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Palaces or minsters? Northampton and Cheddar reconsidered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

John Blair
John Blair
Affiliation:
The Queen's College, Oxford
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Extract

Since their excavation in the 1950s and early 1960s, the palace buildings at Yeavering (Northumberland) and Cheddar (Somerset) have exemplified the physical impact of kingship on the Anglo-Saxon landscape. When, in 1980–2, massive eighth- and ninth-century halls were found at the heart of Northampton, the temptation to recognize a major residence of the Mercian kings was irresistible. Thanks to archaeology, the image of the king's tūn as the one fixed point in a shifting, uncertain world, encouraged by poetic sources and adopted in the first detailed studies of Anglo-Saxon local organization, was assuming concrete reality.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 25 , December 1996 , pp. 97 - 121
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 Hume, K., ‘The Concept of the Hail in Old English Poetry’, ASE 3 (1974), 63–74Google Scholar; Jolliffe, J. E. A., Pre-Feudal England: the Jutes (Oxford, 1933), pp. 40 and 47–52.Google Scholar

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6 RCHM, Inventory, maps in pocket; Williams, , St Peter's Street, p. 4.Google Scholar

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8 The coloured frontispiece of RCHM, Inventory gives a good impression of this topography.

9 Lee, F., ‘A New Theory of the Origins and Early Growth of Northampton’, ArchJ 110 (1953), 164–74.Google Scholar Excavations between the two roads were inconclusive, though they encountered what might be interpreted as a ditch c. 15m wide which remained open into the post-Conquest period: RCHM, Inventory, fiche pp. 326–7.

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11 This is suggested for Northampton by Haslam, J., ‘Market and Fortress in England in the Reign of Offa’, World Archaeol. 19.1 (1987), 76–93, at 84–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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13 Summarized in Williams, St Peter's Street; Williams et al., Middle Saxon Palaces; and RCHM, Inventory, fiche. Full reports on the peripheral sites are: Williams, F., ‘Excavations on Marefair, Northampton, 1977’, Northants. Archaeol. 14 (1979), 38–79Google Scholar; J. H. Williams and M. Shaw, ‘Excavations in Chalk Lane, Northampton’, ibid. 16 (1981), 87–135; and M. Shaw, ‘Excavations on a Saxon and Medieval Site at Black Lion Hill, Northampton’, ibid. 20 (1985), 113–38.

14 Excavations have concentrated in the St Peter's and castle areas. The few others within the primary circuit are small, but probably do constitute negative evidence against mid-Saxon occupation spreading much further: RCHM, Inventory, p. 49 (map) and fiche, pp. 383–96. Recent excavations in Woolmonger Street, to the east of St Gregory's, found tenth-century occupation but none of the pre-Viking period (South Midlands Archaeology, 25 (1995), 40–1Google Scholar, and pers. comm. M. Shaw).

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19 Williams, et al. , Middle Saxon Palaces, pp. 9–17.Google Scholar

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22 Ibid. pp. 28–31. Compare the useful analysis of size ranges in Marshall, A. and Marshall, G., ‘Differentiation, Change and Continuity in Anglo-Saxon Buildings’, ArchJ 150 (1993), 366–402.Google Scholar

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29 Cf. Wormald, P., ‘Bede, Beowulf and the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxon Aristocracy’, Bede and Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Farrell, R. T., BAR Brit. ser. 46 (Oxford, 1978), 32–95, at 43–5 and 53–4Google Scholar, for the social and cultural context.

30 RCHM, Inventory, pp. 57–9 and fiche pp. 371–8. Martin Biddle (pers. comm. 1995) also notes that St Peter's contains ‘megalithic’ column-shafts which seem ‘out of place as post-Conquest’.

31 RCHM, Inventory, fiche p.379.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., fiche p. 379; Williams, et al. , Middle Saxon Palaces, p. 65.Google Scholar

33 Hope-Taylor, , Yeavering, pp. 70–85 and 95–118.Google Scholar

34 Blair, , ‘Topographical Review’, pp. 246–58.Google Scholar

35 Ibid. pp. 249–55.

36 Michael Shaw points out (pers. comm. 1995) that RCHM, Inventory mislocates St Mary's; its correct site is marked as ‘St. Mary's Burying Gd.’ on Wood and Law's map (1847).

37 Levison, W., England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford, 1946), pp. 264–5Google Scholar; Mosford, S. E., ‘A Critical Edition of the Vita Gregorii Magni by an Anonymous Member of the Community at Whitby’ (unpubl. DPhil dissertation, Oxford Univ., 1988), pp. xxv–xxvi.Google Scholar St Gregory is certainly not one of the standard patrons of eleventh- and twelfth-century churches.

38 Tatton-Brown, T., ‘The Topography of Anglo-Saxon London’, Antiquity 60 (1986), 21–8, at 23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blair, ‘Topographical Review’, fig. 10.4.

