Kirkdale

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The history of the church and early history of Kirkdale

 

 

 

  

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Introduction

 

The Saxon Church of Kirkdale is an exquisite historical jewel which lies about a mile west of Kirkbymoorside, south of the North York Moors, and overlooks the Hodge Beck. Within the porch at the entrance door is housed a Yorkshire treasure. It is a Saxon sundial, and it bears the following inscription:

 

Orm the son of Gamel acquired St Gregory’s Minster when it was completely ruined and collapsed, and he had it built anew from the ground to Christ and to St Gregory in the days of King Edward and in the days of Earl Tostig”.

 

The sundial itself bears the inscription “This is the day’s sun circle at each hourand then “The priest and Hawarth me wrought and Brand

 

One would look far before finding a place which surpasses Kirkdale for the combination of beauty of setting with historic and architectural interest. Situated in that belt of limestone which separates Ryedale from the North Yorkshire Moors, through which the streams have scoured narrow valleys, Kirkdale can scarcely be seen from any direction until one is close at hand. The Hodge Beck, rising above Bransdale, flows southward through a wooded gorge and then, just below the old mill at Hold Caldron, it enters a subterranean channel, leaving a surface bed to carry the flood water after heavy rain. The Beck rises again at the spring at Howkeld and eventually rejoins the surface bed near Welburn Hall. At Kirkdale a ford crosses the bed of the stream; normally dry, in time of flood it can be covered by up to three feet of water (St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, Arthur Penn, Parochial Church Council).

 

Much of the existing church is late Saxon. Within the church are the remains of grave slabs and crosses of an earlier period.

 

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Etymology

 

Kirkdale is variously applied to the church of St Gregory’s Minster, to the lower part of the valley, and later to the parish (St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 1).

 

Kirk is an Anglo Saxon place name which is usually associated with a pre existing church. Kirk suggests the existence of a church prior to the ninth century. It has been suggested that the churches at Kirkdale and Kirkbymoorside might have formerly belonged to the monastic estate of Lastingham.

 

The word dale comes from the Old English word dæl, from which the word "dell" is also derived. It is also related to Old Norse word dalr (and the modern Icelandic word dalur), which may perhaps have influenced its survival in northern England. The Germanic origin is assumed to be *dala-. Dal- in various combinations is common in placenames in Norway. It is used most frequently in the North of England and the Southern Uplands of Scotland.

 

Vale, from the modern English valley and French vallée are not related to dale. 

 

The reference to Kirkdale minster on the sundial is likely the English equivalent of monasterium, which was not an association with later monasticism, but to more varied types of religious establishment. So minster does not particularise the religious purpose of the original building. It doesn’t mean that it was a monastery, nor a minster in the modern sense.

 

The Geography of Kirkdale

 

The valley of Kirkdale, which extends from the larger dale of Bransdale, is one of many north to south dales along the southern edge of the North York Moors, before these valleys open out into the rich agricultural land of the Vale of Pickering and the Vale of York. Kirkdale is the southern extension of Bransdale, which follows the Hodge Beck. It lies west of the settlement of Kirkbymoorside. To the south, the River Dove which flows from Farndale through Kirkbymoorside and the Hodge Beck join at a confluence.

 

Kirkdale is at the flood plain of the Hodge Beck, with a long history of downcutting, braiding and terracing. The flood plain must always have been an attractive focus for settlement, pasture and arable. The church and churchyard are situated at a wide area before the dale narrows to pass through a steep valley with a high cliff, to emerge further south into the Vale of Pickering. (Archaeology at Kirkdale, Supplement to the Ryedale Historian No 18 (1996 to 1997), Lorna Watts, Jane Grenville and Philip Rahtz, 2). (St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 1).

 

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Maps showing relationship of Kirkdale to Farndale and the lands of the Chirchebi Estate

 

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The lands of Kirkdale

 

 

To the north of Kirkdale lie the North Yorkshire Moors, the windswept and barren heights. Flowing down from the moors, following river courses, are the dales, relatively steeply sided valleys, with Bransdale following the Hodge Beck and Farndale following the River Dove. The dales flow down to the wide, flat agricultural lands of two vast vales, the Vale of York which sweeps south towards York and the Vale of Pickering, temporarily a prehistoric lake, which flows east towards Pickering and beyond.

 

The vales are ancient agricultural lands. The dales beyond the southern extremities were probably impenetrable and heavily forested for much of their ancient history. The moors have always been a harsh and bitter place.

 

Kirkdale therefore lies at the edge of the wild lands of the dales and the moors, but at the northwest corner of vast agricultural lands, at the southern point of the dales, where there is some protection, and access to stone, mineral and wood resources, and to hunting opportunities. The church is positioned to avoid excessive flood damage, but is at a location which has historically been liable to flooding. 

 

It is clear from the Domesday Book that Kirkdale was at the centre of a section of those vast agricultural lands, stretching from Kirkby Misperton and Muscoates to the south to Gillamor at the approach to the dales in the north. The River Dove and the Hodge Beck flowed out of the dales and through Kirkdale and Chirchebi (Kirkbymoorside).

 

Since Kirkdale cave has revealed animal remains dating to the last interglacial period (130,000 to 115,000 Years Before Present (“YBP”), this is an ancient place, where animals have long roamed and where our distant ancestors later lived and worked, even before historical written records provided more direct evidence of their presence.

 

In time, after the Norman conquest, the new Norman overlords would seek more agricultural land by probing higher into the dales, as the wooded dales were assarted (“slashed and burned”) to provide extensions of the farmed land, into Farndale and Bransdale.

 

The main geographical features in the surrounding area include:

 

·         Hodge Beck which flows from its source in Bransdale. It has been associated with Redofra or Redover in the Rievaulx Chartulary.

 

·         Welburn which is 1 km south of Kirkdale, and referred to in the Domesday book, where Roman finds have been discovered.

 

·         Kirkdale likely had an important relationship with Kirkbymoorside (Chirchebi) which developed from a centralised estate centre to a small urban settlement, whose landowners, by the time of the Norman Conquest and probably prior to that, were active in York and the wider area.

 

·         There was a Roman Villa at Beadlam which might have been part of one estate including Kirkdale (St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 287).

 

·         Lastingham lies in a sheltered valley on the edge of scarcely settled moors.

 

·         Hovingham, Kirkbymoorside and Kirkdale by the middle Anglo Saxon period, were secure locations within a wider territory, and within a network of road and exchange networks.

 

·         Lower down the vale, Sherburn and Kirkby Misperton were at island crossing points within low lying marshes.

 

·         Pickering, Old Malton and Hovingham are likely to have been the centres of major estates within the wider administrative framework.

 

Archaeology at Kirkdale

 

Archaeological research at Kirkdale started in late 1994 focused on the church building itself, above and below ground, and the fields to the north and the south along the river. The Kirkdale evaluation project started in 1995. This work continued to 1998, with further work to the exterior of the church in 2000 and 2014. The excavations were dug by hand.

 

The work was led by Professor Philip Arthur Rahtz (11 March 1921 – 2 June 2011), founder of the University of York’s Archaeology Department in 1979, and Lorna Watts.

 

Much of the present interpretation depends on the excavation of a small sample of only about 0.36% of the area around the church.

 

The excavations were at Kirkdale itself, with three trenches in the North Field – Trench II at the church boundary wall, Trench III in the middle of the field and Trench I to the north by the Hodge Beck. There was also an excavation in the south field.

 

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Archaeological excavations at Kirkdale

 

(St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 10, 283).

 

The earlier history of the church is evidenced by artefacts at Kirkdale dating to as early as the late eighth century CE:

Close scrutiny of the surviving fabric of Orm's church reveals three large stone crosses, much weathered, built into it, two in the outside of the south wall of the nave and one in the outside of the west wall to the north of the tower.

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These are gravestones of Anglo-Scandinavian design introduced to northern and eastern England by the Danes and Norwegians who settled here in the late ninth and early tenth centuries. They are most probably to be dated to the tenth century or early eleventh, and presumably were gravestones in the cemetery of the church which preceded Orm's rebuilding.

Heather O’Donaghue (Viking Age Lastingham, Heather O’Donaghue, Professor of Old Norse at the University of Oxford, 2016) refers to the Christ like figure on the Kirkdale cross, built in to the wall of the church, having a forked beard, suggesting Scandinavian influence.

It may seem a little odd to us that builders should use among their materials gravestones which had been erected in the fairly recent past, especially at a place where good building stone lies ready to hand: but the practice was not uncommon in buildings of this period; there is a nearby parallel, for example, in the church at Middleton between Kirkbymoorside and Pickering.

 

There is a cross which was removed from the west wall of the church and which was once suggested to have been inscribed Cyning Aethilwald, but which inscription is now lost. This cross had been the basis of a theory that Kirkdale rather than Lastingham was the real site of the monastery founded by St Cedd in the Seventh Century. However the theory is not generally accepted.

Two elaborate grave covers, have been called the Cedd Stone and the Ethelwald Stone. These two tomb-slabs are to be seen inside the church, under the arcade which separates the nave from the north aisle.

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These too were incorporated into the fabric at Orm's rebuilding: They were moved to their present position at the time of the restoration of 1907-09. Scholarly opinion dates these to the Anglian or pre-Scandinavian period, that is before about 870 CE. One of them appears to be of the eighth century and the other of the ninth. On the strength of this dating the history of the church on this site may be taken back to about 750 CE, conceivably even earlier. For their day they are very handsome pieces which display craftsmanship of a high order. Furthermore, certain features of their design strongly suggest that they originally stood inside a church. These indications show that the persons once buried beneath them were of significant status and prestige. The church, which originally housed these tombs, may well have been an imposing one.

One of these, upon which is a fine cross, was said, a century ago, to bear the inscription in runic characters, 'Cyning Æthilwald,' but no writing is now decipherable. This inscription was one of the foundations of the theory that Kirkdale was the true site of the monastery founded by S. Cedd in the 7th century.

 

The inscription on the sundial makes it clear that the church built by Orm replaced an earlier one on the site which was, 'completely ruined and collapsed' when Orm acquired it.

 

The earlier church may have been associated with the celebrated early Anglo-Saxon monastery of Lastingham, only seven miles to the north-east of Kirkdale. Lastingham was founded by St. Cedd in about 655. He was a native of Northumbria, a monk and missionary who became the first bishop of the East Saxons (i.e. Essex) in about 654 and died in 664. He kept up his links with his native region, and it was in the course of one of his sojourns in Northumbria after he had become a bishop that he founded Lastingham. The sort of architecture favoured by Cedd may still be seen at the imposing, barn-like church of Bradwell-on-Sea in Essex. The monastery at Lastingham was an important one, and it is by no means impossible that it had daughter-houses. A nearby and contemporary parallel is Hackness, founded in 680 CE as the daughter-house of the monastery of Whitby. It is therefore possible that Kirkdale may have originated as a satellite of Lastingham.

