The North Portal of Durham Cathedral and the Problem of ‘Sanctuary’ in Medieval Britain

Abstract

A small room (which has since been destroyed) located over the north portal of Durham Cathedral has been explained as a watching-room for fugitives fleeing to seek sanctuary at the cathedral that housed the shrine of one of England's pre-eminent saints, Cuthbert. The source behind this identification is an account of the customs of Durham written only c 1593. There is no earlier documentary evidence indicating a function for this room. An examination of the customs and traditions of sanctuary, some aspects of which were unique to England in the Middle Ages, suggests that there was no need for such a supposed watching-room. A search for parallels, especially among cathedral and abbey churches from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, produces no conclusive evidence for the function of similar but larger rooms located over strongly projecting porches sheltering lateral entrances to naves. Although a function as a watching-room may be doubted more than firmly disproved, it can nonetheless be suggested that the room was more likely constructed for a liturgical purpose such as some aspect of the ritual surrounding the arrival of the bishop and his entrance into his church.Next to the north portal -the main entrance to the cathedral, in the sixth bay of the aisle from the east -is a small plaque which reads in part:In the late 16th Century the anonymous author of The Rites of Durham describing medieval practice wrote '... the abbey church and all the churchyard and the circuit thereof was a sanctuary for all manner of men that had done or committed any great offence, as killing of a man in his own defence, or any prisoners that had broken out of prison and fled to the church door, knocking and rapping at it to have it opened.' The sanctuary knocker was perhaps most used for this purpose at night when the church was locked and the noise would alert the watchmen stationed in the room over the north porch. Two blocked-up windows of this room can still be seen inside the cathedral above the north door.The 'sanctuary knocker' to which reference is made is, of course, the splendid and justly famous bronze animal head holding a large ring in its mouth. 1 It is undeniably real, but what of the watchman's room said to have been over the portal? An initial examination of the fabric reveals little evidence for it.The north portal consists of five shafted orders which are not accommodated within the thickness of the aisle wall (fig 1). Rather, the orders project to form what in another context I have termed a portal-porch. 2 Such projecting portal jambs are not at all uncommon in English and Scottish Romanesque and examples may be found ranging from Jedburgh Abbey (Roxburghshire) in the north east to St Germans (Cornwall) in the south west (both from the