[3] Founded in 1091 during the same period as the nearby castle, the Norman church was destroyed by fire in 1216 and the current building was completed in 1350, so is mostly of the Perpendicular style of the 14th century.

Close to the south of the cathedral is Newcastle Castle, which gave the city its name, and which was itself built on the site of the Hadrian's Wall fort of Pons Aelius.

The renovation works entailed removing the Victorian pews, installing underfloor heating, restoring and re-laying up to 130 ledger stones (gravestones), improving the churchyards, and adding an east entrance to the building.

[16] The nave furnishings were designed by the local artist and craftsman Ralph Hedley in the early 20th century, after the parish church of St Nicholas became a cathedral in 1882.

St Margaret's Chapel contains the only known fragment of medieval stained glass in the cathedral, a beautiful roundel of the Madonna feeding the Christ Child.

More-modern stained glass works such as in St. George's Chapel were erected in honour of two of Tyneside's late 19th-/early 20th-century industrial pioneers, who both died in 1931 within weeks of each other.

[18] The cathedral contains a number of memorials, the oldest being a 13th-century tomb effigy of a knight in armour, thought to be Peter le Marechal, sword-bearer to King Edward I.

This commemoration to Thornton, his wife, seven sons and seven daughters can now be seen fixed vertically on the far side of the High Altar of Newcastle Cathedral, facing the east window.

[18] Just to the north of the cathedral stands a bronze statue of Queen Victoria erected to commemorate 500 years of the Shrievalty (the jurisdiction of a sheriff) of Newcastle.

Sculpted by Alfred Gilbert and unveiled in 1903, two years after Queen Victoria's death, the statue was a gift from W. H. Stephenson, a company director and politician who held the office of mayor in Newcastle seven times.

In 1503, the thirteen-year-old Princess Margaret, daughter of Henry VII and engaged to marry James IV of Scotland, while passing through Newcastle on her way north, noted in her journal a number of children in surplices "who sang melodious hymns, accompanying themselves with instruments of many sorts".