History
A Church dedicated to St Michael has stood on this site for over a thousand years. For most of that time, it has been known as ‘Bishopwearmouth Parish Church’. The parish of Bishopwearmouth, south of the River Wear was founded in around 940AD, with an original stone church being built shortly afterwards. The first evidence of a church on the site arose in a 1930s excavation when Saxon stones were found. Due to colliery subsidence, the church was virtually re-built beyond recognition in the early 20th century.
In 1998, following the grant of City status, the Church was redesignated as ‘Sunderland Minster’: possibly the first Minster Church in England since the Reformation.
In May 2007, with the adoption of Benedict Biscop as Sunderland’s Patron Saint, the church was redesignated as an Extra Parochial Place with the addition of St Benedict Biscop in its title.
Read more about this topic: Sunderland Minster
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)