses until the RAF Bomber Command Memorial opened in 2012. Valuable British objects were stored during the war in a chamber about 60 feet, or 18 metres, beneath the cathedral. The Magna Carta was not among them because it was then in the United States.
Lincoln Cathedral is a Grade I listed building. A major west-front renovation began around 2000 and addressed detached flying buttresses at the east end and unstable stonework around the Dean’s Eye window. The work was completed in April 2006. Continued conservation requires more than 100 tonnes of replacement stone each year. The cathedral has owned a quarry on Riseholme Road since 1876, and in 2025 it secured a long-term agreement with Dunston Quarry for matching oolitic limestone when the earlier source was expected to run out.
Archaeological work during restoration from 2016 revealed more than fifty burials, including a priest buried with a chalice and paten. Excavations also found a coin depicting Edward the Confessor and remains of extensively decorated Roman buildings with associated artefacts. The cathedral’s architectural reputation was reinforced by the Victorian writer John Ruskin, who called it the most valuable piece of architecture in the British Isles and roughly equal in worth to any two other English cathedrals.
Remains
Lincoln Cathedral is predominantly built from Lincolnshire Limestone and is one of the few English cathedrals built from the rock on which it stands. Its plan covers approximately 5,000 square metres and extends for about 147 to 148 metres. A double transept forms the cross-arms of the church and separates the nave, St Hugh’s Choir, and the Angel Choir. The central tower rises 83 metres without its lost spire, while the surviving lower west end and its two attached towers preserve part of the Norman building.
West end and main interior
West front
The west front began as a Norman Romanesque facade with substantial round-headed portals. It was transformed into a monumental Gothic screen facade containing tiers of statue niches, a major surviving expression of English Gothic architecture. The lower structure and attached towers belong to the part of the cathedral that survived the earthquake of 1185, while the front’s later treatment reflects the building’s successive medieval reconstructions.
Nave
The nave combines pointed arches, flying buttresses, and ribbed vaults. A flying buttress is an external arched support that transfers the outward pressure of a vault to a pier beyond the main wall. Ribbed vaulting uses stone ribs to organise and support the vaulted ceiling. These structural arrangements allowed larger clerestory windows, bringing more natural light into the upper part of the church.
An error in the nave’s dimensions required an additional arch where it meets the earlier west front. The result is a pair of closely spaced first nave arches. The nave’s vaults are sexpartite, meaning that each is divided into six compartments, and the arrangement places clerestory windows within the bays.
St Hugh’s Choir and chapter house
St Hugh’s Choir has double arcading along its aisles. An outer arcade of pointed trefoiled arches overlays an inner arcade of simple pointed arches, creating an innovative arrangement around 1200. Its vaults are notably asymmetrical: two ribs converge towards a vault bay on one side, while a single rib answers them on the other. This produces a distinctive diagonal rhythm and gives emphasis to the individual bays.
The chapter house, the meeting room of the cathedral chapter, is decagonal. A central column sends twenty ribs upwards towards the surrounding walls. Across the cathedral, vaults vary between the nave, aisles, choir, chapels, crossing, and chapter house. The north aisle has a continuous ridge rib and a regular arcade that disregards the bays, while the south aisle has a discontinuous ridge rib that emphasises each bay.
Chapels and carved stonework
Angel Choir and side chapels
The Angel Choir contains a carved figure known as the Lincoln Imp, which dates from the thirteenth century. It became a symbol of Lincoln from the late nineteenth century after appearing in Arnold Frost’s poem The Ballad of the Wind, the Devil and Lincoln Minster. The chapels beside the Angel Choir are Perpendicular in style, with strong vertical lines expressed through their window tracery and wall panelling.
The north-west chapel has quadripartite vaults, divided into four compartments. In the south chapel, the vaults rise from a single central support. Much of the cathedral’s wall surface carries relief arcading with a second layer of arches intended to create the illusion of a passage behind the wall. This French-derived technique was not executed with the dimensions needed to make the illusion effective.
Screen, misericords, and memorials
The cathedral’s surviving stonework includes the elaborate carved screen, Norman portals, Gothic window tracery, and medieval misericords. The stone chest from Eleanor of Castile’s tomb remains in the building, while the present effigy is a nineteenth-century replacement for the medieval figure destroyed in the seventeenth century. A bronze seated statue of Bishop Edward King by Sir William Blake Richmond stands in the cathedral cloister. Memorials commemorate Bomber Command personnel, bishops, clergy, officials, and local figures.
Transepts and windows
Dean’s Eye
The Dean’s Eye is a rose window in the north transept. It survives from the rebuilding begun under St Hugh in 1192 and was completed by 1235. Its stone tracery deteriorated severely, and movement of only about 5 millimetres could have caused the window to collapse. Conservators removed the tracery, installed a stronger replacement, cleaned the original stained glass, and placed it behind clear isothermal glazing for protection.
Bishop’s Eye
The Bishop’s Eye in the south transept was reconstructed around 1325 to 1350, or in 1330. It is one of the largest medieval examples of curvilinear tracery, a design using continuously flowing curved lines within a window. Its circular composition divides the window into four curved sections and shifts emphasis away from the centre. The surviving imagery includes Saints Paul, Andrew, and James.
The north-south placement of the two windows was given symbolic meaning in The Metrical Life of St Hugh, which associated the north with the Devil and the south with the Holy Spirit.
Library, bells, clock, and organ
Wren Library
The Wren Library houses more than 277 rare manuscripts. Its collection includes the fifteenth-century Thornton Romances in the Lincoln Thornton Manuscript and a manuscript associated with Bede.
Bells and clock
The south-west tower contains thirteen bells, the north-west tower contains two, and the central tower contains five, including Great Tom. The south-west ring was cast by John Taylor and Company. Its back eight bells date from 1913, four treble bells were added in 1927, and a flat sixth followed in 1948. The treble weighs about 281 kilograms and the tenor about 1,217 kilograms. The bells hang below the tower louvres to reduce tower movement. The ringing chamber is above the Great West Front and has three windows on each side except one.
A clock made by John Thwaite was installed in the north-west tower in 1775. Benjamin Vulliamy improved it and moved it to the central tower around 1835. In 1880 it was replaced by a mechanism made by Potts and Sons of Leeds under Edmund Beckett, later Baron Grimthorpe. The clock includes Cambridge Chimes and a double three-legged gravity escapement. Its mechanism weighs about four long tons, while its driving weights weigh about 1.5 long tons. The pendulum weighs about 100 kilograms and beats at 1.5-second intervals; a 102-kilogram hammer strikes Great Tom on the hour.
Organ
A large organ possibly dating from 1635 survived the Commonwealth and the Protectorate. Gerard Smith repaired and enlarged it in 1702, moving it to the top of the screen. A new organ was installed in 1826 in a case designed by C. J. Wilson and rebuilt in 1851, when a pedal division was added.
The present organ was designed by Henry Willis and installed in 1898. It was the last organ he designed and is one of only two Willis organs in English cathedrals that retain their original tonal scheme. Harrison and Harrison restored it in 1960 and 1998. It was inaugurated on 17 November 1898, St Hugh’s Day. Electric blowing had been intended, but the local power station was not yet operating, so soldiers of the Lincolnshire Regiment supplied manual power during the inauguration service.
