Herefordshire Through Time
Herefordshire Through Time
The cathedral at Hereford is known as the Cathedral Church of St. Mary and St. Ethelbert.
The building is constructed almost entirely of local sandstone of a mainly reddish colour. Some of the carved work in the presbytery is of Ketton stone, while the shafting in the north transept is of Purbeck marble. The roofs are covered in lead.
The diocese of Hereford is one of the oldest in the country. The compiler of the earliest surviving set of Anglo-Saxon Episcopal lists named the first in the line of the bishops of Hereford as Putta.
AD 676: According to the Venerable Bede (a monk and historian writing around 730), Bishop Putta of Rochester, after the sack of his own city and cathedral by Æthelred, was given a plot of land - assumed to be at Hereford - for a church.
740: Cuthbert, the fifth bishop, erected a cross of great magnificence there. In 741, Cuthbert was made Archbishop of Canterbury.
790s: The border was dominated by the rule of King Offa, famous for building the dyke along the Welsh Border. In 792 Ethelbert, King of East Anglia was eager to marry Offa's daughter but Offa's wife Cynefrith, opposed to the marriage, arranged for Ethelbert to be murdered (the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, however, states simply that Offa had Ethelbert beheaded, giving no reason). Many people objected to the beheading of Ethelbert, and so Offa was forced to bury him in Hereford. Ethelbert was made a saint and thereafter the cathedral was dedicated to Ethelbert and the Virgin Mary.
1012-1015: Bishop Athelstane II rebuilt the church at Hereford. He also gave the cathedral a copy of the Four Gospels, which can still be seen in the Chained Library today.
Hereford Cathedral had managed to escape the conversion to monasticism that many other cathedrals had undergone. This was mainly due to the fact that substantial revenue was required to support a community of monks, and Hereford was too poor.
1055: The building was seriously damaged by Welsh raids in 1055 and three canons, and four of their sons, who bravely fought to protect the cathedral were killed on its threshold. The cathedral was then burnt and only one book, the Cathedral Gospel, survived. The relics of St. Ethelbert were burnt or stolen.
1056: Bishop Athelstan died in this year and Edward the Confessor chose the warlike Leofgar (a chaplain of Earl Harold) to replace him. In 1056 Leofgar undertook a revenge attack against the Welsh but was killed in battle. Hereford was temporarily under the control of Ealdred, Bishop of Worcester.
1061: Shortly before the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, Bishop Walter of Lorraine was appointed. He was one of a group of foreign clergymen given control of English dioceses at this time. These foreign clergy brought with them the Rule of Chrodegang, a new constitution drawn up by the Bishop of Metz, which meant that Hereford would always be served by canons and never by monks. The pontificate of Walter was short and we have little information about him, but we do know that he does not appear to have improved the finances of the cathedral.
1079: Bishop Robert de Losinga, who was also from Lorraine, is said to have then built a church at Hereford, based on the two-storey basilica at Aix in France. This may have been the structure which formerly stood on the south side of the Bishop's Cloister, which was destroyed by Bishop Egerton in 1737. Bishop Robert had trained at the cathedral school at Liege (said to be one of the best) and under his leadership the cathedral finances began to improve, perhaps because of the experience that he had. Bishop Robert was also the first bishop to appoint an archdeacon in Hereford, and he began to acquire books for the cathedral.
1086: Bishop Robert may have been one of the commissioners for the Domesday Survey, published in this year. He also created small tenancies for members of the cathedral community. He died in 1095.
[Original author: Miranda Greene, 2005]