 

Since very early times Kirkdale Church has been known as St. Gregory's Minster, which implies the existence of a religious house.

 

It is dedicated to St. Gregory, the Pope who sent Augustine's mission in 597 CE to convert the Angli to Christianity.

 

There was for a time a certain amount of disagreement between the Roman and Lindisfarne missions, which was resolved at the Synod of Whitby in 664 CE. St. Cedd was at Whitby and agreed to the adoption of Roman customs. It may well be that the dedication of a foundation, established by a Lindisfarne missionary, to St. Gregory, was a deliberate attempt to foster unity.

 

Chronological history of Kirkdale to Norman times

 

The Palaeolithic record, 130,000 to 115,000 YBP

 

Geological formation

 

The valley of Kirkdale and Bransdale is the result of wearing by the river, which in former millennia cut down the land roughly to the level of the present flood plain at Kirkdale. This flow would have been interrupted between c 18,000 to 13,000 BCE at the end of the last glaciation, when drainage from the Vale of Pickering was impeded at the coast. This resulted in Lake Pickering, which probably extended into tributary valleys such as Kirkdale. (St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 1).

 

Kirkdale Cave

 

Kirkdale Cave is a cave and fossil site located in Kirkdale. It was discovered by workmen in 1821 and found to contain the fossilised bones of a variety of mammals no longer indigenous to Britain, including hippopotami (the farthest north any such remains have been found), elephants and cave hyenas.

 

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In 1821, a quarry close to the Minster was being worked for road stone. The quarry men cut through a cave entrance. They spread stone chippings on the road, not noticing small bones. This cave was later found to have been covered by many inches depth of animal bones beneath a layer of dried mud. The local vicar later spotted the bones and reported his find to the Reverend William Buckland, who was a professor of minerology and geology at Oxford University. Buckland came to the site in 1822. The discovery at Kirkdale occurred in the wake of new forms of stratigraphic dating developed during the Enlightenment. Some of the fossils were sent to William Clift the curator of the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons who identified some of the bones as the remains of hyenas larger than any of the modern species. Buckland later reported to the Royal Society in London the discovery of:

 

·         Straight tusked elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, bison and giant bear finds from the earlier warmer period; and

·         Mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, reindeer, horse and sabre tooth tiger remains from the later cold spells.

 

Buckland began his investigation believing that the fossils in the cave were diluvial, that is that they had been deposited there by a deluge that had washed them from far away, possibly the Biblical flood.

 

On further analysis Buckland concluded that the bones were the remains of animals brought in by hyenas who used it for a den, and not a result of the Biblical flood floating corpses in from distant lands, as he had first thought. His reconstruction of an ancient ecosystem from detailed analysis of fossil evidence was admired at the time, and considered to be an example of how geo-historical research should be done. The minute and painstaking accuracy of his observation and description of the bones set new standards of scientific method. The Kirkdale cave discoveries helped to inspire a landmark in the development of geological study.

 

The hyena bones were abundant and evidenced that hyena had dragged animal parts into the cave to eat them. The mouth of the cave is not larger than one metre in height, so Buckland concluded that the varied animal remains were the prey of hyena, dragged into the cave. He came to realise that the cave had never been open to the surface through its roof, and that the only entrance was too small for the carcasses of animals as large as elephants or hippos to have floated in. He began to suspect that the animals had lived in the local area, and that the hyenas had used the cave as a den and brought in remains of the various animals they fed on. This hypothesis was supported by the fact that many of the bones showed signs of having been gnawed prior to fossilisation, and by the presence of objects which Buckland suspected to be fossilised hyena dung. Further analysis, including comparison with the dung of modern spotted hyenas living in menageries, confirmed the identification of the fossilised dung.

 

All the bones at Kirkdale were accumulated across the cave floor and later a sediment of mud was introduced on a single occasion. This covered thousands of bone remains. Perhaps this mud was carried in by a rush of water, perhaps from glacial melt flooding through Newton Dale to lift Lake Pickering to a height of 250 metres. Thereafter a gradual reduction in the depth of Lake Pickering followed over many years, as water escaped through Kirkham Gorge, to flow towards the Humber Region.

 

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A humorous cartoon in 1822 depicting Buckland’s discovery

 

 

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31 – Ox tibia, Pleistocene, Kirkdale Cave

32 – Deer tooth, Cervus sp, Pleistocene, Kirkdale Cave

33 – Cave Earth, Pleistocene, Kirkdale Cave

34 – Red deer antler, cervus elephus, Pleistocene, Kirkdale Cave

35 – Hyena tooth, Pleistocene, Kirkdale Cave

36 – Hyena tooth, Pleistocene, Kirkdale Cave

37 = Bear tibia, Ursus sp, Pleistocene, Kirkdale Cave

 

(Displayed at the Scarborough Rotunda Museum)

 

A few days before reading the formal paper, he gave the following colourful account at a dinner held by the Geological Society: The hyaenas, gentlemen, preferred the flesh of elephants, rhinoceros, deer, cows, horses, etc., but sometimes, unable to procure these, & half starved, they used to come out of the narrow entrance of their cave in the evening down to the water's edge of a lake which must once have been there, & so helped themselves to some of the innumerable water-rats in wh[ich] the lake abounded.

 

In 1823 he published his findings to great critical acclaim in his work Reliquiae Diluvianae; or Observations on the Organic Remains con rained in Caves, Fissures and Diluvial Gravel, and on other Geological Phenomena, Attesting the Action of an Universal Deluge.

 

The cave was extended from its original length of 175 metres (574 ft) to 436 metres (1,430 ft) by Scarborough Caving Club in 1995. A survey was published in Descent magazine.

 

Calcite deposits overlying the bone-bearing sediments have been dated as 121,000 ± 4000 YBP using uranium-thorium dating, confirming that the material dates from the Ipswichian interglacial.

 

The Eemian or last interglacial was the interglacial period which began about 130,000 YBP at the end of the Penultimate Glacial Period and ended about 115,000 YBP at the beginning of the Last Glacial Period. The climate then was warmer than today, with a higher global sea level and smaller ice-sheets. During the Last Inter Glacial, polar temperatures were about 3-5 °C higher than today, the global sea level was at least 6.6 m above present and the global surface temperature was about 1 °C warmer compared to the pre-industrial era.

 

The specimens were an original part of the archaeology collection of the Yorkshire Museum and it is said that "the scientific interest aroused founded the Yorkshire Philosophical Society".

 

While criticized by some, William Buckland's analysis of Kirkland Cave and other bone caves was widely seen as a model for how careful analysis could be used to reconstruct the Earth's past, and the Royal Society awarded William Buckland the Copley Medal in 1822 for his Kirkdale paper. At the presentation the society's president, Humphry Davy, said: by these inquiries, a distinct epoch has, as it were, been established in the history of the revolutions of our globe: a point fixed from which our researches may be pursued through the immensity of ages, and the records of animate nature, as it were, carried back to the time of the creation.

 

There is no prehistoric evidence of human habitation from the Kirkdale excavations. There have been local finds of later worked flint. There is inconclusive evidence of a stone monolith, but if that is what it was, it could have been transported there in floods. It is possible that there was some prehistoric ritual landscape in the area and this would be consistent with later early religious use which often followed at prehistoric ritual sites. All this however is pretty inconclusive.

 

(St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 284).

 

The discoveries in Kirkdale cave caused a sensation at the time. The fossilised remains were embedded in a silty layer sandwiched between layers of stalagmite. The energetic Buckland went on to explore twenty further caves in the next two years, and even imported a hyena to Oxford to observe the habits of killing and dismembering its prey in order to test his hypotheses.

 

Three years after his Kirkdale discovery, William Buckland discovered the footprints of a giant lizard which he called Megalosaurus, but which would later be called dinosaurs.

 

This was before the age of humans in Britian, but a place of very deep antiquity, and the very place where our ancestors would later live, in a different period of geological time.

 

A vast epoch of time then passed before the first human settlers following the last great Ice Age entered Britain across Doggerland, the lowlands of what is now the North Sea, probably following animals such as reindeer. The first people arrived in the area of the North Yorks Moors about 10,000 years ago. They were hunters, hunting wild animals across the moors and in the forests. Relics of this early hunting, gathering and fishing community have been found as a widespread scattering of flint tools and the barbed flint flakes used in arrows and spears.

 

18,000 YBP – The Devensian Period, the end of the last Ice Age

 

The Devensian ice sheets created the natural topography of Yorkshire and Ryedale, which provided a natural landscape for the dense network of religious communities of the seventh and eight centuries. This was a landscape of strategic corridors through which royal and aristocratic patrons competed. The geology of the upland areas directed the meltwaters through rivers into the lowlands which provide water supplies and rich alluvial deposits, creating four main regions of the Holderness peninsula, the Vale of Pickering, the Vale of York and the Humberhead Levels. The Hodge Beck and the River Dove ran off into the Vale of Pickering to form Lake Pickering, a pro glacial lake. In time Lake Pickering drained off into the Derwent, leaving extensive marshland.

 

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Ryedale thus became an area of key strategic importance. The area became as natural core for agriculture and human habitation and the Vale of York and the Vale of Mowbray were well suited to pastoral farming.

 

(Power, Religious Patronage and Pastoral Care, Religious communities, mother parishes and local churches in Ryedale c650 to c1250, Thomas Pickles D Phil Oxon, Lecturer in Medieval History, The Kirkdale Lecture 2009)

 

Iron Age

 

By the late Iron Age, the area was dominated by the Parisii around Holderness and the Brigantes in the Vale of York.

 

The Pre Roman Period

 

It is clear that within a radius of some 15 to 20 km of Kirkdale there is complex archaeologically derived evidence of secular and religious activity from at least the pre Roman period (St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 3). This was essentially a rural area, with non nucleated settlements, with contact between the settlements by north to south routes through the valleys on the sides of the moors and east to west through the Vale of Pickering.

 

The Roman Period

 

Kirkdale is only about 25km north of the major Roman regional capital, Eboracum (York). Eboracum (York) would have become increasingly accessible from Kirkdale to the south during the Roman period, with the construction of new roads.

 

Thurkilsti was a pre Roman road from the North York Moors which passed close to the west side of Kirkdale and on to Welburn, just south of the Kirkdale ford and to Hovingham where it later joined the Roman roads (St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 3).

 

During the Roman period, Kirkdale was in the Roman hinterland. By the late Roman period, Kirkdale was probably part of a stable, well regulated area with dispersed settlement, probably dependent on major villa based estates such as at Beadlam and Hovingham.

