Thor’s Day Book Club Visits Worcester Cathedral Library

Members of the Thor’s Day Book Club visited Worcester Cathedral Library on Friday 26 June to learn more about the Cathedral’s magnificent collection of historic manuscripts and books.

The library is one of the largest cathedral libraries in the country and holds many priceless treasures, some dating back to the foundation of the Cathedral in the eighth century. The origins of RGS itself also date back to this period, when Anglo-Saxon monks at the Cathedral monastery began to help educate the children of Worcester.

Thor’s Day Book Club meets weekly to read about and discuss Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic literature, history and culture. Its members also enjoy reading works by authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, as well as playing the adventure quest series ‘Fighting Fantasy’. The visit therefore provided an excellent opportunity for pupils to peer back into history and encounter some remarkable literary and historical records.

Among the treasures on display were unique handwritten Anglo-Saxon charters, monastic schoolbooks, world maps, precious Bibles and a copy of King John’s will, together with his thumb bone, which builders removed from his tomb during restoration work in the nineteenth century.

The collection at Worcester Cathedral Library is fascinating, and pupils greatly enjoyed finding out more from Dr David Morrison, who oversees the collection. Of particular interest were the doodles and marginalia contained within the books. It seems that the monks who produced them enjoyed adding their own imaginative and often rather fantastical drawings alongside the texts they were creating.

This has been the Club’s first year and the visit was a splendid way to conclude what has been such an enjoyable time. Although it was certainly warm in the Library during the heatwave, pupils were able to cool down with an ice cream afterwards and are already looking forward to more trips in the future.

Mr N Phillips, Head of English