Wedding Photographer Durham — Cathedral and Castle UNESCO World Heritage Site, the River Wear and Palace Green
Durham is England’s most dramatically sited cathedral city — the Peninsula enclosed by the Wear’s horseshoe meander, upon which stand Norman cathedral and Norman castle that together form the most completely surviving Norman monumental centre in England and a UNESCO World Heritage Site of the highest European significance. Durham Cathedral’s Romanesque nave — the earliest pointed-arch rib vault in Europe (1093–1133), the Galilee Chapel with the tomb of the Venerable Bede and the Chapel of the Nine Altars’ spectacular east end — provides ceremony and portrait settings of maximum Norman ecclesiastical grandeur. For Durham wedding photography, the Cathedral and Castle’s peninsula setting above the Wear’s wooded gorge provides what is arguably the finest combination of cathedral, castle, river and medieval hill-town in England.
Palace Green, the Cathedral Close and the Norman Interior
Palace Green — the open space between the Cathedral’s north front and Durham Castle, the largest Norman civic space remaining above ground in England — provides an exterior portrait setting of extreme Norman architectural grandeur: the Cathedral’s north transept’s three great round arches, the Castle gatehouse and the Georgian and medieval buildings on the Green’s perimeter frame a civic landscape of extraordinary historical gravity. The Cathedral Close’s south side — the Prior’s garden and the Prior’s Hall range — provides a more intimate sequenced garden portrait setting within the monastic precinct. The Cathedral’s nave interior, the Galilee Chapel and the Sanctuary Knocker on the north door (a twelfth-century bronze lion’s head whose grip granted sanctuary) provide interior portrait settings of deep Norman historical atmosphere.
Prebends Bridge, the River Wear and Crook Hall
Prebends Bridge — the Georgian stone bridge of 1777 below the Cathedral’s south front, the most celebrated vantage point for the Cathedral’s peninsular silhouette above the Wear — provides the single most recognisable and most photographed portrait location in Durham: the view up the river from the bridge’s central span, with the Cathedral’s central tower and twin west towers above the wooded gorge sides in dawn or golden-hour light, is one of the great portrait views in English cathedral cities. The Wear’s wooded gorge below Prebends Bridge — the river walk from Framwellgate Bridge to the Old Fulling Mill and Prebends — provides a completely enclosed riverside portrait setting of ancient tree and still-water character. Crook Hall Gardens — a medieval hall and walled garden immediately north of the city centre — provides a more intimate garden portrait setting with a different angle on the Cathedral’s towers.