 

The significance of Ryedale was reinforced by an extensive Roman road network.

 

·         Wade’s Causeway ran from Malton across Wheeldale Moor towards Whitby.

·         A Roman road ran from Malton to the Vale of York via the Coxwold Gilling gap where it joined Hambleton Street which stretched from Bernicia to Lincoln.

 

There have been structures in the area dating to the Roman period, such as the Roman villa at Beadlam, only 2 km west of Kirkdale, discovered in the 1960s. The region around Beadlam was administered from the Roman town of Isurium Brigantum (modern Aldborough, near Boroughbridge).

 

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Beadlam probably sat at the centre of a working estate that provided its owners with an income. Comparable estates show evidence for arable farming and pasture, the management of woodlands, quarrying and various industrial activities. Many of the buildings at Beadlam show evidence of metalworking. Since most of the population of Roman Britain lived in the countryside, it is likely that sites like Beadlam would have played an important part of the rural economy and had goods to trade with larger settlements such as Malton or Aldborough.

 

Compared to the south of Roman Britain, the north was largely dominated by the Roman army, most notably the many forts along Hadrian’s Wall, and evidence of elaborate civilian buildings like Beadlam is quite rare. However, Beadlam is one of a cluster of potential villa sites in the Vale of Pickering around Malton, which include Langton, Oulston and Hovingham.

 

Excavations at each of them have revealed a rich array of Roman objects, including jewellery, pottery and expensive glassware, showing that such luxury items were in high demand even at the farthest extent of the empire. Evidence of occupation at Beadlam before the construction of the villa suggests that its owners were members of existing elites who had now adopted a Roman lifestyle. It was quite common in Yorkshire and across Roman Britain for Iron Age farmsteads to be developed with a Roman-style building. Other possible owners could have been retired soldiers who had been rewarded with land for their service, absentee landowners living elsewhere in the empire, or even the Roman emperor himself, who owned various estates in the province of Britannia.

 

The villa complex was probably constructed in about 300 CE and was occupied until about 400 CE, just before the end of Roman Britain. The villa at Beadlam had about 30 rooms, which were spread across three ranges built around a large courtyard. The northern range, the only one visible today, is a typical Romano-British winged-corridor house. This house comprised communal rooms in the centre and two private suites of well-appointed rooms on either side, connected by a long veranda.

 

The western suite included a room with a heating system (hypocaust) and in the east suite there was an elaborate reception room with a fine mosaic. It may be that these suites were self-contained and belonged to different households, who shared the use of the other rooms. A similar house lay just west of the courtyard and may have been occupied by another household. On the eastern side were further buildings that seem to have been used for industrial or agricultural processes.

 

It seems likely that there may have been some religious site at Kirkdale in the late Roman period, whether pagan or Christian or an amalgam of both. There is evidence of an early burial (including an infant) to the north east of the church at “Trench NB”. The first recognised structural phase is “Foundation P” at the north exterior of the church, which used blocks which might have been from the fully Roman period (or might have been reused) and might have been part of a detached structure, such as a funerary building or mausoleum. It is not clear whether late Roman Christianity might have reached Kirkdale. It was evident in York and it was arguably present in the excavations at the nearby Beadlam villa, but this remains uncertain.

 

It is possible that any Roman presence in Kirkdale might have been related to a place for the burial of the dead from Beadlam.

 

Hovingham was a much more significant Roman villa, perhaps on a palatial scale, nearly 10km southwest from Kirkdale, and it could have had very extensive holdings, which could have embraced a wider estate including Beadlam and Kirkdale.

 

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Lastingham might have had a Roman predecessor to the later monastery, possibly a nymphaeum.

 

Villas at Appleton le Street, Blandsby Park and Langton indicate that Ryedale was a major agricultural producer in the Roman period. The landscape of the Vale of Pickering was likely well settled, and this might have extended into the rural hinterland. Agricultural produce would have been required at significant scale to support the northern Roman army.

 

In the Roman period, the area around Kirkdale probably included a small number of dominant settlements in this area of rural hinterland. The population would have been within the military and administrative orbits of the Roman interests.

 

(St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 284 to 288).

 

A pre Christian past?

 

C L R Tudor, a Brief Account of Kirkdale Church with Plans, Elevations, Sections, Details and Perspective Views (London 1876) suggested that Kirkdale’s Christian association did not mark the beginning of the site’s importance. He wondered about its possible association as a Druid site. In support of a longer history, many commentators have remarked on the quietness, beauty and timelessness of the site.

 

The adjacent stream, Hodge Beck, long referred to by its primitive Welsh name Redofram or stream, has a distinctive characteristic. In dry weather it ceases to flow above ground and uses underground channels of fissured limestone. This occurs either side of the present church, between the mill above the church where the water goes underground and the church at Welburn where it reemerges. Madge Allison, a local archaeologist, had recognised the importance of this, citing J G Frazer’s The Golden Bough, as something unusual that would promote a reaction to the landscape, in its variable physical setting of the beck. The spectacle of the waters of the Hodge Beck on either side of the site of the later Church, which are periodically lost to sight, provides a suitable location for pre Christian phenomenological experience. The Hodge Beck was not the only example of disappearing water, with similar occurrences at Lastingham. Underground openings might have been used to communicate via discolouration by means of dyes and meetings might have been timed to coincide with water flow changes.

 

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The location of Kirkdale is both accessible, whilst not obvious. It could be accessed by long distance routeways, but its location was aside and at the edge of the more populated vales.

 

If there were pre Christian practices at Kirkdale, then the shift from pre Christian to Christian might have been a more natural one.

 

(St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 306).

 

Fifth Century CE

 

The late c 4th and c 5th transitional period after the end of Roman rule, provides limited archaeological evidence. It is likely that settlement was very localised.

 

What happened to the Roman estates and populations around Kirkdale in the post Roman period is uncertain, but the interests of some of the dominant landholders probably continued. The nature of lordship in the area around Kirkdale was not overtly Anglo Saxon. There is an absence of obviously culturally Anglo Saxon grave goods. In might be surmised that the population in the area remained more indigenous, at least for a while, rather than immediately overwhelmed by the Angloi Saxon incomers. Over time however, the population would have gradually assumed a new mixed Anglo Saxon identity.

 

At Beadlam, a large number of coins date to the later fourth century CE and might reflect locally secure conditions after the Romans had left. Beadlam seems to have continued as an important supplier of grain, as evidenced by the presence of a grain dryer. Beadlam’s material culture suggests continued post Roman activity. It cannot be said with any certainty that Kirkdale had any association with Beadlam, but its proximity might suggest its continued importance during this little known period.

 

The Kingdom of Deira emerged from the mid fifth century and Bede’s Historia Ecclesia suggests that there was a gradual consolidation of small controlling groups.

 

The absence of hillforts and the non defensive nature of places like Hovingham raise questions about how control was physically maintained during this period.

 

(St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 288 to 289).

 

580 CE

 

The historian Procopius (500 to 565 CE) described the people of Brittia as Angiloi to Pope Gregory the Great. Gregory had seen fair haired slaves for sale and replied that they were not Angles, but angels. His pun is sometimes taken to define the origin of the English and Gregory continued to class them as a single peoples.

 

It is significant that Bede described the incident as Gregory’s encounter with a Deiran boy in Rome about to be sold into slavery. Kirkdale lay firmly in the Kingdom of Deira.

 

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Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England, Book II, Chapter 1: Nor must we pass by in silence the story of the blessed Gregory, handed down to us by the tradition of our ancestors, which explains his earnest care for the salvation of our nation. It is said that one day, when some merchants had lately arrived at Rome, many things were exposed for sale in the market place, and much people resorted thither to buy: Gregory himself went with the rest, and saw among other wares some boys put up for sale, of fair complexion, with pleasing countenances, and very beautiful hair. When he beheld them, he asked, it is said, from what region or country they were brought? and was told, from the island of Britain, and that the inhabitants were like that in appearance. He again inquired whether those islanders were Christians, or still involved in the errors of paganism, and was informed that they were pagans. Then fetching a deep sigh from the bottom of his heart, “Alas! what pity,” said he, “that the author of darkness should own men of such fair countenances; and that with such grace of outward form, their minds should be void of inward grace.” He therefore again asked, what was the name of that nation? and was answered, that they were called Angles. “Right,” said he, “for they have an angelic face, and it is meet that such should be co-heirs with the Angels in heaven. What is the name of the province from which they are brought?” It was replied, that the natives of that province were called Deiri. “Truly are they De ira,” said he, “saved from wrath, and called to the mercy of Christ. How is the king of that province called?” They told him his name was Aelli; and he, playing upon the name, said, “Allelujah, the praise of God the Creator must be sung in those parts.”

 

So three puns from this story give us some historical perspective:

 

·         An Angle from Deira was the inspiration for the nation of England.

·         A pun on Deira itself, de ira, ‘of anger’ were an inspiration on Gregory, in Bede’s image, that the Deirans had been saved from wrath.

·         King Aelli of Deira was the King who inspired the word Allelujah.

 

Kirkdale finds itself firmly within the ambit of England’s origin story, being a significant place within the lands of Deira, and the place of a church which soon afterwards was dedicated to Pope Gregory.

 

By the late sixth century, groups now referred to as the Anglo Saxons were gaining control over the land, including at Lastingham.

 

597 CE

 

Pope Gregory sent Augustine, Prior of a Roman monastery, to Kent on an ambassadorial and religious mission to convert the Angli, and he was welcomed by King Aethelberht.

 

The English church would come to own a quarter of cultivated land in England and reintroduce literacy at least amongst the Church. English identity began in a religious concept. Hence there grew a single and distinct English church. It adopted Roman practices in its dogma and liturgy (as later confirmed at the Synod of Whitby in 663 CE), but it venerated English saints and developed its own character.

 

604 CE

 

St Gregory (540 to 604 CE) died on 12 March 604. He was the bishop of Rome from 3 September 590 to his death. He is known for instituting the first recorded large-scale mission from Rome, the Gregorian mission, to convert the then largely pagan Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. Gregory is also well known for his writings, which were more prolific than those of any of his predecessors as pope. Gregory was more inclined to remain retired into the monastic lifestyle of contemplation. The mainstream form of Western plainchant, standardised in the late 9th century, was attributed to Pope Gregory I and so took the name of Gregorian chant.

 

627 CE

 

By the early seventh century CE, there was an incipient state structure under King Edwin of Deira’s peripatetic government, which held gatherings on estates where food renderings were consumed. Deira’s land was between the Humber and the Tees. York was an important centre. Edwin converted to the Christian religion, along with his nobles and many of his subjects, in 627 and was baptised at Eoforwic (York) and he built the first wooden church amidst the Roman ruins which was later replaced by a larger stone church.

