Stephen Wynn - Durham City in the Great War

Your Towns and Cities in the Great War

Durham City in the Great War

Your Towns and Cities in the Great War

Stephen Wynn

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by

PEN & SWORD MILITARY

an imprint of

Pen and Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street

Barnsley

South Yorkshire S70 2AS

Copyright Stephen Wynn, 2017

ISBN 978 1 78303 032 3
eISBN 978 1 47386 508 2
Mobi ISBN 978 1 47386 507 5

The right of Stephen Wynn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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The history of Durham City, which sits proudly upon the River Weir, can be traced as far back as AD 995, when the world truly was a different place. But its origins really began 200 years before that, at around the time that the Christian faith started spreading across the country. One of those who was encouraging others to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, was Cuthbert, who after having decided on becoming a monk at a relatively young age, became the Bishop of Lindisfarne. He eventually decided on pursuing the life of a hermit and set up home on the small and remote island of Inner Farne.

On his death in AD 687, his body was taken to Lindisfarne and buried. A few years later, so the story goes, monks decided to inspect his body and, on opening his coffin, found that his body had not decayed. This discovery was determined to be a miracle and Cuthbert was made a saint. Whether it was a miracle or not is open to conjecture, but either way, it made the monks and their monastery at Lindisfarne extremely wealthy as Cuthberts story and the island began attracting literarily boatloads of pilgrims. But because of the continued Viking raids during throughout the ninth century, the monks of Lindisfarne decided to vacate the island and take St Cuthberts coffin with them. So it was that in the year AD 995 it eventually ended up in the City of Durham.

The city has seen many changes over the years. In 1006, with the help of the high peninsula that the city was built upon, the inhabitants defeated an invading Scottish horde who wanted the wealth that the new city had amassed. Some visitors were welcomed, the people who came to the city as pilgrims, to worship at the cathedral. Others included King Canute and William the Conqueror, the latter most definitely not a pilgrim.

The city continued to prosper over the years and through the ages it went from strength to strength, due in no small part to the influence and power of the Bishops of Durham. Armies have been raised, the city has held its own Parliament, it has minted its own coins and administered its own laws, to name but a few of its advantages. During the reign of King Henry VIII, the Bishops powers were somewhat reduced, and in 1538, as if to prove a point of who really did hold power, the King ordered the destruction of the sacred shrine of Saint Cuthbert.

During the English Civil War, which took place between 1640 and 1660, the city remained loyal to King Charles I. The cathedral was closed in 1650 as part of the aftermath of the abolition of the Church of England and the closure of numerous religious buildings.