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St. Peter's Church, Barton-upon-Humber: Excavation and Structural Study, 1978–81

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2011

Warwick Rodwell  and
Kirsty Rodwell
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Summary

Four seasons of excavation and structural study in St. Peter's Church have revealed a complex sequence, beginning with domestic occupation of the Pagan Saxon period, followed by a Middle Saxon settlement enclosure with adjacent cemetery of Christian character. In the later tenth century a three-celled turriform church was built in the cemetery, after the exhumation of graves covering its intended site. Related features in the cemetery include the foundation of a large free-standing cross, a group of wells and an oven, probably for baking bread, all grouped to the east of the chancel. Some of the pre-Conquest graves yielded evidence of probable barkwood coffins built with clenches and roves, while some twenty further graves contained rectangular timber coffins in varying states of preservation. Several were in near-perfect condition and have yielded exceptionally good evidence for techniques and tools employed by Anglo-Saxon carpenters.

The extant Saxon and medieval fabric of the church has been recorded in considerable detail, providing an insight into building and scaffolding methods, particularly of the tenth century. Excavation has revealed the complex development of the medieval church and its internal layout; and 1,326 graves, spanning a millennium, have been investigated.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , September 1982 , pp. 283 - 315
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1982

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References

Notes

1 Brown, R., Notes on the Earlier History of Barton-on-Humber (London, 1906), 2 vols.Google Scholar

2 Rickman, T., An Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of Architecture in England (2nd edn., London, 1819), p.45.Google Scholar See also Archaeologia, xxvi (1836), 26–46.Google Scholar

3 Britton, J., Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 5 (London, 1826).Google Scholar

4 Rickman, , op. cit. (note 2), 5th edn. (Oxford, 1848), p. xii.Google Scholar Proof that Jewitt copied Pugin is found in his treatment of the lower belfry windows, and both artists show a non-existent string-course above the western tower arch.

5 Taylor, H. M., ‘Old St. Peter's Church, Barton-on-Humber’, Arch. J. cxxxi (1974), 369–73Google Scholar

6 Ball, W. H., The Social History and Antiquities of Barton-upon-Humber (Barton, 1856), p. 55.Google Scholar

7 Micklethwaite, J. T., ‘Something about Saxon church building’, Arch. J. liii (1896), 333–5.Google Scholar

8 Brown, G. Baldwin, The Arts in Early England, vol. 2 (London, 1903), pp. 208–16.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., fig. 126.

10 Brown, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 56–62.

11 The plan and contemporary correspondence have fortunately all survived.

12 Varah, W. E., The Notable Churches of Barton-on-Humber (Barton, 1936).Google Scholar

13 Clapham, A. W., English Romanesque Architecture before the Conquest (Oxford, 1930), fig. 31Google Scholar

14 Clapham, A. W., ‘Barton-on-Humber, St. Peter’, Arch. J. ciii (1946), 179–81.Google Scholar See also , H. M. and Taylor, J., Anglo-Saxon Architecture, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 52–7, for a full description and plan.Google Scholar

15 Taylor, , 1974, op. cit. (note 5); this account augments and partly supersedes Taylor and Taylor, 1965, op. cit. (note 14).Google Scholar

16 Ibid., also pp. 293–7. For general discussion see also Taylor, H. M., Anglo-Saxon Architecture, vol. 3 (Cambridge, 1978), passim.Google Scholar

17 Taylor, , 1974, op. cit. (note 5), 373.Google Scholar

18 We are glad to acknowledge here the close co-operation of the staff in all sections of the Department of the Environment (D.A.M.H.B.) concerned with the Barton project: Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments, Architects' Dept., Works Dept., and Ancient Monuments Laboratory. Particular thanks are due to Messrs. O.J. Weaver, F.S.A., Inspector of Ancient Monuments, B. Clark, Area Architect, and T. Lancelott, Superintendent of Works. We are greatly indebted to the staff and volunteers engaged on the project for their hard work and devotion over the past four years, especially the Assistant Directors, Dr. Jem Poster and Stephen Coll; the Finds Supervisor, Jane Grenville; Palaeopathologist, Dr. Juliet Rogers; and principal Site Supervisors, John Adams, Rob Bell, Gerry Pratt, Chris Stone, Bob Sydes, Maria Weld and Richard Williams. Finally, amongst the great deal of local kindness and assistance received throughout the project special mention must be made of that given by Mr. Geoffrey Bryant, F.S.A., Mr. and Mrs. R. C. Russell and Mr. G. H. Varah. Full acknowledgements will appear in the final report.

19 By the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, University of York.

20 Discussed in Rodwell, W. J., The Archaeology of the English Church (London, 1981).Google Scholar

21 Not all early graves in this part of the site could be shown on plan without introducing confusion.

22 It may be relevant to compare this type of coffin with Romanesque dug-out chests, a considerable number of which survive in English churches.

23 Anglo-Saxon doors were also constructed with the use of clenches and roves, as evidenced at Hadstock and Buttsbury, in Essex: Hewett, C., ‘Anglo-Saxon carpentry’, in Clemoes, P. (ed.), Anglo-Saxon England, vol. 7 (1978), 211–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 The antiquity of the gable-ended coffin is uncertain, and is currently under study by Mr. I. Noel Hume, F.S.A.

25 Similar clenches and roves have been found in Anglo-Saxon graves at Jarrow and Monkwearmouth (inf. from Prof. Rosemary Cramp, F.S.A.).

26 There can be no question of small bones being lost through soil acidity, because fragments of animal bone derived from underlying Saxon domestic layers were present.

