Celebrating the artistry, devotion and legacy of our cathedral textiles.
Threads of Faith : Sacred Stitches – Our New Winter Campaign.
From cloth stitched by soldiers recovering from shell shock as part of their recovery, to a woven nativity that refugees and people experiencing homelessness helped shape from charity-shop textiles and reclaimed materials, to a set of panels that schoolchildren designed and volunteers turned into appliqué – England’s cathedrals hold textiles in many forms, and each carries a story.
Threads of Faith: Sacred Stitches, our winter campaign running from Monday 23 November, brings those stories together.
At St Paul’s Cathedral, the Jubilee Cope, designed by Beryl Dean to mark the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, is a story of belonging, carrying the spires of 73 London churches, with St Paul’s at the centre.
St Paul’s Jubilee Cope
At Bradford Cathedral, the Khaki Altar Frontal, designed by Bradford-born embroiderer Louisa Pesel, was cross-stitched on linen during the First World War by soldiers under her supervision, as part of their rehabilitation.
Some textiles look back to the Middle Ages. At Peterborough Cathedral, hundreds of volunteers spent eight years and more than 1.5 million stitches creating a needlepoint interpretation of the Nave’s thirteenth-century painted ceiling, with its kings, bishops, saints and fantastical bestiary.
At St Edmundsbury, a tapestry of the Shrine of St Edmund, worked by 27 local embroiderers in almost a million stitches, shows the boy-king Henry VI kneeling before one of medieval England’s great pilgrimage destinations.
Others are made for today, and with the community.
At Birmingham Cathedral, the New Nativity, installed for Christmas 2025, gives each figure a different texture from textiles and reclaimed materials, shaped in workshops with children, families, refugees and people experiencing homelessness.
At Ely Cathedral, twelve hanging appliqué panels showing key moments in the life of St Etheldreda, the cathedral’s founder and patron saint, were designed by children from schools across the diocese and stitched by the Cathedral Broderers.
Ely Cathedral – Life of St Etheldreda
Some are printed rather than stitched. The copes worn by the Dean and Canons of Newcastle Cathedral, created in 2014 by Linda Schwab and Sally Greaves-Lord, feature screen-printed designs that set saints beside the girders and bridges of Tyneside. And some are the work of volunteers, like the team of six at Hereford Cathedral that share a sixty-year history and recently completed a new altar frontal celebrating the flora and fauna of their county.
And some are still being made. At Lichfield Cathedral, the Poppy Project, an 18-month community craft initiative launched in May 2026, invites people from across the city and diocese to knit, crochet, sew or embroider poppies for a single shared installation of more than 100,000 poppies, to be unveiled in October 2027 for Remembrance.
Together, these textiles record royal celebrations and wartime recovery, local landscapes and industrial heritage, medieval devotion and modern community. They also carry skills passed from one maker to the next, and thousands of hours given freely.
Yet textiles are among the most fragile treasures cathedrals care for. Many are used only on special occasions, some are too delicate for regular use, and many are known mainly to the people who stitch, mend and wear them.
Threads of Faith: Sacred Stitches aims to bring them into view, honouring both the finished work and the people behind it: the artists, craftspeople, volunteers and custodians of a tradition that weaves together faith, history and creativity.
Anna Pitt, Executive Director of English Cathedrals (AEC), said:
“Every cathedral textile is a record of the people who made it, and of the faith and community they were part of. Threads of Faith gives these makers, many of them volunteers, the recognition they deserve, and invites everyone to come and see the work for themselves.”
We will share our cathedral textile stories every day across our social media platforms from Monday 23 November until the new year.
Cathedrals are open to everyone, and visitors are invited to explore these textiles in person or follow the stories online.
