Qualla: Exeter Cathedral

Exeter Cathedral: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Wigulf~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY 2.5. Walk into Exeter Cathedral and look up. The ribbed stone vault above the nave runs for roughly 96 metres without a break, the longest uninterrupted medieval stone vault anywhere on Earth. Bishop John Grandisson finished it in the 14th century, and the geometry has not faltered since. Below that ceiling sits a library that began in 1050 with sixty-six books, one of which still survives in the building where it was first shelved nearly a thousand years ago.

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Wigulf~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY 2.5

Exeter Cathedral: Leofric's books

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris' Buet, CC BY-SA 2.0. When Leofric became the first Bishop of Exeter in 1050, he gave the cathedral sixty-six books. Sixty-five are gone or scattered to other libraries. The one that stayed, Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, is known today as the Exeter Book, the largest surviving collection of Anglo-...

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Image: Chris' Buet | CC BY-SA 2.0

Exeter Cathedral: How the books survived the Commonwealth

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1657, under Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, the cathedral was stripped of several ancillary buildings, including the 1412 reading room. Books vanished into the chaos. Most of them might have followed, except Dr Robert Vilvaine intervened. He had the surviving volumes spirited ...

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Image: Diliff | CC BY-SA 3.0

Exeter Cathedral: The bells called Peter

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Myself, Benjamin Evans, Public domain. The North Tower houses a single bourdon bell, named Peter, weighing roughly 80 long hundredweight, so heavy it no longer swings but only chimes. The South Tower carries something rarer: the second heaviest peal of 12 bells hung for change ringing anywhere in the world, beaten onl...

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Image: Myself, Benjamin Evans | Public domain

Exeter Cathedral: Buried beneath the floor

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit own photo, Public domain. Walking the cathedral floor is walking on bishops. Leofric himself is here, alongside Robert Warelwast, Bartholomew Iscanus, John the Chanter, and a long succession of Exeter prelates running through the centuries. Hugh Courtenay, 2nd Earl of Devon, lies beside his wife Margaret ...

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Image: own photo | Public domain

Exeter Cathedral: The spider in the wall

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Olive Wharry, Public domain. The cathedral has one more resident worth mentioning. Segestria florentina, the tube web spider, lives in the cracks of the cathedral's outer walls. The walls are calcareous stone that slowly decays from acid pollution, opening crevices that invertebrates have made into homes. Th...

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Image: Olive Wharry | Public domain