A Carlisle woman has claimed to have finally discovered the true meaning of the designs of the misericords of Carlisle Cathedral.

Thirlie Grundy has spent the past 30 years analysing and understanding every artefact placed in the Cathedral building, and through her illustrations has finally managed to find the reasons why these 600-year-old illustrations were designed in their own unique way.

Now in her 90s, Ms Grundy feels that the discoveries will help the future of the city gain some form of understanding about the misericords.

When you enter the Cathedral, you notice that the carved seats were placed at random but, as Ms Grundy’s studies suggest, when they are arranged in the order in which they would have been carved, it is like an autobiographical tale about the carver’s life.

The Cathedral was built by three nationalities of master-masons; the Normans, Italians and Anglo-Saxons. As the Black Death spread throughout England in the mid 1300s, many of the masons had succumbed to the plague, grounding building projects to a halt.

Work was then picked up by a group of Normandy builders after the pandemic came to an end, who used oak trees to design the misericords. Woodland designs stemmed from the god of the oak tree in which they worshipped.

Ms Grundy has used her research to create a booklet which describes in detail what each misericord in the Cathedral means, each individual one telling its own unique story.

An earlier edition of Ms Grundy’s ‘The Medieval Misericords in Carlisle Cathedral’ can be purchased online via the Cumbrian Books website, priced at £1.95.