From Earliest Times to the Early 13th Century

Exeter Cathedral stands in the heart of a historic city founded nearly 2,000 years ago. The extensive surviving remains of the ancient walls indicate the size of the Roman city called Isca Dumnoniorum.

For half of Exeter’s existence, until the eleventh century, there was no cathedral here. From 704 AD, the bishop of Sherborne in Dorset was responsible for the Christian Church throughout the south-west. Then, at a reorganisation of the diocese in 909, Eadwulf was appointed the first bishop of Crediton, a few miles northwest of Exeter. Initially the bishop of Crediton was responsible for both Devon and Cornwall, but Cornwall became a separate diocese later in the 10th century.

Leofric became bishop of both Crediton and Cornwall in 1046. It was he who proposed uniting the two dioceses and establishing a new cathedral in Exeter. The pope and the king agreed to Leofric’s ideas and King Edward the Confessor provided his church in Exeter for use as the first cathedral.

So the story of a cathedral in Exeter began in 1050, when Bishop Leofric was enthroned as the first bishop of Exeter, with royal blessing. King Edward and Queen Edytha attended the ceremony and both conducted Leofric to his seat, as described in the cathedral’s foundation charter. Outside the west front of the present cathedral, an iron cross marks the site of the church of St Mary Major which was demolished in 1971. This was a Victorian building which had replaced a medieval church. Excavation of the site revealed the foundations of a large Anglo-Saxon church, likely the first Exeter Cathedral where Leofric was enthroned.

The foundation charter, now on display in the Treasures Exhibition, tells us that Exeter was thought more defensible than either Crediton or Cornwall, where churches had been attacked by pirates. It also refers to the cathedral adopting some former monastic buildings of St Peter. The cathedral community in Exeter established by Bishop Leofric was a secular ‘brotherhood of canons’ who lived according to the Rule of St Chrodegang, working for the bishop and ministering to the city. Exeter Cathedral has never been a monastery.