Carlisle Cathedral might be the second smallest cathedral in the country, but it has had a long and turbulent history, probably more than most. The building we see today was founded in 1123 as a priory church, but it is known that it was built over the foundations of at least one earlier church, most likely Anglo-Saxon, and including one that was in 860 devastated by Danish raiders. And originally there was a Roman road crossing the same place. In fact the ground beneath the cathedral has been so disturbed and is so liable to subsidence that some of the piers lean at different angles!  

The reason I called in today, as I walked through the Cathedral grounds from the car park, was to see the runes that I found out were there. They were a bit of a disappointment, as one set was very damaged and is now set behind glass, so is hard to make out (see extra), and the other set is apparently so high up in the inside wall that they are more or less impossible to see - or so I was told. 

No one knows why there should be runes on a 12th century church, or how they got there, although it is possible that the stones themselves were taken from a previous building and built in to the present walls.