St Mary's Priory
The first cathedral in Coventry was St. Mary's Priory and Cathedral, which held such status from a date between 1095 and 1102, when Bishop Robert de Limesey moved the Bishop's see from Lichfield to Coventry, until 1539 when it fell victim to King Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries. Prior to 1095, it had been a small Benedictine monastery (endowed by Earl Leofric and Lady Godiva in 1043), but shortly after this time rebuilding began and by the middle of the 13th century it was a cathedral of 425 feet in length and included many large outbuildings. Leofric was probably buried within the original Saxon church in Coventry. However, records suggest that Godiva was buried at Evesham Abbey, alongside her father confessor, Prior Aefic.
Read more about this topic: Coventry Cathedral
Famous quotes containing the words mary and/or priory:
“The traveller on the prarie is naturally a hunter, on the head waters of the Missouri and Columbia a trapper, and at the Falls of St. Mary a fisherman.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Blessing turned to blasphemies,
Holy deeds to despites.
Sin is where our Lady sat,
Heaven turned is to hell,
Sathan sits where our Lord did sway,
Walsingham, Oh farewell!”
—Unknown. A Lament for the Priory of Walsingham (l. 39–44)