Gone Medieval - Anglo-Saxons at Prayer: Brixworth Church

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

All Saints’ Church in the village of Brixworth, Northamptonshire is one of the oldest, largest and most complete Anglo-Saxon churches in England. Founded in the eighth century, it has been described as “the finest Romanesque church north of the Alps.”In this episode of Gone Medieval, Dr. Cat Jarman takes a fascinating tour around All Saints’ Church in the company of archaeologist Professor Mark Horton.The Senior Producer on this episode was Elena Guthrie, the Producer is Rob Weinberg. Edited and Mixed by Thomas Ntinas.For more Gone Medieval content, subscribe to our Medieval Mondays newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!To download, go to Android or Apple store. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello and welcome to Gone Medieval. I'm Dr. Cat Jalman. This week, I'm out and about in Northamptonshire. I'm actually out on an Archaeological Project with my collaborator, Professor Mark Horton. Hello and welcome back, Mark. Hi, Kat. It's great to be here. So last time I dragged you on the podcast to talk about something far more exotic, which was the Indian Ocean and medieval trade but now we're a bit closer to home and we've just driven past the church and you've

been talking about this for a long time so you dragged me along to talk about it so we're in a little place called bricksworth and we're just outside of stunning church here and we're going to be talking about this church an anglo-saxon church and about the kingdom of mercia so tell me exactly why have you brought me here apart from the fact that it's stunning well it's one of the best preserved and certainly the largest surviving Anglo-Saxon churches in England are still in use today and built in the 8th century. And it is the most spectacular survival and gives you an idea of what these great Anglo-Saxon churches might have looked like. So the one thing that's right here as soon as you look at this, you look up at it and it's huge. But it's also made

out of mainly out of stone, but then it has an awful lot of red tiles or bricks in it as well. What's so special about those? Let's go and have a look at them. You can see that they are really thick and of standard dimensions. This Anglo-Saxon Church, the knowledge of making bricks and finding bricks like this had been lost by this point. So these must come from an earlier source, and they're actually Roman, Roman Teggilly. And they must have been taken from nearby Roman buildings and brought here to Bricksworth to be handy building. to be handy building materials to create this basic wonderful vuesuars.

You can see this arch and how they've been set at an angle and then been placed along the top there. So there are handy building materials, but possibly more than that, that it was a deliberate appropriation of Roman building to convert to an Anglo-Saxon building to say, here we can still build again. Right, so let's have a little wonder around it here.

Where are we going now? Mark? Well, they built this spectacular bell tower. It's a sort of stair that goes all the way up. And if you stand back, you can see, although it's slightly oval in shape, from this side, it looks circular. And I've always thought just how similar it looks to Irish round towers, for example, that are being put up at exactly the same date. It is an odd one, isn't it? Because it just sort of sticks out as a very round tower. It's not the sort of thing you would expect on a church like this. Do we have many other examples of that in England? Nope, no, it's pretty well unique. Completely unique.

That's amazing. And again, a statement, a circular tower like this from this date. But there's one other feature on the outside, before we go inside, which is incredible. So we're now walking from the west end through to the east end. And these spaces here would have had little projecting chapels known as porticuse. Okay, so we're looking at sort of. several arches. We're looking at several sort of arches here just on the outside that look currently are just windows, but that's not what they were originally? No, no, they would have

been open arches and if we did an excavation here, we would find the remains of a square chapel that would have had an altar and possibly a burial place for a saint or a king or, you know, just an altar maybe. There were eight in total four on both sides and you can see the very careful use of the Roman tiles. Yeah, so the Roman tiles just sort of, they're stacked up beautifully all the way in, along around these arches. Oh, and you can see some

earlier faces here. I can see a little, I can spot a bit of detective work here. There's an earlier arch that's been a doorway or something. Another much smaller chapel here at this east end and then ducking past the heating system. Here at the east end, we've got