 

The first recorded church at York was a wooden structure built hurriedly in 627 to provide a place to baptise Edwin, King of Northumbria. The location of this church, and its pre-1080 successors, is unknown. It was probably in or beside the old Roman principia (the military headquarters), which may have been used by the king when in residence in York. Archaeological evidence indicates the principia was located partly beneath the post-1080 Minister site, but excavations undertaken in 1967-73 found no remains of the pre-1080 churches. It can therefore be inferred that Edwin's church, and its immediate successors, was near the current Minster (possibly to the north, underneath the modern Dean's Park) but not directly on the same site.

 

633 CE

 

Edwin died and overall control of the Kingdom of Northumbria passed to the northern Kingdom of Bernicia.

 

655 CE

 

The Battle of the Winwead was fought on 15 November 655 between King Penda of Mercia and Oswiu of Bernicia, ending in the Mercians' defeat and Penda's death. According to Bede, the battle marked the effective demise of Anglo-Saxon paganism. It marked a temporary Northumbrian ascendency.

 

There followed religious foundations in Deira after the Battle of Winwead in the Vale of Pickering and in the area between York and Whitby, which appear to have included Lastingham, Kirkdale, Coxwold, Hovingham and Kirby Misperton.

 

657 CE

 

Whitby continued to have an ongoing importance as a port, which was enhanced by the foundation of a monastery there. The first monastery was founded in 657 CE by the Anglo-Saxon King of Northumbria, Oswiu (Oswy).

 

653 CE

 

The monastery at Lastingham

 

Bede, in his History of the English Church and People (731 CE), recorded a small monastic community was founded at Lastingham (some 10km northeast of Kirkdale) under royal patronage, partly to prepare an eventual burial place for Æthelwald, Christian king of Deira, partly to assert the presence and lordship of Christ in a trackless moorland wilderness haunted by wild beasts and outlaws.

 

663 CE

 

The Synod of Whitby

 

Aidan had come to Northumbria from Iona, bringing with him a set of practices that are known as the Celtic Rite. As well as superficial differences over the computus (calculation of the date of Easter), and the “cut of the tonsure” (the practice of cutting or shaving some or all of the hair on the scalp as a sign of religious devotion or humility), these involved a pattern of Church organisation fundamentally different from the diocesan structure that was evolving on the continent of Europe. Activity was based in monasteries, which supported peripatetic missionary bishops. There was a strong emphasis on personal asceticism, on Biblical exegesis, and on eschatology. Aidan was well known for his personal austerity and disregard for the trappings of wealth and power. Bede several times stresses that Cedd and Chad absorbed his example and traditions. Bede tells us that Chad and many other Northumbrians went to study with the Irish after the death of Aidan.

 

Lastingham had been founded in the Lindisfarne/Iona/Celtic tradition.

 

There was for a time some disagreement between the Roman and Lindisfarne missions. This caused conflict within the church until the issue was resolved at the Synod of Whitby in 663 by Oswiu of Northumbria opting to adopt the Roman system.

 

The schism had come about because the church in the south were tied to Rome, but the northern church had become increasingly influenced by the doctrines from Iona. The Synod was held in the monastery at Streoneschalch near to Whitby.

 

St Cedd was at Whitby and agreed to the adoption of Roman customs. 

 

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A scribe, probably Bede, who recorded the events of the Synod of Whitby

 

685 CE

 

Whilst there may have been some continued subdivision of the local area into great estates, the locality of Kirkdale at this time was in well regulated and well used landscape. The Vale of Pickering was a self contained area, off centre to the main north south route through York, but accessible to the North Sea. Hovingham continued to be an administrative centre. Kirkdale was therefore well protected from the more troublesome border areas and a suitable place for agricultural and religious prosperity. Kirkdale is unusual in being a settlement which has not been subject to constant renewal. (St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 290).

 

Foundation of Kirkdale

 

The circumstances under which a church of the Anglo Saxon period was established at Kirkdale are unknown. By about 685 CE, it seems likely that the early church at Kirkdale was dedicated to St Gregory, Pope Gregory who sent Augustine’s mission to England in 597 CE.

 

The Church might have been established at the time of the establishment of a new cemetery or there may have been an existing burial practice, so far undetected by archaeology. The preferred model is that the initial use was of a church only, without an associated monastery. The natural resources in the immediate vicinity and risk of flooding was probably not favourable to a permanent monastery settlement.

 

It is most likely that the sponsors of the new church were from the social elite and they probably lived elsewhere, probably in Kirkbymoorside.

 

Ongoing connections with Lastingham may have changed over time.

 

Dedication to St Gregory was unusual. There appear to have been strong links between the Deirans and Pope Gregory.

 

It is significant that Bede reported Gregory’s encounter with a Deiran boy in Rome, about to be sold into slavery and is said to have referred to his nationality as Angli, in his word play with angels; his word play with De Ira; and its King Aella’s association with Alleluia. This suggests some linkage between Deira and the Deiran king and Pope Gregory.

 

The Gregorian link extends further to associations with the royal dead of Deira and Gregory. When King Edwin of Deira fell at the Battle of Hatfield Chase on 12 October 633 about 8 miles north of Doncaster, which marked the effective end of Deiran kingship, Edwin was temporarily placed in a porticus or chapel dedicated to St Gregory in York (later completed by his successor Oswald) and his body was then moved to be finally buried at Whitby again in a porticus dedicated to Gregory. Philip Ratz et al have speculated that as the journey from York to Whitby would have taken more than a day, and as Kirkdale is at about the mid way point, it is possible that his body lay there temporarily. There is no surviving evidence of this. It might be implied from a mid eleventh century dedication stone. It is possible therefore that there may have been some association with St Gregory from as early as 633 CE.

 

Another link with St Gregory is that Cedd, the founder of Lastingham was described by Bede to have baptised the king of East Anglia at Rendelsham in a church also dedicated to St Gregory. This might also reinforce some linkage between Cedd and Lastingham and Kirkdale.

 

Dedication to St Gregory might link Kirkdale to a period of general conversion in the area from about 569 CE and might also have emphasised the direction of the English church’s association with Rome after the Synod of Whitby in 663 CE.

 

There is a possible association of Kirkdale with Cornu Vallis, the horned valley, a name which suggests some association with cattle in the distant past. Augustine’s mission was likely to have included instruction from Gregory to deal with pagan shrines. This might suggest a possibility that Kirkdale was already a known meeting place. Cornu Vallis is referred to as a place where Abbot Ceolfrith of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow visited in 716 CE, and this might suggests links between Kirkdale and the Tyne valley and Jarrow.  Ceolfrith had been a monk at Gilling and Ripon, and had an association with the area.

 

 (St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 292 to 293).

 

Ceolfrith was born around 642 CE in Northumbria. He became a monk at the monastery of St. Peter’s, Wearmouth. In 674 CE, Ceolfrith founded the twin monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow (which have also been associated with Cornu Vallis) along the River Wear in Northumbria. These monasteries became centres of learning, culture, and religious devotion.

 

Cornu Vallis has also been associated with Hornsea on the East Coast of Yorkshire, Spurn Head and with Bass Rock on the Firth of Forth. The exact location of Cornu Vallis remains debated. Cornu Vallis played a role in Ceolfrith’s journey in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria. Bede’s abbot Ceolfrith (also known as Ceolfrid) travelled to a place called Cornu Vallis, which some scholars believe could have been Kirkdale. The Latin name “Cornu Vallis” may reference the horn-shaped valley, aligning with the topography of Kirkdale.

 

The Life of Ceolfrith by an Anonymous Monk of Jarrow of the Eighth Century, chapter XXIX, tells of the appointment of Hwartbert as abbot of Monkwearmouth Jarrow, who wrote a letter which he sent with gifts to Ceolfrith who was found at Aelfberht’s monastery, which is situated at a place called Cornu Vallis. The notes suggest that Ceolfrith had ridden south towards the mouth of the Humber.

 

The creation of a church at Kirkdale has been attributed to the Laestingas, an elite sub group of the Deirans, potentially associated with a larger area than Lastingham itself.

 

T Pickles, Power, Religious Patronage and Pastoral Care: Religious Communities, Mother Parishes and Local Churches in Ryedale, c. 650-c. 1250, The Kirkdale Lecture, 2009 (York: Trustees of the Friends of St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, 2009), at 25-6 has noted the overlapping jurisdiction of the parishes of Lastingham, Kirbymoorside, Kirby Misperton and Kirkdale, suggest that the much larger territory of the Laestingas, and the original parish of Lastingham, had been divided subsequently into several smaller areas.

 

Kirkdale and Lastingham are about 6 km apart and have long been closely associated.

 

It is likely that Kirkdale also had a close relationship with Kirkbymoorside (Chirchebi). Physically Kirkdale was more similar to Kirkbymoorside than Lastingham. Kirkbymoorside was slightly better placed in terms of water supply, protection from flooding, land based resources and higher surveillance points, which made it more suitable as a central place. By the late eighth century, a coin find suggests that it was sharing in the monetary economy which has been evidenced between Whitby and the Humber.

 

It may well be that these relationships were more fluid and not fixed.

 

(St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 290 to 292).

 

St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, Arthur Penn, Parochial Church Council surmises that the church might have been built in around 654 CE, but that theory rests on the unlikely premise that Kirkdale was the place of the Lastingham monastery. However, as the church was dedicated to St Gregory, likely to have been a deliberate attempt to foster unity following the Synod of Whitby, it seems likely to have been founded in the years following the Synod say around 665 CE. Cedd had died in 664 CE. Perhaps the church was founded by his successor and younger brother Chad.

 

It is possible that the site marks an early Anglo Saxon monastery, of which the Church is the surviving part (Archaeology at Kirkdale, Supplement to the Ryedale Historian No 18 (1996 to 1997), Lorna Watts, Jane Grenville and Philip Rahtz, 1), though the use of minister does not necessarily mean that is the case.

 

More recent excavations tend to suggest that the church at Kirkdale was important.

 

There is a local legend that the original intention was to build the church near Nawton and Wombleton, but a stone, chosen to mark the spot, was mysteriously found the next morning in Kirkdale. It was moved back to the intended site, but once again returned to the dale. So the church was built there. The story was later recorded in the diary of a schoolmaster of Appleton le Moors, F C Dawson, in his entry after a visit to Kirkdale on 14 June 1843.

 

The original parish churches emerged at about this time. A parish was a district that supported a church by payment of tithes in return for spiritual services. Some churches were linked to manor houses and others originated as the districts of missioning monasteries. The church at Whitby was near a major settlement, whilst the church of St Gregory’s at Kirkdale was located remotely in a dale. By 1145, Kirkdale was described as the church of Welburn. Recent excavations tend to confirm the view that an important church was at Kirkdale (John Rushton, The History of Ryedale, 2003, 19).

