The chapel of Christ Church acquired the status of cathedral in 1546 and is administered by a dean. The entrance, easily overlooked, is on the east side of Tom Quad. On the site which it now occupies there was originally a nunnery founded by St Frideswide, a Mercian princess, in the eighth century. The present building, mainly in the Transitional style, dates from the second half of the 12th century.
Cardinal Wolsey had part of the nave demolished in order to make space for the college buildings to be extended.
The most striking feature in the interior is the double arcading of the nave which creates an impression of much greater height. This is a feature of the Transitional style. In the middle of the 14th century the church was extended to the north of the Lady Chapel around the Latin Chapel and large tracery windows were installed in order to give expression to the Gothic feeling for light and space. The choir was created in 1500 with fan vaulting over hanging keystones. In the south transept is the Thomas Becket window (about 1320) and the five glass windows designed by Edward Burne-Jones and made by William Morris in 1871-77. Also of note in the choir aisles and the Latin Chapel is the St Frideswide window (1858); in the Lady Chapel three 14th century tombs (Lady Montacute, Prior Sutton, John de Nowers) and the remains of the Frideswide shrine (1289) which was destroyed in the Reformation, as well as the grave of the bishop and philosopher George Berkeley (1681-1735), who gave his name to the town of Berkeley in California. The small cloister is Perpendicular, the entrance to the chapterhouse late Norman, while its interior (the diocesan treasure chamber) is in the Early English style.
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