Worcester Cathedral Library and Archive Blog

Here’s a thought, did people in the Middle Ages have a concept of ‘being on time’? You started work as soon as it was light enough, and there were no 10:00 appointments to be on time for �...

https://worcestercathedrallibrary.wordpress.com/2024/04/09/echoes-of-time-the-medieval-clocks-of-worcester-cathedral/

Recently one of the cathedral guides was asked about the lions painted on the shields of King John’s tomb. The visitor asked if they were lions or leopards as they had heard them described as l...

https://worcestercathedrallibrary.wordpress.com/2024/03/26/a-very-basic-guide-to-the-heraldry-of-king-johns-tomb/

The Cathedral’s service team are a skilled group of craftsmen who work alongside the stonemasons and make sure that things run smoothly for the various buildings and departments around the site...

https://worcestercathedrallibrary.wordpress.com/2024/03/19/the-seventeenth-century-maintenance-team-of-worcester-cathedral/

The Cathedral Library has a number of anatomy books published in the seventeenth century and today’s blog is about one of these, by Giulio Cesare Casseri, published in 1622. The book’s full t...

https://worcestercathedrallibrary.wordpress.com/2024/03/04/all-our-knowledge-begins-with-the-senses-julio-casseri-placentino-1622-nova-anatomia-contines-accuratam-organorum-sensilium/

If you have ever waited for a parcel to be delivered you may not be so far from some medieval people as you might think. The Benedictine Cathedral Priory needed to maintain various means of trans...

https://worcestercathedrallibrary.wordpress.com/2024/02/24/a-moving-business-transport-and-worcester-cathedral-priory-in-the-middle-ages/

Worcester Cathedral Library has two copies of Nathaneal Carpenter’s “Geographie Delineated Forth in Two Bookes containing the Spherical and Topicall parts thereof”. Published in 1635, the b...

https://worcestercathedrallibrary.wordpress.com/2024/01/19/nathaneal-carpenters-journey-through-time-and-place-the-first-english-geography-book/

A recent blog https://worcestercathedrallibrary.wordpress.com/2023/11/02/chemistry-lessons-from-1650-tyrocinium-chyicum-jean-beguin/  describes one of the smallest books in Worcester Cathedral L...

https://worcestercathedrallibrary.wordpress.com/2023/12/13/sir-francis-drake-hero-or-pirate/

The Crises of the early Fourteenth Century at the Priory of Worcester In the lead up to the fourteenth century the Priory of Worcester had been enjoying a prosperous period. It was a time known a...

https://worcestercathedrallibrary.wordpress.com/2023/11/24/famine-and-plague-the-great-equalisers/

On the North side of the Nave, to the left of the entrance to the Tower are two monuments to two 19th century female authors, Mrs Henry Wood (d. 1887) and Mary Martha Sherwood (d. 1851). The monu...

https://worcestercathedrallibrary.wordpress.com/2023/11/14/dorothy-stanton-wise-arca-1879-1918/

After the dissolution, unlike the priory before, the Cathedral doesn’t employ its own Master Mason, but hires masons on an ‘as and when needed’ basis. Although ‘masons’ are mentioned in...

https://worcestercathedrallibrary.wordpress.com/2023/11/07/a-family-of-stone-the-eighteenth-century-stonemasons-of-worcester-cathedral/