Pilgrim Ways

damaged the Romanesque cathedral, St.Hugh of Avalon, a Carthusian monk, rebuilt the cathedral - and in due course his shrine would become a place of pilgrimage (which was housed in the Angel Choir).

Hereford Cathedral dates from the seventh century when a Saxon Church replaced the wooden church of St.Mary the Virgin. The construction of today‟s cathedral began in the thirteenth century. Pilgrims came here to honour St.Thomas Cantilupe, canonised by the Pope in 1320. Born in Hambleden, near great Marlow, St.Thomas was the son of the Norman baron, William Cantilupe. In 1261 he became Chancellor of Oxford University, and, in 1265, he rose to be Chancellor of England. In 1275 he was appointed Bishop of Hereford and became locked in a struggle over the rights of his diocese with the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Peckham. He died at Montefiascome, in Italy, where he had gone to plead his case before the Pope, and to have his excommunication over-turned. Some parts of his remains were returned to Hereford and the memory of his personal holiness and pastoral zeal led to his canonisation. His feast is celebrated on October 2nd.

Hereford‟s refurbished cloister and library house some magnificent treasures, including the thirteenth century Mappa Mundi, the Limoges reliquary, and the Anglo-Saxon Hereford Gospels. Worcester Cathedral‟s first bishop was the seventh-century Bishop Bosel. The cathedral was rebuilt by the Normans. The crypt is the largest remaining Norman crypt in England. Among the surviving monastic buildings is the chapter house and the cloister.

Gloucester Cathedral owes its origins to King Osric of Mercia, who, in the seventh century established a monastery. The Benedictines came during the reign of Cnut. In 1089, the foundation stone of what became the abbey church, and, in the sixteenth-century, a cathedral, was laid. The Romanesque nave, the Perpendicular choir and great cloister (probably the finest in England) and the fifteenth-century Lady Chapel are breath-taking. The great east window depicts the mediaeval hierarchy with Christ and the angles, Mary and the saints, and the knights and the bishops in their descending order. The magnificent tomb of the murdered Edward II lies in the north ambulatory of the east end.

Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford - a college chapel - was raised to cathedral status by Henry VIII, enabling him to suppress the abbey which had been raised to status of cathedral church in c.1542.. Approached through the Tom Quad, commenced by Cardinal Wolsey and by the Tom Tower, added by Sir Christopher Wren, Christ Church was the priory church. Legend holds that St.Frideswide founded the monastery which preceded the later Augustinian foundation. St.Frideswide was the daughter of Didan, the prince (subregulus) of a district bordering the Upper Thames. She was the abbess-foundress of the nunnery of St.Mary‟s under the Rule of St.Benedict. She is said to have had as her maxim “Whatever is not God is nothing.” She is patroness of the city and the university of Oxford. Her relics are extant, although disturbed at the Reformation. In art she is depicted as a nun with a crown, crozier and scepter, and with an ox beside her. She died in 735 and her feast is celebrated on October 19th.

In 1004 her church was rebuilt by King Aethelred, who had a manor in nearby Headington.

Then, in the twelfth century, Augustinian canons refounded the priory, and a church, chapter house and cloister were built. The cathedral spire is thirteenth-century and in 1338 the Latin Chapel was built (where there is some later stained glass by Sir Edward Burne-Jones).

The North