The see of Durham takes its origins from the Diocese of Lindisfarne, founded by Saint Aidan at the behest of Oswald of Northumbria around AD 635. The see lasted until AD 664, at which point it was translated to York. The see was then reinstated at Lindisfarne in AD 678 by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Among the many saints produced in the community at Lindisfarne Priory, Saint Cuthbert, who was Bishop of Lindisfarne from AD 685 until his death on Farne Island in 687, is central to the development of Durham Cathedral.
After repeated Viking raids, the monks fled Lindisfarne in AD 875, carrying St Cuthbert’s relics with them. The diocese of Lindisfarne remained itinerant until 882, when a community was re-established in Chester-le-Street. The see had its seat here until AD 995, when further incursions once again caused the monks to move with the relics. According to local legend, the monks followed two milk maids who were searching for a dun (i.e. brown) cow and were led into a peninsula formed by a loop in the River Wear. At this point Cuthbert’s coffin became immovable. This trope of hagiography was offered for a sign that the new shrine should be built here. A more prosaic set of reasons for the selection of the peninsula is its highly defensible position, and that a community established here would enjoy the protection of the Earl of Northumberland, as the bishop at this time, Aldhun, had strong family links with the earls. Nevertheless, the street leading from The Bailey past the Cathedral’s eastern towers up to Palace Green is named Dun Cow Lane due to the miniature (dun) cows that used to graze in the pastures nearby.
Initially, a very simple temporary structure was built from local timber to house the relics of Cuthbert. The shrine was then transferred to a sturdier, probably wooden, building known as the White Church. This church was itself replaced three years later in 998 by a stone building also known as the White Church, which was complete apart from its tower by 1018. Durham soon became a site of pilgrimage, encouraged by the growing cult of Saint Cuthbert. King Canute was one early pilgrim, granting many privileges and much land to the Durham community. The defendable position, flow of money from pilgrims and power embodied in the church at Durham ensured that a town formed around the cathedral, establishing the early core of the modern city.
The present cathedral was designed and built under William of St. Carilef (or William of Calais) who was appointed as the first prince-bishop by William the Conqueror in 1080. Since that time, there have been major additions and reconstructions of some parts of the building, but the greater part of the structure remains true to the Norman design. Construction of the cathedral began in 1093 at the eastern end. The choir was completed by 1096 and work proceeded on the nave of which the walls were finished by 1128, and the high vault complete by 1135. The chapter house, partially demolished in the 18th century, was built between 1133 and 1140. William died in 1099 before the building’s completion, passing responsibility to his successor, Ranulf Flambard, who also built Flamwell Bridge, the first crossing of the River Wear in the town. Three bishops, William of St. Carilef, Ranulf Flambard and Hugh de Puiset, are all buried in the rebuilt chapter house.
In the 1170s, de Puiset, after a false start at the eastern end where the subsidence and cracking prevented work from continuing, added the Galilee Chapel at the west end of the cathedral. The five-aisled building occupies the position of a porch, it functioned as a Lady chapel and the great west door was blocked during the Medieval period by an altar to the Virgin Mary. The door is now blocked by the tomb of the bishop Thomas Langley. The Galilee Chapel also holds the remains of the Venerable Bede. The main entrance to the cathedral is on the northern side, facing towards the castle.
In 1228 Richard le Poore came from Salisbury where a new cathedral was being built in the Gothic style. At this time, the eastern end of the cathedral was in urgent need of repair and the proposed eastern extension had failed. Richard le Poore employed the architect Richard Farnham to design an eastern terminal for the building in which many monks could say the Daily Office simultaneously. The resulting building was the Chapel of the Nine Altars. The towers also date from the early 13th century, but the central tower was damaged by lightning and replaced in two stages in the 15th century, the master masons being Thomas Barton and John Bell.
The Shrine of St Cuthbert was located in the eastern apsidal end of the cathedral. The location of the inner wall of the apse is marked on the pavement and St Cuthbert’s tomb is covered by a simple slab. However, an unknown monk wrote in 1593:
[The shrine] "was estimated to be one of the most sumptuous in all England, so great were the offerings and jewells bestowed upon it, and endless the miracles that were wrought at it, even in these last days."
Cuthbert’s tomb was destroyed on the orders of Henry VIII in 1538, and the monastery’s wealth handed over to the king. The body of the saint was exhumed, and according to the Rites of Durham, was discovered to be uncorrupted. It was reburied under a plain stone slab worn by the knees of pilgrims, but the ancient paving around it remains intact. Two years later, on 31 December 1540, the Benedictine monastery at Durham was dissolved, and the last prior of Durham — Hugh Whitehead — became the first dean of the cathedral’s secular.
