The annual St Cuthbert’s Day walk from Chester le Street to Durham was spectacularly different this year. The pilgrims arrived at the Town Hall for their first sighting of a new St Cuthbert’s Banner that replaces an earlier one, carried into the 1346 Battle of Neville’s Cross, and destroyed during the Reformation. The new banner was commissioned by The Northumbria Association and created by a team of North-East artisans.
The banner is an exquisite work of craftsmanship involving 800 hours of embroidery and has a frame made of oiled oak and silver. There are silver bells on the banner too and there is a carrying harness in white leather.
Durham Photographic Society members organised by John Attle were on hand to photograph the Walk and the banner being carried by Northumbria Association President, the appropriately named John Cuthbert, from the Market Place, along the Bailey to be formally received in the Cathedral by the Rev Michael Sadgrove, Dean of Durham.
The banner, by any standard a labour of love, can now be viewed in the glorious setting of St Cuthbert’s Chapel, no doubt for the next 1000 years and beyond.
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