AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Beneath the busy streets of Coventry's Cathedral Quarter lie the remains of the city's first cathedral — a great Benedictine priory founded by Lady Godiva and Earl Leofric in 1043. For centuries these ruins disappeared beneath car parks, gardens and rubble. The Priory Visitor Centre tells their story, housing artefacts from remarkable archaeological excavations and sitting in a peaceful cloister garden designed to reveal the shape of the buried monastic complex.↗↗↗
Tucked between Priory Row and the medieval Lychgate Cottages, this is a quiet pocket of heritage in the heart of a modern city, just minutes from Coventry Cathedral and the Blitz ruins of old St Michael's.↗
A Buried Cathedral Brought Back to Light
The story of this site begins with a Saxon legend come to life. In 1043, Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and his wife Godiva — the Lady Godiva of naked-ride fame — founded a Benedictine monastery on a hilltop in Coventry. The abbey church was consecrated on 4 October that year, housing an abbot and around two dozen monks. By 1102 the priory had taken on cathedral status when Robert de Limsey transferred his bishopric here from Chester, creating the Cathedral and Priory of St Mary. At its greatest extent the medieval cathedral stretched approximately 130 metres long — one of the largest in England — with a west front of twin towers, a long nave, two transepts and a central crossing tower, all set across a 13-acre precinct.