In contrast to the trackless moorland wilderness haunted by wild beasts and outlaws where Lastingham was built, in Kirkdale, an ancient route from north to south descended out of Bransdale to form a crossroads with an ancient route from west to east along the southern edge of the moors. Travellers needed shelter, medical attention and perhaps spiritual sustenance. It may well have been to provide these Christian ministrations and to teach the gospel in the region that a small community of monks or a priest was established there as a minster dedicated to Gregory the Great, as an English Apostle. The two finely decorated stone tomb covers, generally agreed to date from the eighth century, hint that this early church had wealthy patrons, perhaps royal patrons.

So we don't know exactly when the first church was built at Kirkdale. It may have been a daughter house of the monastic community at nearby Lastingham, which was founded in AD 659. The first church at Kirkdale was a minster, or mother church for the region. It may have included a chancel, a rarity for Anglo-Saxon churches.

The Friends of St Gregory's Minster Kirkdale suggest that at least one of the 8th century patrons may have been venerated locally as a saint.

The three fragments of Anglo-Saxon cross shafts built into the church walls date to the 9th and 10th centuries.

Pope Gregory had encouraged the conversion of pagan holy places to Christianity and the church at Kirkbymoorside is near a large burial mound.

 

It is assumed in the early Anglo Saxon period, that all land was ultimately held by the King, but was gradually dispersed, but by the ninth century CE the land was held by a broader elite, as the political structure gradually changed. Kirkdale was probably sponsored by the social elite. A structure on the north east side of the church may have been associated with burial and there may have been sequences of burial and building. (St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 283).

 

The scale of building at Kirkdale is evidence of robust economic activity that could be relied upon by its benefactors. This would have required the sourcing of stone and its transportation on viable routeways, its cutting to the required sizes, the tools to do this, and the manufacture of wood for scaffolding and mortar. This could have been achieved by central control, but probably involved a variety of landowners, at least to some degree.

 

It is likely that there were different interrelationships across Ryedale and beyond. The sculpture suggests that there might have been an association with Lastingham and Hovingham as important ‘saint rich’ centres, although it is possible to interpret Kirkdale sculpture as rivalry. It is also likely that there were allegiances and links with Cornu Vallis and perhaps with Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, which might have bridged several generations.

 

(St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 296 to 297).

 

This was perhaps the time when the Old English Beowulf was told orally as an epic poem.

 

750 CE

 

By 750 CE there was a reference to the pope involving land distribution relative to Stonegrave, Coxwold and Donemuthe (probably on the Tyne), which involved the Archbishop of York and his brothers, one of whom was the king of Northumbria. It is likely that Kirkdale would have had contact with Alcuin’s church of York which by that time was a very significant intellectual status, with an important library.

 

By the eighth century, the kings and the church were part of a socially stratified society, with political and economic control in the hands of an elite. The Kirkdale archaeologists have found evidence of symbolism and the burial of ‘special’ dead, so in the middle Anglo Saxon period, Kirkdale likely had a significance as a place in the surrounding hierarchy of the time. Kirkdale might have been attached to a local estate and the presence of the church at Kirkdale must have been a spiritual force which consolidated local hierarchies, providing social cohesion,. It must have been an important expression of Christianity which would have created local identity.

 

Kirkdale probably had an important relationship by the eighth century with what was by then perceived as the past. This might have been visible in its use of earlier Roman materials and as a symbol of enhanced associations with Christian Rome, including through its dedication to St Gregory. The archaeologists have identified blown glass (artefact GL2) in the Roman fashion which might suggest a continuation of techniques from the Roman period. There may have been an importance of Romanitas, a Latin word, first coined in the third century CE, meaning "Roman-ness" a link with things Roman, the collection of political and cultural concepts and practices by which the Romans defined themselves.

 

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Artefact GL2

 

(St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 297 to 298).

 

Early ninth century

 

Important sculptural artefacts of the late eighth and early ninth centuries have been found at Kirkbymoorside and Kirkdale. By this time minsters were associated with pastoral care. What is thought to have been part of an ecclesiastical chair at Kirkbymoorside suggests that it might have been a mother church, reinforced by its dedication to All Saints. So there may have been a relationship between Kirkbymoorside and Kirkdale. However the preferred model is that Kirkdale became dependent upon the secular aristocratic centre of Kirkbymoorside, whilst possibly having an as yet undefined relationship with Lastingham.

 

It has been surmised that:

 

·         Lastingham, Kirkbymoorside and Kirkdale might have been three separate and autonomous units.

·         Lastingham, Kirkbymoorside and Kirkdale might have been interconnected either (1) Lastingham, a major ecclesiastical centre, with Kirkbymoorside a secular and ecclesiastical dependent and Kirkdale an ecclesiastical dependent; or (2) Kirkbymoorside as a secular estate with Lastingham a dependent monastery, perhaps suitable for transhumance or seasonal grazing of livestock, and Kirkland a dependent church.

·         An ecclesiastical estate at Lastingham, a secular estate at Kirkbymoorside, each having an influence over Kirkdale.

 

Kirkdale was most likely a continuing element within a potentially flourishing economy, with a governmental framework in which a strongly aristocratic church would have played an important political role, including in Kingship. Churches would have played an important political role in contemporary power politics.

 

The Vale of Pickering came to have a significant concentration of religious establishments.

 

The significant artefacts excavated relative to this period have been found in excavations to the north of the church, at the west exterior, and in Trench II adjacent to the northern churchyard wall at the southern edge of the northern field. These finds are probably late eighth century and possibly early ninth century. These objects were associated with the early church, from which they had become displaced during later reconstruction. What survives is a tiny fraction of the original stone built structure – stone, glass and lead items which were able to withstand decay. It could be imagined that there would also have been non organic objects including altar cloths, vestments and paintings, which are no longer present. The presence of items such as glass suggest a contemporary active nexus of exchange. They could have been newly acquired or recycled.

 

 

Find ST 42, found in Trench II, stands out from other stone found at Kirkdale. It may have been imported from a significant, possibly Italian centre and was perhaps a relic fragment.

 

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Artefact ST 42

 

The above ground grace structures referred to above, were designated ST 7 and ST 8 by the archaeologists. They were found at the west exterior of the Church and have been interpreted to have been significant above ground grave structures, likely associated with elite members of society. Their position in the building might have been focused with vibrant paint and possibly the play of light.

 

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Artefact ST 7                                                                   Artefact ST 8                                                                                                    Reconstructed designs of ST7 and ST 8

 

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ST8

 

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ST7

 

The symbolism of these finds was likely understood by an informed audience. A design on ST 12 was probably reference to a chalice. Designs on ST 7 and ST 8 were probably theological messages. Symbolism on ST 7 has been linked to Bedean end of the world millenarianism. There was also symbolism associated with the dead themselves, marked out as ‘special’ dead, of more than usual value in the community, particularly associated with ST 8, probably also ST 7 and OM 3. ST 8 has been interpreted to be associated with some local recognition of sainthood.

 

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Artefact OM 3

 

(St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 293 to 295).

 

Late ninth century to early tenth century CE

 

There are theories that the minster fell into ruin, perhaps as a result of Danish raids, long before the sundial tells us that Orm Gamalson rebuilt it. However this might be the wrong interpretation. 

 

How Kirkdale navigated the transition from the Anglo Saxon to the Anglo Scandinavian period is opaque. Its placename incorporating the Scandinavian dalr suggests that it assumed a Scandinavian identity. The name Kirkdale, the church of the dale, would have been no guidance in a landscape with multiple valleys flowing down from the moors, which implies there was a continuation of it being a well known centre.

 

The archaeologists have found the presence of graves which appear to be from the Anglo-Scandinavian period.

 

There might have been unrest, disruption to religious observance and worse during the early Anglo Scandinavian period, however the area around Kirkdale was off centre to the known Danish upheaval, so it is possible that there was a relatively smooth change in local leadership of the area.

 

It is difficult to interpret how Kirkdale might have been affected by the sub division of previously extensive estates into smaller units during this period of increasing feudalisation and reestablishment around manors in the late ninth century. It may well be that the church at Kirkdale might have become more specifically responsible for the dispersed population around it, contrasting with a greater concentration of population in the settlement of Kirkbymoorside.

 

When the Scandinavian government was exercised from York, Kirkdale might have found itself in more regular contact with York. The elite associated with Kirkdale in time acquired property in York, but it is not known when this happened, but this might have caused greater interconnectedness with York.

 

The Scandinavian dominance was the beginning of a period of more profound change, with a tightening of the sense of northern-ness, as a counterpoint to the southern English court.

 

(St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 298 to 300).

 

Tenth century to early eleventh century CE

 

The church appears to have been destroyed by fire, most evident in excavations on its south side. There is archaeological evidence of burning and interior fittings of wood and cloth were inflammable.

 

Burials suggest that the building continued to be in use. Any such fire must have been before it was rebuilt by about 1055, but might not have been so long before as has previously been interpreted.

 

The archaeologists suggest that St Gregory’s minster might have reached its most extensive form before the 1055 building, although not in the nave, so this does not necessarily mean that there were more parishioners. It probably continued to take an Anglo Saxon form and not Anglo Scandinavian in form, and parallels have been identified with St Mary’s, Deerhurst in Gloucestershire.

 

The building therefore probably continued to attract considerable patronage, and the most obvious candidate is Orm Gamalson of the later sundial inscription or his family, as the sundial does not make clear whether Orm’s purchasing of the building and then its later rebuilding, were close in time.

 

Orm and his father Gamal were descendants of a family that gained power when the Scandinavian King Cnut rewarded his followers for their help in the conquest of England in 1014 to 1016. Their forebears probably included Thurbrand the Hold (died 1024). Thurbrand was a Northumbrian magnate in the early 11th century. Perhaps based in Holderness and East Yorkshire, Thurbrand was recorded as the killer of Uhtred the Bold, Earl of Northumbria. The killing appears to have been part of the war between Sweyn Forkbeard and Cnut the Great against the English king Æthelred the Unready, Uhtred being the latter's chief Northumbrian supporter. The family were likely players in multi generational Northumbrian politics and feuds. They were known political figures in the north. They had the wealth to rebuild the church on a significant scale.

 

Following the fire, the area of Trench II in the North Field became a builders yard, where debris from the church was taken and later components of the new building programme were prepared within the shelter of a shed like building. Disturbed graves at the west exterior of the church reflect the chaos of the fire and its aftermath.

 

(St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 301 to 302).

 

1014

 

Wulfstan, Archbishop of York’s Serman to the English People.

