Durham Cathedral's a place close to my heart, but here's a tale.... After the Battle of Neville's Cross (1346) the building was used as POW camp for Scottish soldiers who proceeded to trash the place - burning whatever they could find to keep warm, smashing the heads of statues to heat them in the embers as pass round to keep their hands warm. The evidence of this is there for all to see; not the usual reformation vandalism we're used to weeping over.

Folklore records the prosonors left Prior Castel's famous clock untouched because it bears a prominent thistle. A canny Cathedral guide will point it was more likely because they needed it to know what time it was; a cannier one will tell you it was because the clock wasn't put there for another sixty years or more...

Folklore also records that whilst the prisoners' excrement was carried off and dumped into the Wear by a special team of medieval honey diggers, their urine pooled beneath the foundations of the solid bedrock of the Dunholme where it lay peaceably for over 600 years until the summer of 1976 when it was kicked off by the heat, necessitating the cathedral be closed until the problem could be sorted.

Folklore also records that I went into Durham Cathedral one day and engaged Christopher Lee in a conversation covering much of the above without recognising him....