Worcester Cathedral

Worcester Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of Christ and Blessed Mary the Virgin, is a Church of England cathedral in Worcester, England. The cathedral is the seat of the bishop of Worcester and is the mother church of the diocese of Worcester; it is administered by its dean and chapter. The cathedral is a grade I listed building and part of a scheduled monument. The cathedral was founded in 680. The earliest surviving fabric dates from 1084, when the cathedral was rebuilt in the Romanesque style by Bishop later Saint Wulfstan. The chapter house dates from 1120, and the nave was extended in the 1170s. It became a place of pilgrimage with the shrines of St Wulfstan and St Oswald. Between 1224 and 1269 the east end was rebuilt in the Early English Gothic style. The remainder of the nave was rebuilt in the 1360s, and the "exquisite" central tower completed in 1374. The cathedral retains a set of medieval misericords, now set into Victorian choir stalls; the cathedral was heavily restored in the nineteenth century, and contains a set of furnishings by George Gilbert Scott. It contains several funerary monuments, including those of King John; Arthur, Prince of Wales, elder brother of Henry VIII; and the prime minister Stanley Baldwin.