Guided tour of the thousand-year-old Chester Cathedral to understand its history and confusing layout.
Chester Cathedral is running its Cathedral Discovery Tour on Saturday 7 November, part of the wider Discover Chester Cathedral Tour series. It's a guided walk led by knowledgeable guides, built for anyone trying to make sense of the building. The cathedral describes itself as a thousand-year-old structure with a confusing layout, full of nooks and crannies, rooms off passages and odd names for things; the tour unravels that history and points out the wealth of riches that make it so special.
There's a lot to that history. It was founded as a Benedictine Abbey in 1092 and became a cathedral in 1541, so it's as much an archaeological treasure as it is a place of worship. It's also a centre of musical excellence, and home to an internationally significant collection of stained glass that runs from medieval fragments to the 21st-century Creation Window. Among the finest fourteenth-century Quire Stalls in the country are carved into the woodwork, including an elephant that looks like a horse.
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The tour is designed to help you piece together how the building came to be, so if you've ever walked through and wondered why one part doesn't quite line up with the next, this is the one to take. It's £3, and if you're coming as a group of more than eight, you'll need to pre-book through the cathedral's groups department.
