Lancaster Priory, Cathedral and Town

After a lovely dinner, a good night’s sleep and excellent full English breakfast in the Crown and Mitre Hotel in Carlisle, I spent another couple of hours wandering around the city and taking a few more photos before catching the train to Lancaster.

I wasn’t sure when I first started on my trips how long it was going to take me to photograph the cathedrals, and so I’d allowed 1.5 days per trip, especially for the long trips. Now, I find that it takes me 1-2 hours at most because my patience runs out after a couple of hours. Which is a long-winded way of saying that I’d booked a night’s stay and the Lancaster Travelodge. For a budget hotel, it had friendly and competent staff, was very clean with comfortable beds, which is all you need in a hotel.

After booking in, I went out for a stroll in the warm afternoon sun to do some sightseeing and to find a restaurant for dinner. Lancaster is a lovely small city; it’s on the banks of the River Lune and the Lancaster canal runs through it. There is a modern shopping centre, and the three reasons for my visit (Cathedral, Priory and Castle) are all within a reasonable walking distance of each other. I was disappointed that due to the Castle repair works only parts of it were open to the public, and so I decided to give it a miss.

I dropped into the Lancaster City Museum it is a great little museum of the history of both the city and King’s Own Regiment. Well worth a visit.

Lancaster Cathedral originally built in the 1850s as a parish church in the Gothic style and became a Cathedral in 1924. It has had two major renovations in 1901 and in 1995. In many ways, it is a typical late Victorian church with some nice touches but, in my opinion, it lacks the grandeur of a cathedral.

Here are some of the photos that I took.

Lancaster Priory is a much older building and is very close to the castle and not far from a Roman bathhouse. Work on it began in the 1090s but the site may have been used for religious purposes in Roman and Saxon times. The Priory is one of the High Anglican churches.

Here are some of the photos that I took of it.