another really interesting feature. So repair down there. Okay, so we're now going to the other side of the church and we're looking over a little wall and there's some steps going down just to sort of what looks like the outside of it. Yes, and there you can see the original Roman tiles so you would have entered this from inside the church originally

down into this which is known as ambulatory crypt. So you would walk right around the outside of the east end and this is the original Saxon fabric in here that survives with this pilaster which remember at Repton we have the same side pilasters there and only this little bit survives. So what we're looking at is a polygonal apse which has side pilasters

which are very characteristic of this Saxon period and we've got a little fragment of it running on here and then there's another great Saxon window that survived at that point and of course another Saxon window there again with all those attiles. dressings. But if we just go one little bit round, it gets kind of disappointing. Look! So the vicar in 1850 dug all this out in an antiquarian way. He found the foundations

of the ambulatoryed crypt around the outside, but of course the medievals have built a square east end here and he knocked all that down. So this is Victorian 183. and not Saxon at all, but is a replica of what he thought was there. I see. It's okay. So that's, I mean, that's one of the spectacular things that you see straight away. But actually, this being a Saxon church, there's something very unusual about it, and that is the size, because we have a few Saxon churches around the country, not that many,

but they're not like this, are they? No, you know, the famous ones like Dearhurst, a tiny in comparison to this. I mean, this is actually the largest upstanding Saxon church in Britain and one of the most impressive because it's so complete and really of a very short period of time as well. Well, let's go inside and have a look and then you can tell me about it and then I want to understand why it's here, why it's so big and what that actually means for our understanding of Anglo-Saxon Mercia.

In we go. There's going to be a wow moment. Our listeners won't be able to get the wow moment, though, will they? It's breathtaking as we go inside. Oh, wow, yes. You are right. And you can see that, you know, when you go inside a building like this, just how cavernous and enormous it is.

And, of course, it was much bigger than this, because all these side arches are all opening, would have been opening to what are basically chapels or in Anglo-Saxon architectural terms of porticus. And these would have had side altars, possibly relics of saints, and each one would be in a separate chapel. So you can imagine that the width of this is really twice, three times,

what just survives here in the nave. And what do we know? So we've been talking about this as a Saxon Church, but what do we actually know about the date of it? Do we know when it was first built? Again, so as you arrive into Brexworth, it proudly describes Saxon Church 680. Actually, that's completely wrong.

I noticed that. There's been archaeological project here for 25 years, and that concluded that there's two phases to this church. The first is in the late 8th century, it's 780-ish, and then the other phase is in the early 9th century, maybe 800, 8, 10, something like that. The two phases are very, very close together. But it represents significant change.

If you look up, for example, above us, you can see this archway. Okay. And then this magnificent three-opening window from the Anglo-Saxon. and Belfry and you can see one cuts the other. Yeah so it's quite clear there's a sort of, there's an arch where that's just literally cut through by a later window. That's that later face from the 9th century, isn't it? For the early 9th century, but only 30 years apart, probably.

And it's actually remarkably well preserved, isn't it? Yes. Well, it's slightly enhanced by Vicar in the 1850s who decided to restore it back to its Saxon glory. He was an antiquarian and he was very keen to remove all the medieval, high medieval materials and put it back to what he believed to be a pure Saxon church. So do we know if that's actually real? I mean, what was he basing that on? Well, his own knowledge, but very little, actually. But he didn't do a bad job, let's put it that way.

For example, these have originally medieval windows in and he replaced them with what he thought was Saxon windows. But perhaps his most controversial thing was to knock, down the whole of the east end of the church, which was a square medieval east end, and replaced it with a polygonal apse that would have been the original form of the Anglo-Saxon church. Okay, so let's go back to the Saxon period then and think about when it was built in the first place.

