Christ Church Cathedral

The Cathedral is the College Chapel for the College as well as the cathedral church for the Diocese of Oxford. The beautiful building is home to a vibrant worshipping community with a rich worshipping tradition and a world famous Cathedral Choir. It hosts a wide range of diocesan events, music, art and drama. The Cathedral is visited by thousands of people each year who pray, worship, or simply enjoy the stillness and the profound sense of history it inspires. On this site stood the convent church where Oxford's patron saint, Frideswide, was buried in the 8th century. Around her shrine in the 9th and 10th centuries a group of priests lived a communal life, doing pastoral work, and in the 12th century the monastery became the Augustinian priory of St Frideswide. By the 13th century it was a major place of pilgrimage. When Cardinal Wolsey began the building of his college here, the western end of the building was removed to make space for Tom Quad, and the remainder was used as the temporary chapel for the new college. Wolsey's plan to replace it with a larger chapel on the North side of Tom Quad would have caused its demolition but when he fell from power the building of the new chapel stopped. Today we are grateful that the building has survived, and that it is used to the glory of God.