Ripon Cathedral

Ripon Cathedral
The west end of the cathedral
Ripon Cathedral Shown within North Yorkshire
Coordinates: 54°8′5″N 1°31′12″W / 54.13472°N 1.52000°W / 54.13472; -1.52000
Location	Ripon, North Yorkshire
Country	England
Denomination	Church of England
Tradition	Anglo-Catholic
Website	www.riponcathedral.org.uk
Architecture
Status	Cathedral (since 1836)
Functional status	Active
Heritage designation	Grade I
Style	Anglo-Saxon, Gothic (Early English)
Years built	1160–1547
Administration
Diocese	Leeds (since 2014)
Province	York
Clergy
Dean	John Dobson
Precentor	Paul Greenwell
Canon(s)	Elizabeth Sewell (Canon Pastor & Canon Educator)
Laity
Director of music	Andrew Bryden
Organist(s)	Tim Harper

Ripon Cathedral is a seat of the Bishop of Leeds and one of three co-equal mother churches of the Diocese of Leeds, situated in the small North Yorkshire city of Ripon, England. The cathedral has Grade I listed building status.

There has been a stone church on the site since 672 when Saint Wilfrid replaced the previous timber church of the monastery at Ripon (a daughter house of Saint Aidan's monastery at Melrose) with one in the Roman style. This is one of the earliest stone buildings erected in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria. The crypt dates from this period.

People have been coming to worship and pray at Ripon for more than 1,350 years. The Cathedral building itself is part of this continuing act of worship, begun in the 7th century when Saint Wilfrid built one of England's first stone churches on this site, and still renewed every day. Within the nave and choir, you can see the evidence of 800 years in which master craftsmen have expressed their faith in wood and stone.

Today's church is the fourth to have stood on this site. Saint Wilfrid brought stonemasons, plasterers and glaziers from France and Italy to build his great basilica in AD 672. A contemporary account by Eddius Stephanus tells us:

"In Ripon, Saint Wilfrid built and completed from the foundations to the roof a church of dressed stone, supported by various columns and side-aisles to a great height and many windows, arched vaults and a winding cloister."

Saint Wilfrid was buried in this church near the high altar. Devastated by the English king Eadred in AD 948 as a warning to the Archbishop of York, only the crypt of Wilfrid's church survived but today this tiny 7th-century chapel rests complete beneath the later grandeur of Archbishop Roger de Pont l’Evêque’s 12th century minster. A second minster soon arose at Ripon, but it too perished – this time in 1069 at the hands of William the Conqueror. Thomas of Bayeux, first Norman Archbishop of York, then instigated the construction of a third church, traces of which were incorporated into the later chapter house of Roger's minster.