So if you bring us back to that eighth century context, where are we? What's happening around here at the time? Well, the late eight century is, of course, the reign of King Arthur, who is well known to everyone because of the dike that he built, but he was one of the very few international kings of the Indus kingdom. He corresponded with Charlemagne, for example. We have at least evidence of two letters that he wrote

about trade and about pilgrimage between Mercos and the Kingdom of the Franks. He describes the export of cloth from Mercia and in exchange black stones, which are probably quern stones, near demanding lava stones that probably came from Germany. He offered his daughter and married to King Offer, and then King Offer then wrote back and said,

well, I'll only agree if your daughter marries one of my sons, which probably wasn't a good idea, at which point diplomatic relations rapidly fell off. It's a good try, but yeah, it didn't work. A good try. But they were clearly, he, described King Offer as a brother. This is the point in which Mercia is at its greatest extent of the ascendance of Mercia. So we are, we sort of firmly in Mercia here. Was Bricksworth a key part of the

kingdom of Mercia? Do we think that is a reason why we have this church here at the time? That's a real mystery actually because there's no great saint associated with this place. There's very little documentary evidence about this church. I had no requirement. called it burials of kings or famous people, it's a bog standard church that's being put up in the late 8th century. So that's kind of what is so intriguing about this place, because it's just what we might have lost in other Anglo-Saxon churches, which have been destroyed or rebuilt in the medieval period. And in this time in the 8th century, so Christianity is completely firmly established at that point, isn't it? Yes. Curiously, Mercy was on the last place is to be

converted to Christianity in the 7th century. King Pender famously held out. But then when it became Christian, became Christian, became Christian very effectively and very enthusiastically repped. And Litchfield, most notably, and associated with the great missionary, St. Chad. And Christianity was really, by the early 8th century, probably widespread across Mercia. Throughout June on not just the Tudors, we're honouring Queen Elizabeth Ickon's Platinum Jubilee. by focusing on queenship in the 16th and 17th centuries. I'm Professor Suzanne Lipscomb, and all this month with my guests,

I'll be exploring the coronations of Tudor Queens, Queen's regnant and Queen's Consort, who wielded power in ways we haven't thought about. Really, when we begin to look at Queen Consorts, we notice that there's a lot of ways at the Renaissance Court that women could hold informal power through their relationship with the King. Then there's the Queen who ruled over the Spanish Netherlands,

and the female Swedish king. You heard that right. What did a 17th century person actually mean by saying, oh, she dresses like a man? If she would have worn male clothing, she wouldn't have been able to rule Sweden. So for a month of all things, magisterial and monarchical,

look no further than not just the Tudors from history hit. So we do have, I mean, as you were saying right at the beginning, this is unusual because of its size. So what is the message she's trying to get across, or whoever is commissioning this church, would this have been something that Offa himself had commissioned or somebody else, do we know?

Well, we have no evidence for it, but what's really striking is how similar this is to Carolingian churches. It's on an absolute Carolingian model, and there's only two other churches that are similar to this. One that was excavated in 1960s in Sire and Sester and another one at Wing in Buckinghamshire, both of which are in Mercia. The N tower, as we came in, I don't know if you notice the bell tower with a little circular stair that goes up through it.

These are very reminiscent of Carolingian bell towers, one famously shown on the plan of St. Gaul, for example, and also reminiscent of Irish round towers. It's a very continental thing to do. One thing is that this is a statement. This is part, we are part of Europe. We are part of the Carolingian zeitgeist by putting a building up like this. And of course, the reuse of all the Roman materials, because 800, Charlemagne is crowned on Christmas Day as the Holy Roman Emperor. This is the new Rome and maybe offer in bringing all these Roman materials to construct this great building is saying here, in Mercer also, we have a new Rome. Sorry, and just thinking of again about that Roman material, which now we're standing inside and we're looking at these arches and there's just bricks absolutely everywhere. There's so many of them. We are actually here in the area to excavate a Roman villa actually, so it might be coming from one of those. At this point in the 8th century, are there still lots of Roman remains then that are hanging around that people can access to that easily? Yes, I suspect so. There are literally ruined in fields. They haven't been robbed out. In fact, some parts of Britain are still.

all upstanding remains of Roman, remained even today, Roman villas and things in bits of the Cotswold you can find in woodland. Almost certainly in the 8th century, there would have been significant, ruined buildings, just like ruined farm buildings today, that

you would quarry for their building stone and their tiles. So let's go forward a bit in time. So you've said that the first stage of it is the 8th century and then there's a later 9th century phase after that. What do we know about that? And do we have other states quite precise?

