Pilgrim Ways

In 633 the Roman mission to Canterbury sent St.Felix to establish the Church in East Anglia.

The diocesan seat was founded at Dunwich and then moved to North Elmham, Thetford and, in 1096, to Norwich. In the seventh century, Celtic missionaries came from Ireland and established a monastery in Great Yarmouth at Burgh Castle, in the ruins of the ancient Roman fort. St.Cedd built the stone church at Bradwell, in Essex.

Benedictines had an abbey church at Bury St.Edmunds, whose ruins may be seen near the present cathedral; and monasteries at Peterborough, Binham and Ely. There was a Cluniac priory at Castle Acre.

In 1096 the cathedral was begun in Norwich and boasts the largest monastic cloister in England. The ambulatory, the Bishop‟s Throne and the almost circular St.Luke and Jesus chapels are all unique to Norwich in their design. Nearby is the post-Reformation Catholic cathedral of Norwich. Built by the fifteenth Duke of Norfolk, it was begun in 1882, designed

by George Gilbert Scott and his brother John Oldrid Scott. The north aisle of the sanctuary contains a chapel dedicated to the Precious Blood while the South aisle houses the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament. At Ely stands the cathedral which crowns what was once an island.

First settled by Etheldreda, here she built her double monastery for men and women. When this was destroyed by the Danes, Benedictine monks re-established the monastery and, in 1093, Abbot Simeon began the construction of the Romanesque church.

The fourteenth-century Lady Chapel is the largest chapel of its kind in any of our cathedrals.

Although the cloister was destroyed at the Dissolution, the twelfth-century Prior‟s Door remains. The board ceiling was constructed in the nineteenth century to a design of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. Peterborough Cathedral can trace its origins to the seventh-century monastery founded by Peda, the King of Mercia. After its destruction by the Danes, the Benedictines founded a community and, in 972, the abbey church was consecrated in the presence of King Edgar. The present building, with its unique Gothic triple portico dominating the west front, was begun in the thirteenth century.

The Midlands.

St.Chad brought Christianity to Lichfield (see Chapter Two, The Celtic Church), which, in the eighth century, briefly achieved metropolitan status having its own archbishop. Elsewhere in the East Midlands there was a Minster at Southwell, an abbey at Newstead and a cathedral at Lincoln. In Coventry Earl Leofric of Mercia, and his countess, Lady Godiva, founded the Benedictine monastery of St.Mary, which became the cathedral of the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield. In the West Midlands stand the great cathedrals of Hereford, Worcester and Gloucester and Christ Church Oxford. There were abbeys at Tewkesbury, Hailes and Dorchester-On-Thames.

Lichfield has its origins in a church built in 700 as a shrine for St.Chad. This Saxon church was replaced in the twelfth century and the present building was erected in the fourteenth century. The fourteenth century Lady Chapel originally housed the shrine of St.Chad. Some of his bones were rescued from the medieval shrine before its destruction at the Reformation and hidden - and they are now above the high altar at St.Chad‟s Cathedral, Birmingham. This was the first post-reformation Catholic cathedral by A.W.Pugin.

Lincoln cathedral stands high on a limestone cliff and dominates the skyline. In 1072, Bishop Remigius moved his see here from Dorchester-Upon-Thames. In 1185, after an earth tremor