The choir looking towards the Presbtery and the site of St Etheldredas shrine, Ely Cathedral, The Choir was rebuilt in the 14th century. The choir stall canopies and misericords or carved seats date from this period. The Cathedral was originally founded as a monastery in 673 by St Etheldreda, a Saxon Princess from East Anglia. The site of her shrine is in front of the High Altar. The Danes destroyed the monastery in 870 and it was refounded in 970 as a Benedictine community. The present building was started in the 1080s by Abbot Simeon and it became a Cathedral, the seat of the Bishop, in 1109. King Henry VIII closed the monastery in 1539 during the dissolution of the monasteries in the Reformation but it has remained a Cathedral to the present day. Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Ely. Diocese of Ely, East Anglia. Known as the Ship of the Fens.