Not really. Of course, Mercia comes crashing down in 873 with the Danish, the Viking invasions and their arrival at Repton, the Derbyshire. But before that, there's another second sort of golden age under King Wiglaf, who incidentally is buried at Repton. And during that period, there was also a sort of period

of self-confidence. And one wonders whether the second phase of this church is associated with the reign of Kingwood Laugh. Yeah, because that's when we see in Repton as well. There's a lot of work going on there, isn't there, in St. Winston's, what becomes St. Winston's Church in the crypt. And that's not too far from here. It's about an hour away.

So possibly part of a bigger sort of scheme. A bigger scheme. And, of course, the crypt themselves, the crypt columns have been argued, are replicas of some pieces of Rome, which, again, is taking that Roman theme into Anglo-Saxon architecture. And is that something that we see in other Saxon kingdoms as well, or is that a very Merchant thing?

Do we get that in Wessex? Do we get it anywhere else? Not really. You really have to wait until the conquest, where William the Conqueror and his barons are consciously reusing Roman materials of Roman sites, because the Normans also saw themselves as new Romans. But elsewhere, absolutely not, that Anglo-Saxon architecture takes a form of its own. and just these three churches at Wing, here at Bricksworth and at Sarencestor, a self-consciously carried engine in their style. So if we were here in the 8th century or 9th century even, what would we have seen that we don't see now? I mean, there's things like there's not a lot of sculpture, for example,

would we have had sculpture inside here as well? Yes, almost certainly. I mean, there's a little fragment of a churchyard cross that's all that remains from here. but almost certainly this would have had a stupendous amount of sculpture. This period, about 800, is the great period of mercy in sculpture. A few miles down the road at Breeden on the hill, for example, there is a magnificent scheme of sculpture, both decorative and figural sculpture. And perhaps the most spectacular discovery from this period comes from Litchfield, Lichfield Cathedral,

where a painted angel was found in excavations there a few years ago, which is absolutely exquisite in its nature. And of course, in this period, offer tried to create a separate sea here. So we know we have an archbishop prick in York and we have an archbishop brick in Canterbury. But Mercia wanted its own archbishop prick. And an archbishop was installed for a brief period of time in Litchfield.

Okay, so let's just wander down a little bit. Now, one thing that struck me actually when I arrived at, So this is called All Saints Church. And you just said earlier that we don't really have a particular association with one certain saint here. Does that mean that there's literally no association with any saints in any way or form? Well, not formally, but there's a curious tradition linking Bricksworth with St. Boniface. Sir Boniface, of course, was one of the great missionary bishops that went and converted the Franks on the eastern side of the Rhine to Christianity and Anglo-Sax.

and offer, King Offer, collected relics associated with St Bonnefus. We know that he gave a thumb nail to Westminster Abbey. But there's also the curious story of a throat bone associated with St. Bonnefifes. Of course, the throat bone is a really important relic because it's where sound comes out of. And there is a tradition that he presented it to Bricksworth Church. And there was a shrine, a medieval shrine that probably held it. that's still in the church, but also an inquesting little hole

which was uncovered in the 19th century that actually contained this throat bone relic. Oh, an actual throat bone? An actual bit of this throat bone. As far as I know, has never been looked at scientifically. But the idea was that this was actually hidden from the desecrators at the Reformation,

hidden away and bricked up in the wall for safekeeping until it was discovered. Right, so it could possibly be quite a genuine story. I mean, it might not be the actual state's bone, but it might date back to that original period. It could well date back to the Anglo-Saxon period. And there's an extra bit of confirmatory evidence in Bricksworth because they have an annual fare dedicated to St. Boniface.

