A hand coloured magic lantern slide circa 1900. Worcester Cathedral has been described as possibly the most interesting of all England's cathedrals, especially architecturally. It was founded it in 680. Saint Oswald then built another cathedral in 983, and established a monastery attached to it. Saint Wulfstan, who rebuilt the cathedral in 1084, began the present building. During Anglo-Saxon times, Worcester was one of the most important monastic cathedrals in the country. It was a centre of great learning, which continued into the later middle ages, when Worcester's Benedictine monks went to university to study a variety of subjects, such as theology, medicine, law, history, mathematics, physics, and astronomy. Some of these medieval university textbooks still survive in the cathedral library today.