St Mary and St Cuthbert, Chester-le-Street

The parish church of St Mary and St Cuthbert is a Church of England church in Chester-le-Street, County Durham, England. The site has been used for worship for over 1100 years; elements of the current 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.St Cuthbert's communityThe 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, with a significant cultus and the Venerable Bede writing both a verse and prose biography of him. So when driven out of Lindisfarne by Viking raids in 875 the monks took St Cuthbert's coffin along with other valuable items. They wandered for seven years before eventually settling at Chester-le-Street (then called Cunecaster or Conceastre), at the site of the old Roman fort of Concangis, in 883, on land granted to them by Guthred.