The oldest surviving translation of the Gospels into English was done here, by Aldred between 947 and 968, at a time when it served as the centre of Christianity from Lothian to Teesside.

So when driven out of Lindisfarne by Viking raids in 875 the monks took St Cuthbert's coffin along with other valuable items.

They wandered for seven years before eventually settling at Chester-le-Street (then called Cunecaster or Conceastre), at the site of the old Roman fort of Concangis, in 883,[1] on land granted to them by Guthred.

It was built within the Roman fort, which although abandoned over five hundred years before may have still offered some protection,[4] as well as access north and south along Cade's Road and to the sea by the River Wear.

This was also a cathedral as it contained the seat of the bishop, for the diocese (sometimes known as Lindisfarne and sometimes as Cuncacestre the Latin name for Chester-le-Street) stretching between the boundaries of Danelaw at Teesside in the south, of Alba at Lothian in the north and the Irish Sea in the west.

[4] The oldest parts of the building that can be dated, to 1056 when a stone church was built to replace the wooden shrine to St Cuthbert, are the walls of the chancel and the two largest pillars now near the centre of the nave.

[11] The church was extended around 1267 with the nave, the lower part of the tower and east wall with sedilia all dating from this time.

In 1286 it was made a collegiate church,[12][13] with a dean, seven canons, five chaplains and three deacons, supported by tithes from extensive endowments throughout a large parish.

[12][13] Bishops Deans Rectors Perpetual Curates The Lumley effigies are reflected upon in Letitia Elizabeth Landon's poetical illustration The Aisle of Tombs to an engraving of a painting by Thomas Allom in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1836: 'All their meaner part hath perished, In the earth at rest; And the present hour hath cherished What of them was best.

[20][21][22] The Lindisfarne Gospels were kept at Durham until 1539, when during the Dissolution of the Monasteries St Cuthbert's shrine there was looted and they were taken to London.

From 1383 to 1547 it was occupied by six anchorites, each being walled in to the anchorage for life, able to watch services through a squint into the church which looks down onto a side altar, being fed through another slit to the outside.

It shows the conditions that an anchorite lived in when it was occupied, as well as containing Roman, Anglo-Saxon and medieval items found on the site.