39 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 913A: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. 3: MS A, ed. Bately, J. M. (Cambridge, 1986), p. 65Google Scholar; V.C.H. Northants. 3 (1930), 1Google Scholar; Williams, et al. , Middle Saxon Palaces, pp. 43–4.Google Scholar

40 Williams, J. H., ‘Northampton's Medieval Parishes’, Northants. Archaeol. 17 (1982), 74–84, at 77–8, uses as evidence for the royal status of Northampton the fact that its parochial dependencies, Upton and Kingsthorpe, were Domesday royal manors and later hundredal manors. This seems to me to underline its ecclesiastical importance, but to say nothing about its secular importance.Google Scholar

41 Nova Ugenda Anglie, ed. Horstman, C., 2 vols. (Oxford, 1901) II, 727–31Google Scholar; Farmer, D. H., The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 2nd. ed. (Oxford, 1987), pp. 366–7Google Scholar; Williams, , ‘From “Palace” to “Town”’, pp. 126–7.Google Scholar

42 Williams, , ‘Northampton's Medieval Parishes’, pp. 77–8Google Scholar; Franklin, M. J., ‘Minsters and Parishes: Northamptonshire Studies’ (unpubl. PhD dissertation, Cambridge Univ., 1982), pp. 80–121Google Scholar, which gives grounds for thinking that Duston, Dallington and Hardingstone had also belonged to the mother-parish.

43 Stenton, F. M., Preparatory to Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1970), pp. 169–70 and 177Google Scholar; Franklin, , ‘Minsters and Parishes’, pp. 80–3.Google Scholar

44 For a recent discussion, see Blair, J., ‘Ecclesiastical Organization and Pastoral Care in Anglo-Saxon England’, EME 4 (1995), 193–212.Google Scholar

45 Asser, in his De rebus gestis Ælfredi (ch. 49: ed. Stevenson, W. H. (rev. ed., Oxford, 1959), pp. 36–7)Google Scholar, calls Wareham a castellum but identifies it as a monasterium sanctimonialium. For the others, see Blair, J., ‘The Minsters of the Thames’, The Cloister and the World: Essays in Medieval History in Honour of Barbara Harvey, ed. Blair, J. and Golding, B. (Oxford, 1996), pp. 5–28, at 18–19 and 20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Rahtz, P., The Saxon and Medieval Palaces at Cheddar, BAR Brit. ser. 65 (Oxford, 1979).Google Scholar

47 Ibid. p. 29.

48 C. and Hollinrake, N., ‘The Abbey Enclosure Ditch and a Late-Saxon Canal: Rescue Excavations at Glastonbury, 1984–1988’, Proc. Somerset Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Soc. 136 (1992), 73–94.Google Scholar

49 Rahtz, , Palaces, p. 32Google Scholar; Williams, M., The Drainage of the Somerset levels (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 63 and 72–3Google Scholar; Russett, V. E. J., ‘Hythes and Bows: Aspects of River Transport in Somerset’, Waterfront Archaeology, ed. Good, G. L., Jones, R. H. and Ponsford, M. W., CBA Research Report 74 (London, 1991), 60–6, at 63 and 65.Google Scholar

50 For comparanda for all these features, see Blair, , ‘Topographical Review’, pp. 227–31Google Scholar;Blair, J., Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire (Stroud, 1994), p. 63Google Scholar; Blair, , ‘Minsters of the Thames’, pp. 9–12. It cannot, of course, be asserted that only minsters occupied such places, but more work needs to be done on the siting of Anglo-Saxon settlements and monuments in relation to water. Cf. below, n. 86.Google Scholar

51 C. and N. Hollinrake (pers. comm. 1995) compare this layout with the village plans of Dundon, Shapwick, Carhampton and Hardington Mandeville, where fieldwork suggests origins during the tenth to twelfth centuries.

52 Blair, , ‘Minster Churches in the Landscape’, pp. 48–9 and fig. 2.3Google Scholar, notably Wimborne Minster, which bears a marked resemblance to Cheddar.

53 Rahtz, P., ‘Cheddar Vicarage, 1965’, Proc. Somerset Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Soc. 110 (1966), 52–84Google Scholar; S. M. Hirst and P. A. Rahtz, ‘Cheddar Vicarage, 1970’, ibid. 117 (1973), 65–96; Rahtz, , Palaces, pp. 12–13 and 32–3.Google Scholar A Roman ditch, enclosures and cobbled surfaces have since been found well to the west of the villa, beyond the railway embankment: J. Hawkes, ‘Archaeological Evaluation at Kings of Wessex School, Cheddar, June 1991’ (AC Archaeology, unpublished typescript, copy in Somerset SMR), summarized in Hawkes, J., ‘Cheddar: Kings of Wessex School’, Proc. Somerset Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Soc. 135 (1991), 142–3.Google Scholar

