Bristol Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, stands on College Green in the centre of Bristol and is the seat of the Bishop of Bristol. It was founded in 1140 as St Augustine's Abbey by Robert Fitzharding, a wealthy local merchant and royal official who later became Lord Berkeley, and was consecrated in 1148 as a house of Augustinian canons. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries it was elevated to cathedral status in 1542, when the new diocese of Bristol was created, and it is today a Grade I listed building. The cathedral is internationally significant for its architecture, above all for its medieval eastern end. Begun under Abbot Knowle from 1298, the choir, aisles and eastern Lady Chapel were built as a hall church, in which the aisles rise to the same height as the central choir, flooding the interior with light and producing one of the finest examples of this form anywhere in Europe. The late Norman Chapter House, surviving from the twelfth century, is celebrated for its rich Romanesque decoration and for containing some of the earliest pointed arches in England. The building's history is also one of interruption and revival. The original nave was demolished during the upheavals of the Dissolution, leaving the church without its western half for more than three centuries. A campaign begun in the 1860s led to the construction of a new nave in the Gothic Revival style by the architect G. E. Street, completed in 1877, with the twin western towers finished around a decade later, so that the present cathedral combines genuine medieval fabric with confident Victorian work. The name College Green, the open space to the north of the cathedral, recalls the collegiate community established in 1542, when the cathedral clergy lived not in a communal monastic dormitory but in separate houses under a Dean. The green remains a focal point of civic Bristol, used for ceremonies and gatherings, and the cathedral itself continues as an active place of worship as well as a visitor attraction. The cathedral has also marked moments of wider church history: in March 1994 it was the setting for the ordination of the first women priests in the Church of England. Built largely of pale Dundry and Bath stone, and containing the tomb of its founder Robert Fitzharding in the choir, it offers visitors a continuous thread from twelfth-century monastic foundation through to the present day.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: College Green, Bristol, United Kingdom

Website: https://bristol-cathedral.co.uk

Opening Date: 11/04/1148