27 For fuller descriptions of the Anglo-Saxon elements, see Taylor and Taylor, 1965 and Taylor, 1974, opp. citt. (notes 5 and 14).

28 The only occasion when gritstone appears to have been used in Barton, prior to the twentieth century, was for the building of this Anglo-Saxon church: it does not occur in earlier or later contexts. The blocks have plainly been recovered from major Roman structures, the two nearest sources being but a short distance up-river at Winteringham and Brough-on-Humber. Stones now used as voussoirs in the Saxon chancel arch appear to be derived from a Roman domical vault.

29 But shutters mounted on frames could have been placed directly against the inner faces of the walls, leaving no structural evidence.

30 Baldwin Brown, loc. cit. (note 9).

31 The proportions of the stone are ideal for the depiction of Christ in Majesty, but not for a crucifixion as suggested by some writers. A similar rectangular panel, depicting a Majestas, exists over one of the tower windows in St. Peter at Gowts, Lincoln, and provides a local parallel for the Barton stone: Taylor and Taylor, 1965, op. cit., p. 396 (note 14).

32 During the 1858 restoration the original head of the eastern doorway was replaced with stone voussoirs, to make it appear more ‘authentic’.

33 For Hadstock, see Hewett, op. cit. (note 23). Both Hadstock and Clapham have been studied in detail during recent restorations.

34 This was a standard method for the construction of rubble window heads. Evidence for the former existence of the basket work is well preserved at Hadstock, Essex; and the basket work itself survives at Hales, Norfolk (Taylor and Taylor, 1965, op. cit. (note 14), fig. 483 and pp. xv and 279).

35 Taylor, 1978, op. cit. (note 16), pp. 924–7.

36 Cf. Hadstock: Rodwell, W. J., ‘The archaeological investigation of Hadstock Church, Essex: an interim report’, Antiq. J. lvi (1976), 55–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Neither the mortar nor the boulderconstructed foundation is paralleled in the Late Saxon or Saxo-Norman work on this site. If the foundation antedates the construction of the church it could be interpreted as belonging to a free-standing bell tower, as proposed at Major, St. Mary, Exeter: Bull. C.B.A. Churches Committee, No. 9 (1978), 9–10.Google Scholar

38 The size suggests an older child, or subadult.

39 The charring of coffin wood, known in Britain as a preservative technique since the late Roman period, leaves evidence in the soil which is quite distinct from that associated with ‘charcoal burials’, although confusion and misinterpretation are revealed by some excavation reports.

40 As observed by Rickman, op. cit. (note 2) and discussed by Taylor, H. M. in ‘Anglo-Saxon architecture in Lincolnshire’, Arch. J. cxxxi (1974), 293–4.Google Scholar

41 Internal areas of successive naves: Anglo-Saxon 27 m.2, Saxo-Norman 58 m.2, Norman 175 m.2. The ratios are 1:2 1:6·5. The only extant fabric of the Norman nave is a vertical strip of ashlar walling on the north side of the nave, adjoining the east respond of the later medieval arcade.

42 The capitals seem originally to have been designed to surmount circular piers, each with four attached shafts, in the Early English style.

43 A plain chamfered respond with brooch stops, which must have belonged to the thirteenth-century chancel arch, still survives, although reset in the fifteenth century and turned through ninety degrees, to support the easternmost bay of the south arcade. An indication of the likely form of the Early English chancel is perhaps given by St. Mary's Church in Barton. There are numerous observable architectural similarities between the two buildings.

44 A radio-carbon determination yielded the date 1380 ± 70 (HAR 2865).

45 The east wall of the aisle had to be repositioned in order to receive the lateral thrust of the new chancel arch and clerestorey.

46 Various small-scale excavations have been undertaken and finds collected during building works: for summaries see Loughlin, N. and Miller, K. R., A Survey of Archaeological Sites in Humberside (Hull, 1979), pp. 184–7Google Scholar, and Bryant, G. F., The Early History of Barton-on-Humber (Barton, 1981), pp. 10–16.Google Scholar

47 For a catalogue of the finds, see Bryant, op. cit. (note 46), pp. 16–26.

48 Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, IV. 3. The monastery still existed in Bede's time.

49 Sawyer, P. H., Anglo-Saxon Charters: an Annotated List and Bibliography (London, 1968), no. 782.Google Scholar

50 For discussion of the charter and its bounds, see Bryant, op. cit. (note 46), pp. 28–31.

51 Boden, J. M. and Whitwell, J. B., ‘Barrowupon-Humber’, Lincs. Hist. Arch. xiv (1979), 66–7. The newly discovered church at Barrow is almost identical to our Saxo-Norman building at Barton, and is unlikely to be much earlier in date.Google Scholar

52 For discussion of the Barton Domesday, see Bryant, op. cit. (note 46), pp. 55–70.

53 For example, when Wulfric built his octagon at Canterbury, linking the churches of St. Peter and Paul, and St. Mary, the intervening cemetery was cleansed by exhuming all existing graves, which might have been carried out as a requirement of Pope Leo IX. For a summary and discussion, see Taylor and Taylor, , 1965, op. cit. (note 14), p. 137.Google Scholar

54 Clay, C. T. (ed.), Early Yorkshire Charters, vol. 5 (1936), no. 394.Google Scholar

55 The end boards were not quite upright when the coffin was constructed, but were skewed slightly to the right, as shown on the section in fig. 11.

56 The use of split and wedged pegs in Anglo-Saxon carpentry is seen in the Pyx Chapel door of Westminster Abbey: Hewett, op. cit. (note 23), pp. 214–16.