Qualla: Southwark Cathedral

Southwark Cathedral: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ethan Doyle White, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 16 March 2018, a stray brown cat named Doorkins Magnificat met Queen Elizabeth II in the south aisle of Southwark Cathedral. Doorkins had been wandering in from the streets in 2008, looking for food and a warm radiator. She stayed. Dean Colin Slee named her in a joking nod to the atheist Richard Dawkins. By the time she retired in October 2019 she was a fixture, beloved enough that her death the following year was reported in the national press and that the cathedral held a memorial service for her, apparently the first such service ever held for a cat. The cathedral that took her in is one of the oldest places of Christian worship in London, the first Gothic church the city built, and the spiritual centre of the south bank of the Thames for more than a thousand years. The story is mostly older than her, but the cat fits.

Read more: Southwark Cathedral on Qualla

Image: Ethan Doyle White | CC BY-SA 4.0

Southwark Cathedral: A Ferry, A Priory, A Saint

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Charles from Port Chester, New York, CC BY 2.0. The legend recorded by John Stow in the 16th century claimed the church was founded as a nunnery long before the Norman Conquest by a maiden named Mary, on the profits of a Thames ferry inherited from her parents. Later, the story went, it was converted into a college of priests ...

Read more: Southwark Cathedral on Qualla

Image: Charles from Port Chester, New York | CC BY 2.0

Southwark Cathedral: London's First Gothic Church

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arpingstone, Public domain. The Great Fire of 1212 burned the church down, and the rebuilding that followed produced what is essentially the church standing today: a cruciform Gothic plan, built between roughly 1220 and 1420, the first Gothic church in London. Some 12th-century fragments survived. In the 13...

Read more: Southwark Cathedral on Qualla

Image: Arpingstone | Public domain

Southwark Cathedral: Heresy Trials and Burials

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Protolanguage17, CC BY-SA 4.0. Like every monastic house in England, the priory was dissolved by Henry VIII, surrendered to the Crown in 1540 and re-dedicated to St Saviour. The parishioners leased the church from the Crown until they were able to buy it outright in 1614 for £800. During the reign of Mary I, s...

Read more: Southwark Cathedral on Qualla

Image: Protolanguage17 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Southwark Cathedral: John Harvard and the Harvard Chapel

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AmericanHistoryinEngland, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 29 November 1607, a baby was baptised at the font in St Saviour's. His name was John Harvard. His father Robert, a Southwark butcher and inn-holder, was a business associate of Shakespeare's family and a parochial officer alongside the playwright's colleagues. Three decades la...

Read more: Southwark Cathedral on Qualla

Image: AmericanHistoryinEngland | CC BY-SA 4.0

Southwark Cathedral: Bombs, Cathedral Status, the Future

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, CC BY 2.0. St Saviour's was raised to cathedral status in 1905, becoming the mother church of the new Diocese of Southwark. Between October 1940 and June 1941, more than 1,600 high-explosive bombs and 20 parachute mines fell on the borough of Southwark; the cathedral was damaged in February...

Read more: Southwark Cathedral on Qualla

Image: Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK | CC BY 2.0