Worcester Cathedral

Worcester Cathedral has been a place of Christian worship and prayer for fourteen centuries. The cathedral was first founded in 680. Saint Oswald then built another cathedral in 983 and established a monastery attached to it.

The present building was built in the Romanesque style in 1084 by Saint Wulfstan, and the earliest surviving parts of the current cathedral date from this 1084 building. This includes the remarkable crypt which is one of the most attractive parts of the cathedral, constructed by Wulstan to contain the shrine of St Oswald. The chapter house dates from 1120, and the nave was extended in the 1170s. Between 1224 and 1269 the east end, including the Lady Chapel, was rebuilt in the Early English Gothic style. The remainder of the nave was rebuilt in the 1360s, and the magnificent central tower was completed in 1374.

During Anglo-Saxon times Worcester was one of the most important monastic cathedrals in the country. It was a centre of great learning which continued into the late Middle Ages, when Worcester’s Benedictine monks went to university to study a variety of subjects such as theology, medicine, law, history, mathematics, physics, and astronomy. Some of these medieval university textbooks still survive in the cathedral library today.

Worcester Cathedral contains many funerary monuments including two royal tombs; those of King John and Arthur, Prince of Wales (eldest son of King Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, and older brother of King Henry VIII). King John’s tomb can be found in front of the High Altar and Prince Arthur’s Chantry to the right of the High Altar.