Durham Cathedral: Builders & Buildings

Here at Durham we have one of the principal buildings erected at that time and it was at the cutting edge of technology. It was begun in 1093, there had been some minor redevelopment of the colossal buildings prior to that but this really was the first major exercise. As was the normal practice they built the east end first to, in this particular instance, to house the Shrine of St Cuthbert and also to accommodate the monks within the choir area. The building took 40 years, the original Norman building, 40 years from the east end through to the west end. So how did they build this cathedral in so quickly in a 40 year building period? Well a lot of it was down to standardisation and organisation, something the Normans did bring to the building process in this country and you can see the evidence of their efficiency as it were when you look at this distinctive patterning on the columns of this cathedral. The patterns were actually cut into the stones before they were laid so they would have been cut in the workshops before they were laid and we know that because there are places where the lining through of the pattern doesn't quite work across the joints and they've had to sweeten in afterwards. Now when they were cutting the stone at the workshop the masons wanted to make sure they would get paid for it and they marked the stones with these characteristic mason's marks. Each mason or team of masons had their own mark and here we have examples of a double triangle here, we have a snowflake design here and all sorts of different marks appear and many of them repeated several times over. Looking at the Chapel of Nine Altars you can see immediately how Norman architecture has now been totally superseded by 13th century Gothic architecture and a shift from thinking of architecture as a wall with holes in to conceiving buildings as a stone framework around the glass and that is the essence of the development through from Norman architecture to the end of the medieval period. Here in the north window we have a further development of that idea of a stone framework supporting the glass. Modern analysis by computer has actually failed to prove that this window can stand up. Here under this polished limestone slab we have the remains of Saint Cuthbert and his bones, his remains are the reason for Durham Cathedral being here in the first place. There is a legend associated with how the monks chose this site which is Saint Cuthbert's coffin became impossibly heavy to carry one evening so they set it down and during the night one of the monks had a vision and in that vision Saint Cuthbert said he wanted to be permanently buried on the dung home. The trouble is the monks didn't know where or what the dung home was until the following morning they heard two milkmaids calling to each other and one said have you seen my cow anywhere and the other one replied yes it's on the dung home. So you have this wonderful image of a bunch of probably fairly elderly monks chasing a young milkmaid through the wooded headland looking for this place the dung home.