The Journey - by Fenwick Lawson

Saint Cuthbert, a Northumbrian Saxon, lived on Lindisfarne (or Holy Island) - off the coast of Northumberland, where he was first Prior and then Bishop. He died in 687 on the island of the Inner Farne, his place of retreat.
A few years later the monks reopened his coffin to find the body preserved intact. They took this "miracle" to be a sign that he indeed was a saint.
From then on Cuthbert's body was of supreme importance to his Island Community, who built a shrine in his honour.
In the late 9th Century, the Vikings invaded Lindisfarne, and the community fled, carrying its precious coffin together with the "Lindisfarne Gospels" written for "God and Saint Cuthbert".
For many years the monks travelled around the north: first to Whithorn in Scotland; then across the Pennines South to Crayke in Yorkshire. In 883 they arrived in Chester-le-Street and built a wooden church there to hold the body of their Saint.
In 993 a further Viking invasion forced the monks to move again, first to Ripon, and then later that year to Durham, to a rocky outcrop in a loop of the river Wear. Here, according to an account by Simeon of Dirham, the coffin became immovable, taken to be a sign that it was here that Cuthbert wished his body to remain permanently.
A Saxon church was built in his honour, and in 1093 the Normans built the present magnificent Cathedral as his permanent shrine.
The city of Durham grew up around it.

This sculpture was unveiled by Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal on 26 September 2008.