Chester Cathedral [antikvár]

CHESTER CATHEDRALThe Very Rev. G. O. Addleshaw, Dean of Chester 1963-1977T~lHE story of Chosrcr Cathedral begins in 907 with the fortification of Chester by Ethelfleda, the martial sister of Edward the Elder, king of Wessex, as a strong-point against the half-heathen Norse from Ireland who were settling in W'irral. Soon after 907 a church wasfounded on the site of the present cathedral. In the church were placed the relics of St. Werburgh, brought from Hanbury in Staffordshire. St. Werburgh, who had died between 700 and 707, was the daughter of Wulfhere, king of Mercia. Like a great many other royal ladies of hertime she became a nun and was placed by her father in charge of all the convents in iVlercia. Up until 1092 the church of St. Werburgh was a minster staffed by a college of twelve clergymen, called canons, under a custos, or warden. Each had his own house near the church. They were responsible for the daily services and guarded the relics of St. Werburgh, and they were also parish priests, as St. Werburgh's was the parish church of an area embracing most of Chester and extending a good way into Wirral. Nothing is left of the Anglo-Saxon minster except two filled-in doorways in the south-east corner of the cloister.In the reign of William Rufus, in 1092, Hugh Lupus, the second earl of Chester, wanted to turn St. Werburgh's into an abbey of Benedictine monks. He was a great friend of St. Anselm, the abbot of Bec in Normandy, and asked him over to England to advise him how to do it. St. Anselm came to Chester in September 1092, and at the time of his visit he was beginning to plan the greatest of his writings, that on the meaning of the Death of Christ, known by its Latin title. Cur Deiis Homo. After making arrangements for the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon minster into a Benedictine abbey, he stayed onleft: The baptistry, which was tuade in 1885 in the north-zoest corner of the early 12th-centiiry nave. The font, given in that year, came from Venice.facing page: The south-zuest porch and exterior of the nave. The nave, begun about 1350, was finished about 1490, and the porch about 1508. The World U"tjr I memorial cross, erected in 1922, is bv F. H. Crosslev.