54 Rahtz, , Palaces, p. 372.Google Scholar

55 For the range of arguments, see: Morris, R. and Roxan, J., ‘Churches on Roman Buildings’, Temples, Churches and Religion: Recent Research in Roman Britain, ed. Rodwell, W., BAR Brit. ser. 77(i) (Oxford, 1980), 175–209Google Scholar; Pearce, S. M., ‘Estates and Church Sites in Dorset and Gloucestershire: the Emergence of a Christian Society’, The Early Church in Western Britain and Ireland, ed. Pearce, S. M., BAR Brit. ser. 102 (Oxford, 1982), 117–38Google Scholar; Hase, P. H., ‘The Church in the Wessex Heartlands’, The Medieval Landscape of Wessex, ed. Aston, M. and Lewis, C. (Oxford, 1994), pp. 47–81, at 48–50Google Scholar; Blair, , ‘Topographical Review’, pp. 235–46.Google Scholar

56 Rahtz, , Palaces, pp. 44–67.Google Scholar

57 Ibid. pp. 71–3 and 85–6. It may be significant that the two earlier coins are both in a damaged condition (ibid. p. 291 and pl. XVIII).

58 Ibid. p. 282 and fig. 95, item C.A.14. Leslie Webster (pers. comm. 1995) confirms that a date of manufacture earlier than c. 900 is extremely unlikely.

59 Ibid. p. 53.

60 Fabric ‘G’: ‘early 10th or earlier’, or ‘may well be of 9th-century or earlier date’; Fabric ‘A’: ‘early 10th to early 11th’, but ‘too generalised a fabric to be closely datable’ (ibid. pp. 310 and 314–15). Doubts about the dating of this pottery are reinforced by petrological analysis by Christopher Gerrard, who writes (pers. comm. 1995) that the material classified as ‘A’ and ‘G’ actually includes several different fabrics. For ninth- to tenth-century parallels for the bow-sided ‘long hall’, see Beresford, G., Goltho: the Development of an Early Medieval Manor (London, 1987), pp. 12 and 38–47.Google Scholar There are grounds for suspecting that the Goltho hall also dates from the tenth century rather than the ninth: Higham, R. and Barker, P., Timber Castles (London, 1992), p. 56.Google Scholar

61 Rahtz, , Palaces, pp. 140 and 147.Google Scholar The coin was found in West Hall context 84/18A, with a tenth-or eleventh-century sherd (M.P.18).

62 Given the massive quantities of food-bones, the plausible alternatives are (1) that Ditch A was filled at the inception of the Period 1 buildings, using debris carted from the minster site; or (2), perhaps more likely, that it was filled during the life-span of Period 1, maybe a decade or two after its inception, using palace debris.

63 Rahtz, , Palaces, pp. 146 and 168.Google Scholar

64 Ibid. pp. 202–3 and 228–34. For late use of the basketwork technique, see Heywood, S., ‘The Round Towers of East Anglia’, in Minsters and Parish Churches: the Local Church in Transition, 950–1200, ed. Blair, J. (Oxford, 1988), pp. 169–77, at 170 and fig. 63.Google Scholar

65 Rahtz, , Palaces, pp. 196, 203 and 310.Google Scholar Christopher Gerrard (pers. comm. 1995) states that fabric ‘C’ actually represents several different fabrics, mostly matched elsewhere from eleventh- to twelfth-century contexts, and that fabric ‘EE’ is similarly dated at Glastonbury Tor.

66 Ibid. p. 89.

67 Ibid. pp. 282–5 and 291–2, small-finds C.A.10, 21 and 90 and coins S.C.1–3. Daring of the small-finds remains tentative; I am grateful to Leslie Webster for her advice on this point. Ditch A also produced two possibly ninth-century glass fragments (ibid. p. 258, no. 7).

68 Cf. ibid. p. 290: ‘The [Roman] coins are doubtless derived from the neighbouring Roman site at Cheddar Vicarage.’ Twenty-five Roman coins were found, five of them in the Ditch A fills; the ninth-century objects could just as easily have come from outside the site.

69 Ibid. pp. 77–80 and 83–7, concluding that the ditch is unlikely to have undergone much scouring or maintenance before the rapid silting.

70 Ibid. pp. 78–81 and figs. 6, 8 and 20–4; Hawkes, ‘Archaeological Evaluation’. It is an odd feature of the 1991 test pits (Trench 2) that they lay in the same area as Rahtz's Trenches 69–73, but found much less clear evidence for Ditch A. The non-continuance of Ditch A in a south-westerly direction seems, however, to be proved by the 1991 Trench 4, and by the intact Roman features located by geophysical survey in this area.

