Beautiful Durham– Part Three

One of the major features of construction of this Norman cathedral was massive columns to hold up the roof. You will not see these sort of massive columns in Yorkminster, our next stop on this tour. The saints frame this building with Bede at one end and St. Cuthbert in his own little chapel behind the high altar at the other. You can spend a whole afternoon just looking at the stained glass windows and learning what they teach. The enormous chapter house is worth a visit as well, where monks and clergy met to sort out the business of religious life. Every priest had to say mass everyday, hence the numerous extra altars at the back of the cathedral. Here on the outside of the cathedral is the dun cow and the woman who gave the monks fleeing from Lindisfarne with their Gospel where to go to start their new community. One of those was of course Cuthbert, and here is his older window, and also the Transfiguration window which features his story as well. Notice he is surrounded by seagulls, as he leaves Lindsfarne island. This is a window dedicated to Archbishop Michael Ramsey, who I used to sit next to at C.K. Barrett’s seminar, as we studied the Didache together. He had retired to Du...