Southwark Cathedral or ’The Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Saviour and St Mary Overie’ lies on the south bank of the Thames close to London Bridge.
Southwark Cathedral is the mother church of the Anglican Diocese of Southwark. It has been a place of Christian worship for more than 1000 years, but a cathedral only since the creation of the diocese of Southwark in 1905.
The present building retains the basic form of the Gothic structure built between 1220 and 1420. The nave is a late 19th-century reconstruction.
Between 1106 and 1538 it was the church of an Augustinian priory, Southwark Priory. Following the dissolution of the monasteries, it became a parish church, with the new dedication of St Saviour’s.
The church was in the diocese of Winchester until 1877, when the parish was transferred to the diocese of Rochester.
