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Building a cathedral in early medieval times was a prolonged and sometimes a very dangerous business. Architectural techniques were not so far advanced that there was any certainty that a stone cathedral, once built, would stand. In fact several Norman churches and cathedrals collapsed either due to design faults, unsuitable materials or sheer carelessness on the part of the workmen.

Four Decades of Construction

Those that have remained, however, stand as magnificent examples of their kind. They are typified by high, vaulted ceilings, beautifully decorated chapels and pillars and tasteful ornamentation. These cathedrals were very long-term projects, perhaps revealing the Normans' surety that their rule in England, once seized, would last. The Norman cathedral at Durham, for instance, took 40 years to construct. The first stone was laid on 11 August 1093 in the reign of King William II. Completion did not take place until 1133 after William's brother, Henry I, had been king for 33 years.

Durham Cathedral, one of the greatest buildings in twelfth-century Europe, had all the traditional Norman characteristics. It contained arcades flanked by rounded arches ornamented with chevron designs. The vault of the nave, however, was quite revolutionary for the time. Generally, each section of a vault was strengthened by building a 'bridge' between opposite pillars. At Durham, however, arches were built between diagonal pillars, giving the impression of overlapping 'folds' covering the entire ceiling. Though not a new idea it was the first time such a device had been used on a vault of this great height and it led to greater stability for the whole building. The method also had the value of economy: it used far less stone than the 'bridge' technique.

Westminster Abbey

The result at Durham was an inspirational cathedral stretching heavenwards in an elegant manner that was quite new to England. When the Normans arrived they had found the Anglo-Saxon cathedrals too plain and mundane for their taste. Something of far greater architectural artistry was required and the Normans already had their model in the public buildings of Ancient Rome. These too had been built to denote power and splendour and to impress the populace with their sheer size as well as their magnificence. England did already have at least one cathedral of this impressive kind in 1065, namely Westminster Abbey. King Edward the Confessor had completed it less than a year before the Norman invasion. Edward, who grew up in Normandy, had taken his ideas from the cathedrals he saw in the duchy while he was there. He had incorporated them in Westminster Abbey, which was begun in about 1050. It was not long before Westminster was joined by the work started on cathedrals at Durham, Norwich, Peterborough in Cambridgeshire and Southwell in Nottinghamshire. King William I's archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc, rebuilt the cathedral at Canterbury and other bishops did the same at Winchester and at Ely, where the Norman nave had no less than 13 bays.

Rebuilding Canterbury

Although Lanfranc's cathedral at Canterbury was devastated by fire in 1174 it was rebuilt to an even greater standard of splendour by a French architect, William of Sens. He brought over to England the innovative Gothic style then popular in the north of France. When it was completed in 1200 the new Canterbury Cathedral also featured beautiful stained-glass windows, the most extensive in England at that time.

Later cathedrals incorporated architectural advances and changes of style, indeed the Norman buildings were often added to. Nevertheless the Norman buildings set a standard that persisted for a very long time: the cathedral was a massive, elaborate, but not ostentatious, and tastefully beautified monument to God.