Manchester+Cathedral

 Manchester Cathedral is a church dedicated to St. Mary. There's been a church in Manchester dedicated to St. Mary on that site as long ago as 1086, but the only surviving evidence from this period is a small carving of an angel with a scroll . That stone translates as “into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit .” The original building was a Saxon church, built before the Norman Invasion.

In the year of 1075, William the Conqueror gave land away. A church stood there for some time, but the land was abandoned in the early 1200s. Around 1421, King Henry V allowed Tomas de la Warre to establish a college on the land, and the college included the parish. For the next few centuries, the church was added to, hardly resembling what you would have seen back in the 15th century.

 By the middle of the 1800s, the cathedral was in disrepair, so s tone work was replaced between 1850 and 1870. Now the cathedral gives the overall impression of a 19th century structure. During the Manchester Blitz of 1940, a German bomb damaged the cathedral and demolished the Lady Chapel, it took almost 20 years to complete the repairs. The cathedral became a Grade I listed building on January 25, 1952. The building was again damaged by an IRA bomb in June 1996. The cathedral will be refurbished in 2013.   There are 10 bells in the cathedrals tower hung for change ringing, cast in 1925 by Gillett in Johnston. The largest bell in keyed in the tune of D. The bells or rung for church service on Sunday mornings and special occasions. Most recently for a visit by Queen Elizabeth.

In fact evidence of an early Saxon church in Manchester comes from the Angel Stone (right), which was discovered embedded in the wall of the original South Porch of the Cathedral in the 19th century, and which has been dated to around 700.

It was around the year 1075 that King William the Conqueror gave all the land between the River Ribble and the River Mersey to Roger de Poitou, son of the Earl of Shrewsbury.

He in turn gave the Manor of Manchester to the Greslet or Gresley family.

In 1086 Manchester was recorded in William the Conqueror’s Domesday Book, which mentioned that the place had a Parish Church and it is believed that this church was located at the corner of St Mary’s Gate and Exchange Street.

However, this site was deserted when in 1215 Robert Greslet, Lord of the Manor and 5th Baron of Manchester decided to build the current church adjacent to his manor house (now Chetham’s Library). This became the Parish Church of Manchester.