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Britain - Photo and History Pages Paradoxplace BRITISH ABBEYS AND CATHEDRALS
Lindisfarne Priory
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This is the view looking back from Lindisfarne ("The Holy Island") towards the coast just south of the border town of Berwick. The island is reached via a tidal causeway road which is impassable for about half the time.
Lindisfarne is one of the holiest places in Britain, having played host to Saint Aidan (an Irishman who travelled from the Isle of Iona), who founded a monastery here in 635, and the more famous still Saint Cuthbert who hailed from what is now the Scottish borders, and started his monastic life in the Monastery of Melrose - predecessor to a later great Cistercian Abbey - and who became Bishop of Lindisfarne in the 670s.
The Lindisfarne Gospels, a beautifully illuminated 258 page manuscript drawn on parchment (stretched and dried calf skins), were produced in the monastery in the 700s.
Everything was destroyed by the Vikings who first appeared on the scene in 793, when the monks fled with the remains of Cuthbert. These ended their medieval days in Durham Cathedral (then Abbey) as the centrepiece of England's most visited shrine in the pre-Becket era.
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Looking East down what was the nave of the later Priory Church dating from the 1100s return of the monks to Lindisfarne after the end of the "Viking Troubles" and the arrival of the Normans.
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Many of the stones have weathered into fascinating patterns |
Anyone who has been to Durham Cathedral or Waltham Abbey will recognize the patterning in one of the two remaining nave columns
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All original material © Adrian Fletcher 2000-08 - The contents may not be hotlinked, or reproduced without permission
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