Carlisle Cathedral

Carlisle is a border city, fought over by the English and the Scots for five hundred years, and its cathedral shows the scars. Most of the Norman nave was pulled down during the Civil War to repair the castle and the city’s defences, leaving a church that looks cut off at the west end. But walk in and turn east, and Carlisle springs its surprise: a choir under a barrel ceiling painted deep blue and scattered with gold stars, medieval stalls with painted legends on their backs, and one of the most beautiful windows in England.

An Augustinian cathedral on the border

Carlisle was taken from the Scots by William II in 1092, and in 1122 Henry I founded a priory of Augustinian canons here. In 1133 he made it the seat of a new bishop, for the newly English lands of Cumberland, and the priory church became a cathedral — the only one in medieval England run by Augustinian canons rather than Benedictine monks or secular priests. The Norman church was built of the local red sandstone.

In the thirteenth century the canons began a much larger choir in the Gothic style. A fire in 1292 destroyed much of it, and the rebuilding took most of the next century, which is why the choir has thirteenth-century arcades below and fourteenth-century work above. At the Reformation the priory was dissolved but the cathedral kept, with its last prior, Lancelot Salkeld, as its first dean.

During the Civil War Carlisle held out for the king through a long siege in 1644–45. In 1646 the Scottish army that then held the city pulled down most of the nave, with the cloister and chapter house, and used the stone to repair the castle and the defences. Two bays of the nave survive. In 1797 the novelist Walter Scott was married here, on Christmas Eve.

The visitor's cheat sheet

What to see, in the order you meet it

The Norman nave

You enter through the south door into what is left of the nave: two bays of massive Norman pillars and round arches, now used as the regimental chapel of the Border Regiment. Look at the arches themselves. Several have sagged and distorted, pushed out of shape over nine centuries by the weight of the tower and by settlement in the ground; they are safe, but they are startlingly crooked.

The choir and its ceiling

Go east, under the crossing, and into the choir. The tall arcades are of the thirteenth century; the upper parts and the roof are later. The wooden barrel ceiling, painted dark blue and powdered with gold stars, was restored and repainted in the 1850s to designs by the Victorian designer Owen Jones. It is the first thing every visitor looks at, and it is unforgettable.

Before you look at anything else, look at the tops of the choir piers. Their capitals are carved with the labours of the months, a medieval calendar in stone: pruning, sowing, reaping, threshing, killing the pig, feasting by the fire. They date from the rebuilding after the fire of 1292, and they are among the best of their kind in England.

The east window

The east window fills the end of the choir. It is about 15 metres high, and its tracery, of the mid-fourteenth century, is a flowing pattern of curving lines, the high point of the English Decorated style. Most of the glass in the main lights is Victorian, but the small pieces in the tracery at the top are medieval, showing the Last Judgement.

The choir stalls and the painted panels

The choir stalls were made in the early fifteenth century, with carved misericords under the seats. On the backs of the stalls, facing the aisles, are painted wooden panels of the late fifteenth century, telling chiefly the legends of three saints — Augustine, Anthony and Cuthbert — in pictures with rhyming captions, like a medieval strip cartoon. Walk round the choir aisles to see them.

The Salkeld Screen and the Brougham Triptych

In the north choir aisle stands the Salkeld Screen, a wooden screen carved in the early Renaissance style for Lancelot Salkeld, the first dean, in the 1540s, with medallion heads, putti and his initials. At the west end of the cathedral, the Brougham Triptych is a carved and gilded altarpiece made in Antwerp in about 1520, showing scenes from the life of Christ; it came to the cathedral from St Wilfrid’s Chapel at Brougham, near Penrith.

The Treasury and the Fratry

Below the choir, the Treasury displays the cathedral and diocesan plate and objects from the cathedral’s history. Outside, on the south side, the Fratry was the canons’ dining hall, rebuilt in about 1500; its vaulted undercroft is now the cathedral café.

Tickets and tours

Don't miss

• The starry ceiling Blue and gold, over the choir.
• The east window Fourteenth-century tracery and medieval glass at the top.
• The capitals The labours of the months, carved in stone.
• The painted panels Saints’ lives on the backs of the stalls.
• The crooked arches In the stump of the Norman nave.
• The Brougham Triptych Flemish carving of about 1520.

Insider tips

Carlisle is the western end of Hadrian’s Wall country, and the city is a good base for the wall and for the northern Lakes. The cathedral is a short walk from the station, so it also makes a good stop on a journey north to Scotland.

Where to stay and eat nearby

The Fratry café is beside the cathedral. The city centre, a few minutes away, has pubs, restaurants and hotels, and the station is close.

More English churches

• Durham Cathedral — the great Norman cathedral of the north-east
• Glasgow Cathedral — across the border, about an hour and a quarter by train
• York Minster — the mother church of the north

See all the cathedrals and churches worth visiting in England →