 

Wulfstan was appointed Archbishop of York in 1002 during the trubulent times of fresh waves of settlement from the wicinglas, the people of the fjord settlements. By the end of the tenth century, England was a sophisticated European state and in this context Wulfstan envisaged a sophisticated model of society. 1014 was a year of crisis, when King Aetheraed had been driven into exile, expelled by Sweyn Forkbeard who was accepted as King of the English before dying in 1014. Thus his young son Cnut became King.

 

Wufstan had long served in Aethelraed’s administration. In this context he wrote his sermon to the English people, Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (Lupi being the Latin for wolf, Wulfstan’s pen name). The sermon provided a contemporary definition of morality and was a landmark in the evolution of English civilisation.

 

The sermon began with a sense of foreboding: Beloved people, know that this is true: this world is in haste and it approaches its end. And so, because of the nation’s sins, things must of necessity grow far more evil before Antichrist’s advent: and then indeed they shall be appalling and terrible widely throughout the world.

 

It continued: the devil has too much led stray the nationif we are to expect any cure, then we must deserve it of God better than we hitherto have done…. God’s houses are too cleanly despoiled … Nor has anyone been faithful in thought towards another as duly he should … people have not very often cared what they have wrought by word or by deed

 

He then recounted that There was a historian in the days of the Britons called Gildas, who wrote about their misdeeds, how they by their sins so overly much angered God that in the end he permitted the army of the English to conquer their lands and destroy withal the Britons power

 

He therefore continued And let us do as our need is: submit to what is right and in some measure abandon what is not right

 

(“When the Danes Most Greatly Persecuted them, Wulfstan Archbishop of York’s Sermon to the English People, translated from the Anglo Saxon by S A J Bradley, Published by the Trustees of the Friends of St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale)

 

1055

 

The church rebuilt by Orm

 

The introduction  has recorded that the Saxon sundial, bears the inscription “Orm the son of Gamel acquired St Gregory’s Minster when it was completely ruined and collapsed, and he had it built anew from the ground to Christ and to St Gregory in the days of King Edward and in the days of Earl Tostig”.

 

The inscription refers to Edward the Confessor and to Tostig, the son of Earl Godwin of Wessex and brother of Harold II, the last Anglo Saxon King of England. Tostig was the Earl of Northumbria between 1055 and 1065. It was therefore during that last relatively peaceful decade, immediately before the Norman conquest, that Orm, son of Gamel rebuilt St Gregory’s Church.

 

The sundial consists of a stone slab nearly eight feet long (236 cm) by about twenty inches wide (51 cm), divided into three panels. The central panel contains the dial, and the Old English inscription above it may be translated as "This is the day's sun-marker at every hour." The panels to left and tight contain the further inscription in Old English which furnishes precious information about the early history of the church:

 

Left-hand panel: "Orm the son of Gamel acquired St. Gregory's Minster when it was completely ruined.” Right-hand panel: “and collapsed, and he had it built anew from the ground to Christ and to St. Gregory, in the days of king Edward and in the days of earl Tostig."

 

At the foot of the central panel a further inscription reads: "Hawarth made me: and Brand (was) the priest."

 

Short though it is, this inscription provides us with a wealth of information. It enables us to date the earliest phase of the existing fabric with some precision. Tostig, the son of Earl Godwin of Wessex and the brother of Harold II the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, was earl of Northumbria from 1055 to 1065. It was therefore during that decade that Orm the son of Gamel rebuilt St. Gregory's church. It is very rarely that we can date the construction of an early medieval church so precisely.

 

The sundial was preserved in a coat of plaster until it was discovered in 1771.

 

What survives of Orm's church in the existing visible fabric appears to be the south, west, and what remains of the east walls of the nave; the archway in the west wall of the nave (now opening into the much later west tower) which probably formed the original entrance to Orm's church; and the jambs, angle-shafts, bases and capitals of the arch which leads from the nave into the chancel. The latter archway is some four centuries later than Orm's church, but it appears that the masons who were responsible for it re-used what they could of an earlier chancel arch. It is therefore reasonable to infer that Orm's church had a chancel, though not all Anglo-Saxon parish churches did, though it was probably a great deal smaller than the existing one.

 

Much of the present nave in undoubtedly Orm’s building. The western entrance arch and the responds of the chancel arch belong to that period. Old masonry including grave slabs and crosses, was later used in the west and south walls.

 

So the Scandinavian named Orm rebuilt the minster – not Viking destruction, but Scandinavian reconstruction.

 

Characteristically Anglo-Saxon architectural features are (1) the size and manner of laying of the qunins of the south-west and north-west outside corners of the nave; (2) the height and narrowness of the western arch; and (3) the simplicity of the bases and capitals of the angle-shafts of the western and chancel arches.

 

It is possible to discover a little bit about Orm from the slender documentation which survives from the eleventh century. Both Orm and Gamel are Scandinavian names. The sundial at Old Byland church was commissioned by 'Sumerled the housecarl', another Scandinavian name, and the housecarls were the eilte troops who formed the backbone of Canute's armies.

 

Orm Gamalson is an Old Norse name which roughly translates as Dragon Oldson.

 

Orm was a prominent person in Northumbria in the middle years of the eleventh century. He married into the leading aristocratic clan of the region. His wife Aethelthryth was the daughter of Ealdred, earl of Northumbria from 1016 to 1038. Among his brothers-in-law was Siward, earl of Northumbria from about 1042 to 1055, famous for his exploits against the king of Scots, Macbeth, and as the founder of St. Olave's (i.e. Olaf's) church in York. Orm was a considerable landowner in Yorkshire before 1066, as we may learn from the witness of Domesday Book. Among his landholdings in Ryedale was the big and valuable estate based on Kirkbymoorside.

 

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Estates in Yorkshire held by Orem Gamalson before Hugh Fitz Badric, from the Domesday Book records

 

Earl Tosti. Tosti or Tostig, who became Earl of Northumberland in 1055, was banished in 1065 for a variety of crimes, including the murder of Orm's son, Gamal Ormson in 1063, but returned with Harold Hardrada, King of Norway, in the following year. The Norwegian army fought against Tostig's brother, Harold Godwinson, King of England, at Stamford Bridge, and there both Tostig and his Norwegian ally were killed. After the battle Harold Godwinson carried out his famous forced march to Hastings, where he was killed in battle by the Norman army of William the Conqueror.

 

The Parish of Kirkdale

 

It seems likely that the parish of Kirkdale (as opposed to the church itself) originated in a process of fragmentation of a once much larger unit of ecclesiastical administration, which had its hub in Kirkbymoorside.

 

The pastoral organisation of the Anglo-Saxon church within each diocese was focused upon the institution of the minster. Our modern word Minster is derived from the Old English mynster, itself a derivation from the latin term monasterium, which is also of course the ancestor of our word 'monastery' By ‘monastery’ we usually understand something like 'a community of monks vowed to living according to a monastic rule, cut off from the world the better to devote themselves to prayer and worship.' The Anglo-Saxons sometimes used mynster in this sense, but more often they understood something rather different by it; something akin to what today is called in the Church of England a 'team ministry'. One should think of the typical Anglo-Saxon minster as a community of clergy (not necessarily celibate) who discharged pastoral functions over a wide area round about which could embrace many square miles and several villages or hamlets. It was an institution ideally adapted to the early days of Christianity in England when there were few priests, few churches and much work to be done: these early minsters had something of the character of mission stations. Much later on - and in northern England the key period seems to have been between about 1000 and 1150 - these early units came to fragment into smaller ones.

 

The most cause of fragmentation was the tendency for the landed classes to build village churches for their tenants staffed by individual priests whose pastoral responsibilities were restricted to the territory of the particular village itself. These smaller units became the parishes which in most rural areas of England retain today the shape and boundaries which they acquired in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

 

This evolution was complicated in much of the north and east of the country by the disruption occasioned by the Viking attacks and subsequent Scandinavian settlements of the ninth and tenth centuries. Whatever status Kirkdale might have enjoyed as a pastoral centre in the pre-Viking period, it appears that by the eleventh century the main ecclesiastical centre in this area was at Kirkbymoorside. Orm's great estate with its nucleus at Kirkbymoorside had a number of outliers attached to it. Some of these settlements evolved into separate parishes, for example Kirby Misperton. Kirkdale seems to have shared this evolution, with the difference from Kirby Misperton that its church was not built at a nucleated village because none existed in the dale. The parish consisted of a scatter of small hamlets and isolated farmsteads - Welburn, Skiplam, Nawton, Muscoates, Sunley Hill, Wombleton, and others, some of them now lost such as Walton and Hoveton. but its new church as rebuilt by Orm, embellished with its sundial by Hawarth, and served by the priest Brand, was where the old, ruined, minster church had stood in days gone by, the ruined church whose cemetery was still used by the local people for the burial of their dead.

 

(http://www.ormerod.uk.net/Places/Kirkdale/placekirkdale.htm)

 

 

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The area of Trench II became a workshop for the rebuilding work. The destruction of the old church was so extensive that much of the previous structure required to be rebuilt, but the previous church seems to have been used as the basic template for the new foundations.

 

The Sundial

 

The sundial was placed over the south doorway, by then clearly the main entrance to the building. The basic form of the south doorway is attributed to this phase of work. There can be no certainty that the sundial was built into the new church as it was constructed, but the general dating of the fabric suggests this was so.

 

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We cannot be sure that its present position is its original position … The sundial could even have originally been separate from the church structure itself; but there is a strong probability, given the dedicatory nature of the associated inscription … that it always comprised a prominent display on the face of Orm’s rebuilt church – on the south side of the building, that is, in order the catch the sun.” (Orm Gamalson’s Sundial, The Lily’s Blossom and the Roses’ Fragrance, The Kirkdale Lecture 1997, Published by the Friends of St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, S A J Bradley MA FSA, Professor Emeritus, University of York)

 

SAJ Bradley sees some parallel with the seventh century dedication inscription of St Paul’s Church, Jarrow, In hoc singulari signo vita redditur mundo, “In this singular symbol, life if restored to the world”.

 

SAJ Bradley observed that the characters of the inscriptions are mostly in the Latin alphabet, they are non runic. They are in Old English, apart from the conventional Latinate forms of sanctus (in the abbreviation SCS), Christus (christe, abbreviated to XPE), and Gregorius. Otherwise the wording is of late Old English.

 

There are several personal names within the inscription:

 

·         Orm. Orm, though a Scandinavian word, is stripped of its Norse form of Ormr, but appears in anglicised form. Orm is almost certainly Orm of the Domesday book.

·         Gamal.

·         Tosti. Earl Tostig of Northumbria.

·         Eardward. Edward the Confessor.

·         Hawarth. It has been speculated that Hawarth may have been the sculptor who executed the work.

·         Brand. Brand was probably the priest, perhaps custodian of the science of the computes lying behind the sundial.

