He was and remains “northern England’s most popular saint”, according to the Oxford Dictionary of Saints, but it has taken five centuries to replace a monument to Cuthbert on the spot of his original tomb.
It is long overdue, some will say. It is entirely deserved, say English Heritage which will on Saturday reveal the memorial at Lindisfarne Priory, in Northumberland.
“This is the first time in 486 years that there has been something to memorialise the fact that Cuthbert was actually buried here,” said Mark Douglas, senior properties curator.
Visitors to the priory this weekend will see the new memorial as well as a total refresh of the priory’s museum display, including recent discoveries such as Britain’s first known rosary bead necklace and one of the earliest surviving examples of knitting in Europe.
Lindisfarne Priory is on Holy Island, a magical place only accessible by causeway at low tide. It was once one of the most important places in Anglo-Saxon England and Cuthbert is a huge part of its story.
Cuthbert was a seventh-century monk who was prior and then bishop of Lindisfarne. His holiness, charm and teaching skills made him famous far and wide and he was said to have gifts of prophecy and healing.
One story tells of how he would sing psalms at night in the North Sea and once emerged to bless otters who dried his feet. In his later years he was a hermit with only seabirds and seals for company.
Eleven years after his death, Cuthbert’s coffin was opened and his body was found to be uncorrupted, in that he looked as if he had just fallen asleep.
That was the beginnings of the cult of St Cuthbert, with Lindisfarne becoming an important centre of pilgrimage and the monastery growing in power and wealth.
The world turned upside down when the Vikings raided in 793, sending shock waves across Christian Europe. Even Cuthbert’s presence had not stopped it. “It was seen as an astonishingly bad thing to have happened and a portent for worse things to come,” said Douglas.
In 875 the monks left Lindisfarne, taking Cuthbert’s coffin with them. It eventually made its way to Durham, where a cathedral was built and his shrine remains.
From the early 12th century there was a cenotaph marking Cuthbert’s original tomb on Lindisfarne. It was removed when the priory closed in 1537 as part of Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries.
The new memorial, designed by sculptor Russ Coleman, is a significant moment, said Douglas. “The presence of Cuthbert here is so, so important and it’s a mistake not to recognise that. He is not a sideline to the story, he is the story.
“I’m not massively spiritual but there is something about Cuthbert, there’s something about the reverence and the appeal of the man right the way through the centuries. He is also a saint for the modern age, there is an ecological side to his life.”
English Heritage had to be a lot of things to a lot of people, Douglas said. Their sites are a fun day out, a place to learn about history and some people do come to Lindisfarne as a place of pilgrimage. “That needs to be acknowledged. I’ve seen people gather in the shop and say prayers and that’s not right, they should come here and say prayers.”
The memorial coincides with a major revamp of the priory’s museum. “We’ve stripped out the original space and it has completely changed,” said the collections curator, Susan Harrison. “Every single element from the floor to the ceiling beams … new cases, new panels, new interpretation. We’ve brought back favourite objects and also added objects that were previously in storage or have been excavated in recent years.”
One of the recently excavated objects is a remarkable necklace of tiny salmon vertebrae dating from the 8th or 9th century found on a skeleton which, experts said, are Britain’s earliest known rosary beads. “It is a poor man’s material because it was easily available,” said Harrison.
Nearby are textile fragments that were mixed up in a bundle of rags and have been identified as one of the earliest surviving examples of knitting ever found in Europe.
The woollen-sleeved waistcoat dates from the 18th century and the fact that it survives is remarkable, said Harrison. “For me it is the connection to the people. This waistcoat was worn by somebody who lived here; it is a tangible connection to our past and that is really, really exciting.”
