Carlisle Cathedral
A historic Cumbrian gem on the English/Scottish borders
As cathedrals go, Carlisle’s could be classified as compact. Some tourist guides may refer to it as the smallest of the Church of England’s ancient cathedrals, but it still has the capacity to astound and amaze.
Its foundations can be traced back to 1122, when it began life as the Augustinian Priory Church of St Mary, making Carlisle the only cathedral to have served as an Augustinian Priory prior to the Reformation.
It became a cathedral 11 years later, in 1133, when Henry I removed it from the Bishop of Glasgow’s diocese, and established the Diocese of Carlisle.
Henry was attempting to assert his authority over the tumultuous English/Scottish border region, so creating a cathedral was seen as a ‘soft’ way of doing this.
A century later, the cathedral was joined by two additional friaries in the vicinity-a Dominican friary about 400 metres away (where the West Walls and Victoria Viaduct meet) and a Franciscan friary similarly distanced (in nearby Devonshire Street).