 

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It is possible that Provost Brand, who was elected abbot of Peterborough in 1066, and the maker of the Kirkdale sundial, were one and the same; so that a colony from Peterborough were involved in the reconstruction of S. Gregory's minster. (Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, Vol 5, page 151)

 

Kirkdale is now recognised to have been at the forefront of contemporary English architecture, with comparisons even to Westminster and comparisons with Deerhurst. There may have been influence from Ealdred Archbishop of York from 1061 to 1069, who had also been bishop of Worcester and who later crowned William the Conqueror at Westminster on Christmas Day 1066. Orm Gamalson held property in York, and may well have been subject to Ealdred’s ideas. It might have been Ealdred who influenced Orm Gamalson to commission the inscription. Ealdred was a diplomat, almost a ‘prince bishop’.

 

The stone for the rebuilding was from local sources and reused material. If the stone came from the quarry of North Grimston near Wharram Percy, 27km south east of Kirkdale, this might have been an asset of Orm Gamal’s family.

 

There was a continued importance of symbolism and the sundial was replete with sophisticated allusions, with symbolic and liturgical meaning, and resonances of Romanitas.

 

The sundial provides an extraordinary wealth of information conveying Scandinavian, Latin and English associations. It provides information about the past both distant and more recent,.

 

·         It is the first known reference to the dedication of the church to St Gregory, but the inference is that the church was already dedicated to Gregory. The inscription reaffirms the importance of Kirkdale’s connections with Rome.

·         Earl Tostig, referred to in the inscription, with Archbishop Ealdred of York, had been on a pilgrimage to Rome in 1061.

·         The inscription is the first surviving reference to the church being a minster, probably an age old title, but whose meaning and connotations might have changed over time.

 

Where the priest lived is unknown as no evidence has been found of a residence of this date.

 

Time, the Computus and the sundial

 

The sundial itself bears the inscription “This is the day’s sun circle at each hour

 

S A J Bradley has observed that whilst sundials were already old in England by the mid eleventh century, Orm Gamalson’s community were not equipped to create sophisticated gadgetry for time telling. So the community at Kirkdale would have been as well off using such things as the shadow of hill tops or other features of the landscape as natural shadow clocks. He therefore suggests it is highly likely that Kirkdale would have used natural; features for time telling and its steep sided valley would have offered good opportunities for such methods. This is consistent with such records as the Prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, in which the narrator was able to calculate that it was foure of the clokke by a calculation based on his own shadow.

 

Bradley surmises that religious symbolism might be an alternative explanation for the sundial.

 

·         The faithful; dead were buried on the south side of the churchyard, so the exterior of the south wall was a logical site for such symbolism.

·         The adoption of an octaval division for the sundial matches the division of the 24 hour day into eight sections in the New Testament, with daylight divided into four period each corresponding to three hours starting at 6am.

·         The sundial might have been intended as a symbolic reminder of temporal progression or pilgrimage. Time was perceived as the linear temporal space within which the world moved towards its final judgement and dissolution.

·         By the fourth century CE, the Christian fathers had moved away from eschatology (focused on the ending of the world and the last things) towards a focus on history, and God’s plans for how life on earth was lived.

·         Orm’s octaval sundial might have been a reminder to those who passed to keep watch of the day and night against Christ’s Second Coming, but also as an incentive to live life as a pilgrimage through time.

·         There were ideas that people were in temporary exile from the heavenly homeland through this world so there was a place for a symbolic reminder to every pilgrim in spirit. This was a subject that later ran through English literature, such as John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. The Seafarer written in about 1000 CE described the seafarer who, despites the dangers, was irresistibly drawn to journey onwards over the oceans.

 

The Kirkdale sundial might have originally been painted in strong colours. It might have been intended for those who set eyes upon it, to think upon Time. Consciousness of time was growing through awareness of history. Bede was the national historian of the English people and in Alfred of Wessex, the English people understood the need for civilised people to keep historical records. After the Conquest in 1074, the Benedictine missionary Aldwin came to Jarrow, inspired by Bede to see whether the centres of monastic life were still thriving as recorders of history. Perhaps on his journey from York he might have come across Kirkdale. If so, Kirkdale would have reassured Aldwin that there was already a revitalisation of ancient religious sites.

 

There was a striking investment of wealth at this time into church buildings, often from secular patrons, which characterises the revised English church of the late tenth and eleventh centuries. It is all the more striking that in this period when losses of the period of Scandinavian domination were being made good, Kirkdale was rebuilt by so Scandinavian sounding a patron. It seems likely that these men were inspired by an awareness of history.

 

It is also of note that this was an uneasy generation of the period just after the end of the first millennium. In 1014, Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, had published his sermon addressed to the English nation. He anticipated the coming of the Antichrist and found moral decline in the nation. There was always some uncertainty about the exact span of the thousand years. There was uncertainty of the precise date, but not of the fact of a Second Coming. So it is possible that Orm’s sundial was recording the passing of the last of days. It is uncertain whether it was a symbol of foreboding, or whether it was a more optimistic symbol.

 

Orm’s sundial was also likely to have reflected a central and arcane ‘science’, focused on the searching for a knowledge of the Creator and his universe, and his purposes, through the interpretation of the calendar, through the calculations of the computus.

 

·         In 325 CE the Council of Nicaea ruled that Christians should hold Easter on the same day, always a Sunday, and referenced to the Jewish means to determine the date of the Passover.

·         The computational method involved complex cycles of years and never worked satisfactorily.

·         Bede’s De temporum ratione was a resource to help calculate the dates of Easter up to the millennium and beyond.

·         There was a renewal of computes learning in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries.

·         Aelfric’s De temporibus anni was largely based on Bede’s earlier work.

·         It had become possible for a reasonably educated cleric to make his own calculations. There was likely to have been a network of ecclesiastical connections, leading to the restored library at York.

·         There was also an idea that the sun in its daily course was appointed to declare mystical truths of God’s creation. The sun and moon were understood to mirror God’s purposes and the destiny of humankind.

 

In this context a sundial on the south wall of the church might have aspired to turn light into knowledge, as it charted a shadow of this great continuum. Orm’s ornate sundial might have been intended to offer a glimpse into the divine order of things.

 

(Orm Gamalson’s Sundial, The Lily’s Blossom and the Roses’ Fragrance, The Kirkdale Lecture 1997, Published by the Friends of St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, S A J Bradley MA FSA, Professor Emeritus, University of York)

 

Anglo-Saxon or Scandinavian, or mixed?

 

The old English of the sundial reflects the late Anglo Saxon period. There is a single Old Norse work, solmerca, or sundial. It has been suggested that this might have been a loanword from the Norse language, but Bradley suggests that it is more likely that Old Norse borrowed solmerca from English. As above, the Scandinavian names, particular Orm, have been Anglicised from the Norse Ormr.

 

Orm might therefore be seen as a rebuilder and a re dedicator of the ancient ruined church to St Gregory, who thereby symbolically stepped back from the disorder of the Viking centuries, back to the pre Viking Christian traditions.

 

So the sundial might reflect a rejection of Scandinavian culture and a recovery of the earlier Anglo-Saxon Christian period.

 

(Orm Gamalson’s Sundial, The Lily’s Blossom and the Roses’ Fragrance, The Kirkdale Lecture 1997, Published by the Friends of St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, S A J Bradley MA FSA, Professor Emeritus, University of York)

 

However we cannot ignore the clear evidence of Scandinavian culture on the local community.

 

Orm and Gamal are common personal Scandinavian names.

 

Orm’s name appears in three other texts of the period – the Domesday Book and De Obsessione Dunelmi, On the Siege of Durham which states that after the Norman Conquest, a thegn of Yorkshire, called Orm, son of Gamel, married Aetheldryth, one of five daughters of Earl Eadred, and they had a daughter called Ecgfrida, wjho by Aelsfsige of Tees, had a son, Waltheof, two other sons and a daughter, Eda. Symeon of Durham’s Historia Regum recorded that Gamal, the son of Orm, was killed by Earl Tosti in York in 1063 or 1064.

 

Brand is likely to have been the priest responsible for the design of the sundial. Brandr weas a common personal name in Viking Age Denmark and Iceland.  

 

Hawaro was probably the craftsman, responsible for the inscription. This is also a medieval Scandinavian name, as in the Icelandic saga, Havaroar saga.

 

The inscription provides the names of an elite landholder, Orm Gamalson, a priest called Brand and probably an artisan called Hawaro. Whilst not describing the local peasantry, this provides a cross section of middle and upper ranks of society.

 

The Anglo Saxon Chronicle records that a great army of Vikings arrived in England in 865. In 876, the Anglo Saxon Chronicle records “Healfdene shared out the land of the Northumbrians, and they turned to ploughing and making a living for themselves.” Place name evidence of settlement, especially in North Yorkshire, is plentiful.

 

In 1016 the Danish King Cnut followed his father Swein Forkbeard and granted many of his followers estates in England. It is possible that Orm’s father Gamal was a recipient of such estateland and in marrying Ealdred’s daughter Aethelthryth, Orm was certainly well connected into the Scandinavian and English elites. By the tenth century there was extensive interaction between England and Scandinavia. 

 

The preferred model is not of a transplanting of Scandinavian culture into England, but rather of continuing and developing practices.

 

In this context a Scandinavian name could, on the one hand, have been evidence of Scandinavian descent, but on the other, might be evidence of an increased use of fashionable Norse names. However Townend argues these were more than just fashionable Norse names, but rather evidenced links with prominent Scandinavian families in England. Names were used as a means to slot into a social network, bringing familial and communal obligations. Naming practices were therefore carefully controlled and constrained. Orm Gamalson may well have been named after his grandfather.

 

There was a frequent use of Scandinavian names in Yorkshire. The Domesday book shows a very high proportion of 70 Old Norse to 30 Old English names, that is English names outnumbered two to one. The highest of all such names was in Yorkshire and the Ryedale Wapentake including Kirkdale had a higher than country average, Townend calculates this as 92 to 8. The sheer quantity of Scandinavian names is striking.

 

He also points out that whilst there was a similar quantitative adoption of Norman names after the conquest, the total number of different names adopted from the Normans was very small. However the evidence of Norse names is of a large number of different names which were used. So it is not a case of a small number of popular names being widely used.

 

Old Norse continued to be spoken in Viking Age England, particularly in Yorkshire and there was a rich tradition of Old Norse poetry for English audiences. It is evident that over time Old Norse speakers were continuing to enter the country, particularly as a result of Cnut’s 1016 invasion. The Old Norse language flourished in Cnut’s court in England. In the north of England there was an audience for elite poetry in the Old Nose language.

 

The contrary evidence to a strong Scandinavian culture is the language of the Kirkdale inscription itself, which is in Old English. There are four other examples of similar inscriptions which are quite similar:

 

·         Aldbrough: Ulf ordered the church to be erected form himself and for Gunnwaru’s soul.