71 Rahtz, , Palaces, p. 83.Google Scholar

72 Blair, , ‘Minster Churches in the Landscape’, pp. 48–50Google Scholar; Blair, , ‘Topographical Review’, pp. 229 and 231–5.Google Scholar A local parallel for Cheddar in form and scale, though not on a riverine site, is the Glastonbury enclosure proposed by Warwick, Rodwell, ‘Churches in the Landscape: Aspects of Topography and Planning’, Studies in Late Anglo-Saxon Settlement, ed. Faull, M. L. (Oxford, 1984), pp. 1–23Google Scholar, ‘circuit B’ in fig. 9. For a recently explored example where the enclosure ditch can be clearly traced, see Lowe, C. E., ‘New Light on the Anglian “Minster” at Hoddom’, Trans. of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Nat. Hist. and Ant. Soc. 3rd ser. 66 (1991), 11–35.Google Scholar

73 Blair, , ‘Minsters of the Thames’, pp. 12–13 and 25 and fig. 1.2.Google Scholar

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76 Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, pp. 85 and 317.Google Scholar

77 S 1115; Domesday Book, fols. 86 and 89v.

78 Ekwall, E., The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names, 4th ed. (Oxford, 1960), p. 503.Google Scholar

79 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Dean and Chapter of Wells, 2 vols. (London, 1907–1914) I, 534 (Mark, Blackford, Biddisham, Allerton, Mudgely).Google Scholar

80 S 806 (Robertson, A. J., Anglo-Saxon Charters (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 94 and 340).Google Scholar

81 S 511 (dots represent scribal omission) and S 611; Rahtz, , Palaces, pp. 16–17.Google Scholar S 511 is of uncertain authenticity and involves severe dating problems (pers. comm. Susan Kelly).

82 HMC, Calendar of Wells MSS I,439.

83 Earle, J., A Hand-Book to the Land-Charters, and other Saxonic Documents (Oxford, 1888), p. 432Google Scholar; Pelteret, D. A. E., Catalogue of English Post-Conquest Vernacular Documents (Woodbridge, 1990), no. 11.Google Scholar The south-western analogies support the reading of ‘Cheddar-minster’ as defining the whole settlement nucleus (as distinct from such outlying zones as ‘Cheddar-cliff’ or ‘Cheddar-combe’), though the alternative possibility exists that it was coined to distinguish the zone immediately around the church from the palace complex.

84 Cf. Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, pp. 317–18Google Scholar, tending towards a similar conclusion as regards royal occupation of Cheddar.

85 Aston, M., ‘The Towns of Somerset’, in Anglo-Saxon Towns in Southern England, ed. Haslam, J. (Chichester, 1984), pp. 167–201, at 172–4Google Scholar; Costen, M., The Origins of Somerset (Manchester, 1992), pp. 136–8Google Scholar; Rahtz, , Palaces, p. 10Google Scholar; Domesday Book, fol. 86.

86 The high-status secular complex at Sprouston lies beside a river, but is not on a site of the promontory or confluence kind so characteristic of minsters.

87 For other probable cases, see Blair, , ‘Minsters of the Thames’, pp. 12–14.Google Scholar

88 See, for instance, Fleming, R., ‘Monastic Lands and England's Defence in the Viking Age’, EHR 100 (1985), 247–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yorke, B., Wessex in the Early Middle Ages (London and New York, 1995), pp. 194–7 and 235–9.Google Scholar

89 See esp. Hamerow, H. F., ‘Settlement Mobility and the “Middle Saxon Shift”’ ASE 20 (1991), 1–17.Google Scholar Occasional royal centres (such as Benson (Blair, , Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, pp. 26–7Google Scholar)) occur regularly in written sources between the pre-Viking period and the eleventh century, but there are far fewer of these than is often supposed.

90 Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, p. 101.Google Scholar

91 For instance, Williams, , ‘From “Palace” to “Town”’, pp. 127–30 and 134.Google Scholar

92 Brühl, C. R., ‘The Town as a Political Centre: General Survey’, European Towns: their Archaeology and Early History, ed. Barley, M. W. (London, 1977), pp. 419–30, at 426.Google Scholar

93 Ibid. pp. 426–7, observing that under the Carolingians ‘the ruler, on a visit to a civitas, no longer necessarily resides in a palatium intramuraneum, but in a monastery outside the walls, where the ruler from now on has at his disposal a domus or palatium of his own’.

94 My foremost thanks are to the two excavators, Philip Rahtz and John Williams, for their helpful and constructive responses. Earlier drafts were read by Mick Aston, Steven Bassett, Martin Biddle, Sarah Blair, Glenn Foard, Richard Gem, Nancy and Charles Hollinrake, Simon Keynes, Christine Peters, Michael Shaw and Barbara Yorke, and I am much indebted to their criticisms and advice. For information and help of various kinds I am very grateful to Bob Croft, Christopher Gerrard and Leslie Webster.