So it's not improbable that it really is his throat bone. How exciting. Well, maybe we should try and see if we can investigate. That's right. And if it was indeed given by offer, then that makes a lot of sense in terms of... why this great Anglo-Saxon church was built here. Yeah, and it would lend it that exhibit of credibility as well

and that association, which was, of course, very important for a church at the time. Yeah, and possibly that great Western window above the chamber might well have been a royal chamber in which a Mercing King could look down on proceedings down the nave. Fantastic, I love that. Right, so, okay, so it's interesting that there's so little left of it here, And of course, we've worked in Repton, and we know that Repton was attacked in 873. The Great Army attacked the church, but the whole monastic complex there.

And there's been a lot of evidence of that destruction of sculptures. We literally have the broken-up pieces that are being used. I mean, but has there been anything like that here? I mean, as you said, there's only one small fragment. Do you know if there are any projects that have found similar things? Well, as far as I know, not a lot, the excavations were quite limited. The 25-year archaeological study was mostly on the fabric of the building rather than actually doing excavations.

So there's very little that actually survives. But I mean, almost certainly the Vikings would have come here. As we drove here, we went to a little village called Raventhorpe. How Viking can that get? We are the right side of the A5, which was the division for the Dengeld. So this is where it gets quite interesting, isn't it? Because what happens then with the Great Army and certainly 8-7-3, Repton, and then Mercia with it, falls to the Vikings.

And we have this period where a lot of this is, later it becomes learned as a Dane lawyer, isn't actually the term used at the time, but as you say, there seems to be a division and there seems to be settlement, certainly on this sort of side. So we don't really know what happens here specifically, but to the rest of Mercia, what is the impact really that those Vikings have on Mercia?

Well, politically, the greatest impact up until the Vikings, Mercia was the dominant kingdom of England. We mentioned the connections with Charlemagne. If the Vikings hadn't come along, and I hate counterfactual history, but if the Vikings hadn't come along, Mercia would have remained the dominant kingdom

in the medieval period, and a place that's now completely forgotten about, like Tamworth, you know, might have been the capital, you know, like Paris is in the middle of France, the same idea. So, you know, with the people, political geography in Britain was changed forever with the arrival of the Vikings,

and then the growth of the Kingdom of Wessex that managed to stem the Viking advance. And the kings of Wessex were the people who, Athelston, Edward the Elder, to then create a kingdom, a unified kingdom in the 9th century. So really, I suppose, it's churches like this where we're standing right now, that's the sort of the remainder really that we have, of that Mercy in prime time, as it were, the golden age of Mercia, is in places like this church in Bricksworth.

This fleeting moment for literally 40 or 50 years. We have the sculpture, we have manuscripts from this period, we have wonderful decorative arts, brooches, gold work. It must have been the most amazing period. But then it was all squashed. Yeah, sorry about that. You've got like that was to blame a lot for. Fantastic. Well, I would absolutely recommend everyone come here to All Saints Church in Bricksworth to have a look.

It's open. You can just have a look around and do spot those Roman bricks and in other churches as well. I mean, around the country, that is quite a common thing, isn't it? So people can't have a look for that, can't they? Two people can spot the reuse of Roman material in Saxon churches. Yeah, absolutely. Brilliant. Mark, thank you so much for joining me and for taking me here. Well, it was a pleasure and it's a joy to share what is, I think, the most exciting Saxon building in the country. Thank you so much. And thank you everyone for listening. This has been an episode of Gone Medieval from History Head. Please do subscribe if you haven't already. And don't forget, you can subscribe to our newsletter, Medieval Mondays.

Just look in the episode notes for how to do that. I'm Dr. Kat Jarman and I will be back with you next Tuesday.