The parish Church of St Mary and St Cuthbert is a Church of England Church. The site has been used for worship for over 1100 years; parts of the building are over 950 years old. The oldest surviving translation of the Gospels into English was done here, by Aldred between 947 and 968, at a time when it served as the centre of Christianity from Lothian to Teesside.
The church was established to house the body of Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, Bishop of Lindisfarne from 684 to 687. After his death he became one of the most venerated saints of the time, so when driven out of Lindisfarne by Viking raids in 875 the monks took St Cuthbert's coffin along with other valuable items, including the Lindisfarne Gospels, eventually settling at Chester-le-Street (then called Cunecaster or Conceastre), at the site of the old Roman fort of Concangis, in 883. They built a wooden church and shrine for St Cuthbert's relics, dedicating it to St Mary and St Cuthbert.
This was also a Cathedral as it contained the seat of the Bishop, for the diocese stretching between the boundaries of Danelaw at Teesside in the south, of Alba at Lothian in the north and the Irish Sea in the west.
While here the Lindisfarne Gospels - created in Lindisfarne around 715 - were translated from Latin into English, sometime between 947 and 968, by bishop Aldred. The Gospels and St Cuthbert's coffin were here until 995, when renewed Viking raids drove the monks out, to Ripon before returning to the more easily defended Durham, where they eventually built a stone cathedral around St Cuthbert's remains. The wooden Church remained in place until replaced by a stone Church in the mid 11th century.
The co-ordinates will take you to an information board where the numbers needed to find the cache can be gathered:
The cache is located on a public footpath a short walk away at:
N54 51.ABC W001 34.DEF
A = Second paragraph, third line: last number in date -1
B = Final paragraph, first line: first number in date +1
C = Final paragraph, first line: first number in date
D = Final paragraph, first line: third number in date
E = Fourth paragraph, height of the Church in feet: second number
F = Fourth paragraph, height of the Church in feet: first number
Checksum = 14
This is a high muggle area so extreme stealth is required.
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