The Quire

• Prior Fossor commissioned the Neville Screen just before his death. He lived to almost 90 years of age, surviving the Black Death and the threat of Scottish invasion.
• Lord John Neville was the main donor who paid for the Screen. It might have been intended as a memorial to his father Ralph, who died in 1367, and who had led the English army to victory against the invading Scots at the Battle of Neville’s Cross in 1346.
• It cost £500 or 500 marks (the account does not clarify) which would be between £192k-365k in today’s money.
• It is thought that the King’s mason Henry Yvele designed and carved the screen. 
• It is made from Caen stone imported from Normandy and carved in London. 
• Unfortunately, the screen did not escape conflict and in the 1550s the puritanical Dean Horne ordered that all the colourful decoration and gilding be washed away.

Originally, the niches in the Screen held carved alabaster statues, likely to have been made in Nottingham.

The 107 statues featured saints and angels, including the Blessed Virgin Mary in the middle with St Cuthbert and St Oswald to either side of her.

It is thought that, during the Reformation in 1539, the Durham monks and other members of the community hid the statues to protect them from destruction. Nobody knows where the statues were hidden. Made of soft alabaster, they are probably only dust now.