·         Great Edstone: Looan made me. The Traveller’s Clock.

·         Old Byland: Sumarleoi’s house servant made me.

·         St Mary Castlegate, York:  and Grim and Aese raised this church in the name of the holy Lord Christ and to St Mary and St Martin and St Cuthbert and All Saints. It was consecrated in the … year in the life of

 

However Townend points out that Old Norse had never become a written language in the Roman alphabet. The two traditions of Roman literacy were Latin and Old English. Since Old English and Old Norse were related languages, the Scandinavian elite were content to continue to existing traditions of Old English and Latin as the written languages of record.

 

The Vikings were originally pagan but from the tenth century there is extensive evidence of religious piety particularly through Scandinavian inspired stone sculpture. James Land in Corpus of Anglo Saxon Stone Sculpture 1991, catalogued 9 items of sculpture at Kirkdale, apart from the sundial. These sculptures seem to be funerary monuments for the new Scandinavian elite of the area.

 

Kirkdale is a place where Scandinavian, Latin and English traditions meet and find expression.

 

(Scandinavian Culture in the Eleventh Century, Matthew Townend, Department of English and Related Literature and Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, the 2007 Kirkdale Lecture, Published by the Trustees of the Friends of St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale)

 

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Orm Gamalson was the holder of the complex estate of Kirkbymoorside, evidenced in the Domesday Book. When his family came into possession of the estate, isn’t known for sure. In 1066 he held land across the Vale of Pickering and beyond. He might have held land not surveyed in the Domesday Book as far as the Tees.

 

His family association back to Thorbrand the Hold, which family had perhaps intermarried with local aristocracy which had held Kirkbymoorside, might explain the holding. Orm Gamalson married into the house of Bamburgh, the major northern noble family, and his wife was Aethelthryth, the daughter of Ealdred, Earl of Northumbria in the mid eleventh century.

 

Orm Gamalson was clearly a substantial figure, and the place he chose to articulate his power was Kirkdale.

 

York was a centre for Tostig Godwinson (1029 to 1066)’s later career, a member of the major West Saxon house under which his brother Harold Godwinson had gained his kingship. Tostig’s initial role in Yorkshire, as Anglo Saxon Earl of Northumbria on the death of Earl Siward, was to strengthen the king’s influence in this unruly land.

 

Tostig was the third son of the Anglo-Saxon nobleman Godwin, Earl of Wessex and Gytha Thorkelsdóttir, the daughter of Danish chieftain Thorgil Sprakling. So he had parental associations with both Godwins and Scandinavians.

 

It was during this period that the son of Orm Gamalson was murdered in his house at York, probably part of the ongoing multigenerational feud. This might have been the start of a period of disorder, during which Tostig changed his allegiance in 1066 from the West Saxon housed in favour of the Scandinavian side, to die soon afterwards at Stamford Bridge.

 

Kirkdale clearly had political significance in this historical episode.

 

(St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 302 to 306).

 

1086

 

The Domesday book evidences that Kirkdale by about this time comprised ten villagers, one priest, two ploughlands, two lord’s plough teams, three men’s plough teams, a mill and a church. Orm seems to have held five carucates of land at Chirchebi (Kirkbymoorside) So presumably this area of land described the five carucates of cultivated land around Kirkdale.

 

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There was a nearby settlement at Hoveton, a settlement listed by the Domesday Book of 1086 and believed to have been somewhere between Fadmoor and Kirkbymoorside.

 

The Domesday Book records two churches at Chirchebi, with one (clearly Kirkdale) in the manor of Orm and the other in the manor of Torbrand (now Kirkbymoorside Parish Church).

 

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The north field beside Kirkdale Minster, which shows clear evidence of ridge and farrow patterns, evidencing medieval farming

 

1131

 

Walter Espec encouraged the founding of the Cistercian abbey at Rievaulx in 1131. These austere monks sought detachment from the world, in contrast to the Benedictines and the Augustinians.

 

A breakaway group from St Mary’s Abbey in York established Fountains Abbey and Kirkham Priory.

 

The twelfth century boundaries of Rievaulx suggest that Kirkdale was “an island amidst abbey land.” (J McDonnell, A History of Helmsley, Rievaulx and District, York 1963, map p 111). The sub property within the Kirkbymoorside estate to which Kirkdale was clearly attached, was Welburn (St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021, 4). Kirkdale was by then surrounded by abbey lands.

 

1145

 

Roger de Mowbray granted the church to Newburgh Priory, who held it until the dissolution.

 

The field to the immediate north of Kirkdale Church retains prominent earthworks of ridge and furrow, which suggest that this field was in arable use by the twelfth century. (Archaeology at Kirkdale, Supplement to the Ryedale Historian No 18 (1996 to 1997), Lorna Watts, Jane Grenville and Philip Rahtz, 2).

 

1150

 

There was some association in the twelfth century with Rievaulx and the Cistercians. A scheduled site at the farm still named Skiplam Grange, situated above Hodge Beck not far north-west of St Gregory’s Minster, preserves an earthworks, associated buried remains and some above-ground remains of buildings from the grange maintained there by Rievaulx Abbey up to the date of the Dissolution. Skiplam was part of the large grant of land given to Rievaulx Abbey by Gundreda d'Aubigny between 1144 and 1154 and later confirmed by her son Roger de Mowbray. This grant included some land in cultivation along with previously unexploited land which the abbey was allowed to assart, or improve and bring into productive use, as they wished. By the time of Abbot Ailred (1147-1167) Skiplam was operated as a grange.

 

1292

 

Under Pope Nicholas’ taxation of 1292, Kirkdale was taxed at £23 6s 8d.

 

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1432

 

At about the same time as the Farndale grant in 1154, Roger granted the whole of the vil of Welburn with six bovates of land (but excepting the Church of Kirkdale) to Rievaulx. This land had been in the possession of the Augustinian priory of Newburgh.

 

The Cistercians obtained papal freedom from payment of tithes on land which they cultivated themselves. The Cistercians tenaciously maintained their tithe privileges.

 

In 1432, the prior and convent of Newburgh brought a case in the consistory court of York against Robert Hewlott and Richard Page for non payment of titches of coppice wood, by virtue of their possession by that time of the parish church of Welburn. The records of the case provide a description of the parish church at Kirkdale at that time:

 

The parish church of Welburn, otherwise known as Kirkdale, built and dedicated in honour of St Gregory, of the said diocese, which has been canonically united, annexed and appropriated to their said priory [Newburgh] to their own uses.

 

He submits and intends to prove that for the whole periods stated above there was, was accustomed to be, and is, in the said diocese of York, a certain parish church with the cure of souls, universally and commonly known as Welburn or Kirkdale. It has well known boundaries by which it is distinguished, divided and separated from the other neighbouring parishes. It has a goodly number of parishioners of both sexes, a baptismal font, cemetery, and other attributes of a parish church.

 

He submits and intends to prove that the right to take an enjoy tithes of whatever kind, both personal and predial, and great and small, and especially titches of coppice wood issuing from whatsoever places within the parish of the said church [of Welburn] otherwise known as Kirkdale, and the boundaries, borders and places liable to tithe located within the parish belonged and belongs under common law, by sufficient legal right and praiseworthy custom, which has been observed peacefully and inviolately, to the parish church of Welburn, otherwise known as Kirkdale, and the said religious men, the prior and convent, and their monastery or priory in the name of the said church.

 

(Monasteries and Parishes in Medieval Yorkshire, Janet Burton FSA FR Hist S, Professor of History, University of Wales, 2010 Kirkdale Lecture)

 

1539

 

On 23 January 1539, Newburgh was dispossessed of Kirkdale. This was probably part of the Reformation redistribution.

 

1944

 

Sir Herbert Edward Read, art historian, poet and critic was born at Kirkdale and wrote a poem in his collection A World within a War:

 

Kirkdale

 

I, Orm, the son of Gamal

Found these fractured stones

Starting out of the fragrant thicket

The river bed was dry

 

 

 

The rooftrees naked and bleached,

Nettles in the nave and aisleways,

On the altar an owl’s cast

And a feather from a wild dove’s wing

 

 

There was peace in the valley;

Far into the eastern sea

The foe had gone, leaving death and ruin

And a longing for the priest’s solace

 

 

Fast the feather lay

Like a sulky jewel in my head

Till I knew it had fallen in a holy place

Therefore I raised these grey stones up again

Texts, books and links

 

St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, Arthur Penn, Parochial Church Council,

St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, Richard Fletcher, 2003, Published by the Trustees of the Friends of St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale

Archaeology at Kirkdale, Supplement to the Ryedale Historian No 18 (1996 to 1997), Lorna Watts, Jane Grenville and Philip Rahtz

St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire, Archaeological Investigations and Historical Context, Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, 2021

The Friends of St Gregory’s Minster

Great English Churches.

Article 1990 on Kirkdale.

University of Chester Book Review.

Orm Gamalson’s Sundial, The Lily’s Blossom and the Roses’ Fragrance, The Kirkdale Lecture 1997, Published by the Friends of St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale, S A J Bradley MA FSA, Professor Emeritus, University of York

Power, Religious Patronage and Pastoral Carte, Religious Communities, Mother Parishes and Local Churches in Ryedale, c650 to c1250, Thomas Pickles, D Phil (Oxon), Lecturer in Medieval History and Fellow by Special Election at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, The Kirkdale Lecture 2009, Published by the Friends of St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale

Monasteries and Parishes in Medieval Yorkshire, Janet Burton FSA FR Hist S, Professor of Medieval History, University of Wales, Lampeter, the 2010 Kirkdale Lecture, Published by the Trustees of the Friends of St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale

Scandinavian Culture in the Eleventh Century, Matthew Townend, Department of English and Related Literature and Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, the 2007 Kirkdale Lecture, Published by the Trustees of the Friends of St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale

Lastingham and its Sacred Landscapes, Ian Wood, Professor of Early Medieval History in the University of Leeds, The Fifth Lastingham Lecture, 2008

Viking Age Lastingham, Heather Donaghue, Professor of Old Norse in the University of Oxford, Lecture on 1 October 2016, Printed for the Friends of Lastingham Church

East Coast Connections, Ian Wood, Professor of Early Medieval History in the University of Leeds, The Thirteenth Lastingham Lecture, 2016

“When the Danes Most Greatly Persecuted them, Wulfstan Archbishop of York’s Sermon to the English People, translated from the Anglo Saxon by S A J Bradley, Published by the Trustees of the Friends of St Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale

 

 

The Ryedale Historian, Vol 10, 1980:

 

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The Ryedale Historian, Vol 11, 1982:

 

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