After the Battle of Dunbar on 3 September 1650, Durham Cathedral was used by Oliver Cromwell as a makeshift prison to hold Scottish prisoners-of-war. It is estimated that as many as 3,000 were imprisoned of whom 1,700 died in the cathedral itself, where they were kept in inhumane conditions, largely without food, water or heat. The prisoners destroyed much of the cathedral woodwork for firewood but Prior Castell’s Clock, which featured the Scottish thistle, was spared. It is reputed that the prisoners’ bodies were buried in unmarked graves (see further, ’21st century’ below). The survivors were shipped as slave labour to North America.
John Cosin, Bishop of Durham who had previously been a canon of the cathedral, set about restoring the damage and refurnishing the building with new stalls, the litany desk and the towering canopy over the font. An oak screen to carry the organ was added at this time to replace a stone screen pulled down in the 16th century. On the remains of the old refectory, the Dean, John Sudbury founded a library of early printed books.
During the 18th century, the deans of Durham often held another position in the south of England, and after spending the statutory time in residence, would depart to manage their affairs. Consequently, after Cosin’s refurbishment, there was little by way of restoration or rebuilding. When work commenced again on the building, it was not always of a sympathetic nature. In 1777 the architect George Nicholson, having completed Prebends’ Bridge across the Wear, persuaded the dean and chapter to let him smooth off much of the outer stonework of the cathedral, thereby considerably altering its character. His successor William Morpeth demolished most of the Chapter House.
In 1794 the architect James Wyatt drew up extensive plans which would have drastically transformed the building, including the demolition of the Galilee Chapel, but the Chapter changed its mind just in time to prevent this happening. Wyatt also renewed the 15th cent. tracery of the Rose Window, inserting plain glass to replace what had been blown out in a storm.
In 1847 Anthony Salvin removed Cosin’s wooden organ screen, opening up the view of the east end from the nave.
The restoration of the cathedral’s tower in 1859-60 was by the architect George Gilbert Scott, working with Edward Robert Robson (who went on to serve as Clerk of Works at the cathedral for six years). In 1874 Scott was responsible for the marble quire screen and pulpit in the Crossing.[ In 1892 Scott’s pupil Charles Hodgson Fowler rebuilt the Chapter House as a memorial to Joseph Barber Lightfoot (Bishop).
In the 1930s, under the inspiration of Dean Cyril Alington, work began on restoring the Shrine of St Cuthbert behind the High Altar as an appropriate focus of worship and pilgrimage, and was resumed after the Second World War. The four candlesticks and overhanging tester (c. 1950) were designed by Ninian Comper. Two large batik banners representing St Cuthbert and St Oswald, added in 2001, are the work of Thetis Blacker. Elsewhere in the building the 1930s and 40’s saw the addition of several new stained glass windows by Hugh Ray Easton. Mark Angus’ Daily Bread window dates from 1984. In the Galilee Chapel a wooden statue of the Annunciation by the Polish artist Josef Pyrz was added in 1992, the same year as Leonard Evetts’ Stella Maris window.
In 1986, the cathedral, together with the nearby Castle, became a World Heritage Site. The UNESCO committee classified the cathedral under criteria, reporting, "Durham Cathedral is the largest and most perfect monument of ‘Norman’ style architecture in England".
In 1996, the Great Western Doorway was the setting for Bill Viola’s large-scale video installation The Messenger.
At the beginning of this century two of the altars in the Nine Altars Chapel at the east end of the Cathedral were re-dedicated to Saint Hild of Whitby and Saint Margaret of Scotland: a striking painting of St Margaret (with her son, the future king David) by Paula Rego was dedicated in 2004. Nearby a plaque, first installed in 2011 and rededicated in 2017, commemorates the Scottish soldiers who died as prisoners in the Cathedral after the Battle of Dunbar in 1650. The remains of some of these prisoners have now been identified in a mass grave uncoverered during building works in 2013 just outside the Cathedral precinct near Palace Green.
In 2004 two wooden sculptures by Fenwick Lawson, Pieta and Tomb of Christ, were placed in the Nine Altars Chapel, and in 2010 a new stained glass window of the Transfiguration by Tom Denny was dedicated in memory of Michael Ramsey, former Bishop of Durham and Archbishop of Canterbury.
In 2016 former monastic buildings around the cloister, including the Monks’ Dormitory and Prior’s Kitchen, were re-opened to the public as Open Treasure, an extensive exhibition displaying the Cathedral’s history and possessions.
Durham Cathedral was featured in the Harry Potter films as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where it had a spire digitally added onto the top of the famous towers. It is also featured on TV in Season 5’s last episode of Inspector George Gently.
Architectural historian Dan Cruickshank selected the cathedral as one of his four choices for the 2002 BBC television documentary series Britain’s Best Buildings.
In November 2009 the cathedral featured in the Lumiere festival whose highlight was the "Crown of Light" illumination of the North Front of the cathedral with a 15-minute presentation that told the story of Lindisfarne and the foundation of cathedral, using illustrations and text from the Lindisfarne Gospels. The Lumiere festival was repeated in 2011, 2013 and 2015
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