About English Churches
English Churches is a guide to the history and architecture of England's great cathedrals and churches — the buildings in which the story of a nation's faith is written in stone.
A Thousand Years, Told in Stone
From the mission of Augustine at Canterbury in 597 to Sir Christopher Wren's dome above London, English cathedrals chart the arrival of Christianity, the ambition of Norman and Gothic masons, and the upheavals of the Reformation. Our purpose is to make that long history clear and vivid — one building, one founding date, one story at a time.
Each profile sets out when a church was founded, how it was built and rebuilt, the style of its architecture, and the events and people that shaped it, alongside images of its interior and exterior.
The Great Churches
We focus on the cathedrals and churches that best tell the wider story: the cradle of English Christianity at Canterbury, the coronation church of Westminster Abbey, the Norman grandeur of Durham, the soaring Gothic of Lincoln, Salisbury and York, and the singular marvels of Wells and Ely. Together they span every great age of English church-building.
Explore the cathedrals →