Today's church is the fourth to have stood on this site. Saint Wilfrid brought stonemasons, plasterers and glaziers from France and Italy to build his great
basilica in AD 672. A contemporary account by
Stephen of Ripon tells us: Saint Wilfrid was buried in this church near the high altar. Devastated by the English king
Eadred in AD 948 as a warning to the
Archbishop of York, only the crypt of Wilfrid's church survived but today this tiny 7th-century chapel rests complete beneath the later grandeur of Archbishop
Roger de Pont l’Evêque's 12th century minster. A second
minster soon arose at Ripon, but it too perished – this time in 1069 at the hands of
William the Conqueror.
Thomas of Bayeux, first
Norman Archbishop of York, then instigated the construction of a third church, traces of which were incorporated into the later chapter house of Roger's minster. The
Early English west front was added in 1220, its twin towers originally crowned with wooden spires and lead. The east window was built as part of a reconstruction of the choir between 1286–8 and 1330, and was described by architecture critic
Pevsner as a 'splendid' example of the series of large Decorated Gothic windows constructed in Northern England. Major rebuilding had to be postponed due to the outbreak of the
Wars of the Roses but resumed after the accession of
Henry VII and the restoration of peace in 1485. The crossing tower was rebuilt after it collapsed in an earthquake in 1450 but was never completed. Between 1501 and 1522 the nave walls were raised higher and the aisles added. The church's thirty-four
misericords were carved between 1489 and 1494. The same (Ripon) school of carvers also carved the misericords at
Beverley Minster and
Manchester Cathedral. But in 1547, before this work was finished,
Edward VI dissolved Ripon's college of canons. All revenues were appropriated by the Crown and the tower never received its last Perpendicular arches. It was not until 1604 that
James I issued his
Charter of Restoration. During the Civil War, much of the stained glass was smashed and some of the statues were destroyed. The minster finally became a cathedral (the church where the Bishop has his
cathedra or throne) in 1836, the focal point of the newly created
Anglican Diocese of Ripon – the first to be established since the
Reformation. ==Dean and chapter==