Coventry Blitz the 1950s, designed by the architect Basil Spence. Spence (later knighted for this work) insisted that instead of re-building the old cathedral it should be kept in ruins as a garden of remembrance and that the new cathedral should be built alongside, the two buildings together effectively forming one church. The use of Hollington sandstone for the new Coventry Cathedral provides an element of unity between the buildings. The foundation stone of the new cathedral was laid by the Queen on 23 March 1956. It was consecrated on 25 May 1962, and Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem", composed for the occasion,
Osburh of Coventry Osburh of Coventry Osburh (or Osburga) was an Anglo-Saxon saint who rested at Coventry Cathedral. Although there is some tradition holding her to be an early 11th-century abbess of Coventry Abbey, it is suspected that her cult predates the Viking Age. A 14th-century note in MS Bodley 438 mentions an early nunnery at Coventry. The 15th-century writer John Rous related that Cnut the Great destroyed the old Coventry minster, and noted that the "holy virgin Osburga now laid there in a noble shrine" (probably lay in the south transept of the church). As the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" records the devastation of