St Mary and St Cuthbert Churchyard in Chester-Le-Street, County Durham

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Get directions Chester-Le-Street, County Durham, England

Coordinates: 54.85590, -1.57172
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A wooden church and shrine to house the body of Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, Bishop of Lindisfarne from 684 to 687, was built within the Roman fort. Most notable among their treasures were the Lindisfarne Gospels, created in Lindisfarne around 715. While here they were translated from Latin into English, sometime between 947 and 968, by bishop Aldred writing a gloss in Old English above the text, making them the oldest surviving English translation of the Gospels. The Gospels and St Cuthbert's coffin were here until 995, when renewed Viking raids drove the monks out, to Ripon before returning to the more easily defended Durham, where they eventually built a stone cathedral around St Cuthbert's remains. The wooden church remained in place until replaced by a stone church in 1056.

The oldest parts of the building, dating from 1056, when the stone church was built, are the walls of the chancel and the two largest pillars now near the centre of the nave. The church then would have been a third shorter and much narrower, as wide as the chancel today. Lewis holes visible in two stones on a front buttress show that Roman stone was used in later construction. It was extended around 1267, with the nave, the lower part of the tower and east wall with sedilia all dating from this time.

The Lindisfarne Gospels were kept at Durham until 1539, when during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, St Cuthbert's shrine there was looted, and they were taken to London. Today they are kept at the British Library, but a facsimile copy is kept at the church. In 1595, John Lumley contributed a set of family effigies that now lie along the north wall.