Day 10

After traveling for a day to Durham, we had an amazing day visiting the beautiful town and Cathedral there. To me, this was the most stereotypically medieval place we had been thus far in the trip. In fact, due to the architecture at the Cathedral, the directors of Harry Potter decided to film multiple Quidditch practice scenes in the courtyard there.

The Durham Cathedral was once home to a large group of monks. In “Medieval Britain”, John Gillingham says that in 1066 there were 1,000 monks and nuns in England, and by 1216 there were 13,000 in the countries. England’s religious influences are huge, as can be seen by the several of the movies we watched. Specifically in Chariots of Fire, the entire movie is centered around the spiritual experience of faith of the runners. This religious influence was easy to see in Durham.

One of the most interesting parts of the Cathedrals we visited on our trip was seeing the destruction still left over from the reformation – how all the Catholic statues and attributes of the Churches were destroyed.