St Michael Chapel — A Charnel House Becomes a Church
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Transcript
St Michael Chapel began in the late fourteenth century beside the parish cemetery. Its lower level served as an ossuary while the upper chapel provided worship associated with burial and remembrance.
That original function makes the building more than a miniature companion to the cathedral. Medieval urban death required infrastructure: cemeteries filled, bones were reorganized, and religious ritual structured how communities remembered the dead.
Later alterations changed the chapel before modern restoration sought to recover its Gothic character. The building therefore reveals both medieval funerary practice and the modern desire to present a coherent historic centre.