Lincoln Cathedral, also called Lincoln Minster, and formally the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lincoln, is a Church of England cathedral in Lincoln, England. It is the seat of the bishop of Lincoln and is the mother church of the diocese of Lincoln. The cathedral is governed by its dean and chapter, and is a grade I listed building. The earliest parts of the current building date to 1072, when bishop Remigius de Fécamp moved his seat from Dorchester on Thames to Lincoln. The building was completed in 1092, but severely damaged in an earthquake in 1185. It was rebuilt over the following centuries in different phases of the Gothic style, with significant surviving parts of the cathedral in Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular. The cathedral holds one of the four remaining copies of the original Magna Carta, which is now displayed in Lincoln Castle. It is the fourth largest cathedral in the UK by floor area, at approximately 5,000 m2 (50,000 ft2), after Liverpool Cathedral, St Paul's Cathedral, and York Minster. It is highly regarded by architectural scholars; the Victorian writer John Ruskin declared: "I have always held ... that the cathedral of Lincoln is out and out the most precious piece of architecture in the British Isles and roughly speaking worth any two other cathedrals we have."
History
The first Bishop of Lincoln Remigius de Fécamp moved the episcopal seat (cathedra) there "some time between 1072 and 1092". About this, James Essex writes that "Remigius ... laid the foundations of his Cathedral in 1072" and "it is probable that he, being a Norman, employed Norman masons to superintend the building ... though he could not complete the whole before his death." Before that, writes B. Winkles, "It is well known that Remigius appropriated the parish church of St Mary Magdalene in Lincoln, although it is not known what use he made of it." When Lincoln Cathedral was first built, William the Conqueror granted the parish of Welton to Remigius in order to endow six prebends which provided income to support six canons attached to the cathedral. These were subsequently confirmed by William II and Henry I. Until then, St Mary's Church in Stow was considered to be the "mother church" of Lincolnshire (although it was not a cathedral, because the seat of the diocese was at Dorchester Abbey in Dorchester-on-Thames, Oxfordshire). However, Lincoln was more central to a diocese that stretched from the Thames to the Humber. Remigius built the first Lincoln Cathedral on the present site, finishing it in 1092 and then dying on 7 May of that year, two days before it was consecrated. In 1124, the timber roofing was destroyed in a fire. Alexander (bishop, 1123–48) rebuilt and expanded the cathedral, but it was mostly destroyed by an earthquake about forty years later, in 1185 (dated by the British Geological Survey as occurring 15 April 1185). The earthquake was one of the largest felt in the UK: it has an estimated magnitude of over 5. The damage to the cathedral is thought to have been very extensive: the cathedral is described as having "split from top to bottom"; in the current building, only the lower part of the west end and its two attached towers remain of the pre-earthquake cathedral. Some (Kidson, 1986; Woo, 1991) have suggested that the damage to Lincoln Cathedral was probably exacerbated by poor construction or design, with the actual collapse most probably caused by a vault failure. After the earthquake, a new bishop was appointed. He was Hugh de Burgundy of Avalon, France, who became known as St Hugh of Lincoln. He began a massive rebuilding and expansion programme. With his appointment of William de Montibus as master of the cathedral school and chancellor, Lincoln briefly became one of the leading educational centres in England, producing writers such as Samuel Presbiter and Richard of Wetheringsett, though it declined in importance after William's death in 1213. Rebuilding began with the choir (St Hugh's Choir) and the eastern transepts between 1192 and 1210. The central nave was then built in the Early English Gothic architectural style. Lincoln Cathedral soon followed other architectural advances of the time – pointed arches, flying buttresses and ribbed vaulting were added to the cathedral. This allowed support for incorporating larger windows. There are thirteen bells in the south-west tower, two in the north-west tower, and five in the central tower (including Great Tom). Accompanying the cathedral's large bell, Great Tom of Lincoln, is a quarter-hour striking clock which was installed in the early 19th century. The two large stained glass rose windows, the matching Dean's Eye and the Bishop's Eye were added to the cathedral during the late Middle Ages. The former, the Dean's Eye in the north transept dates from the 1192 rebuild begun by St Hugh, completed in 1235. The latter, the Bishop's Eye, in the south transept was reconstructed a hundred years later in 1330. A contemporary record, "The Metrical Life of St Hugh", refers to the meaning of these two windows (one on the dark, north, side and the other on the light, south, side of the building):
For north represents the devil, and south the Holy Spirit and it is in these directions that the two eyes look. The bishop faces the south in order to invite in and the dean the north in order to shun; the one takes care to be saved, the other takes care not to perish. With these Eyes the cathedral's face is on watch for the candelabra of Heaven and the darkness of Lethe (oblivion).
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