The See of Sherborne
was created in AD 705 when the great Diocese of Winchester was divided
in two, and Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury, was appointed as the first
Bishop of the West Saxons.
The new Cathedral of Sherborne served St.
Aldhelm and twenty-six succeeding Saxon Bishops, but soon after the
Norman Conquest the Bishop's seat was moved to Old Sarum, and later to
Salisbury.
Earlier, in 998, St. Wulfsin had ejected the
community of secular canons who served the Cathedral, and invited monks
of the Order of St. Benedictine house until 1539 when Abbot John
Barnstaple and his sixteen fellow monks surrendered it to King Henry
VIII. Relations between the monks and the people of Sherborne had
not always been good - a riot in 1437 had resulted in a fire which
permanently reddened the walls of the choir and the crossing - and the parishioners
were delighted to regain possession of what has ever since been their
parish church.
The chief glory of the Abbey is its roof, the
earliest great fan vault in existence. See also the medieval
misericords in the Choir, some fine Tudor monuments, the Ascension
reredos behind the High Alter and the engraved glass reredos by Whistler
in the Lady Chapel. The most recent feature is the Great West
Window by John Hayward, dedicated in 1998 in the presence of Her Majesty
the Queen and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh.
