Act 4
Anglo Saxon Kirkdale
Kirkdale and the Chirchebi
Estate from c580 CE to c793 CE
Kirkdale Minster only five kilometres
south of the place that would come to be called Farndale, and part of the same
estate lands, was at the centre of a stable area for most of the Anglo Saxon
period. There is every reason to suppose that the agricultural lands around
Kirkdale and Kirkbymoorside, were the lands of our ancestors for centuries.
As a scene
setter, you might enjoy a burst of Gregorian Chant.
Scene 1 – Order from Chaos
Fifth
Century CE
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.
At nearby
Beadlam, a large number of coins date to the later fourth century CE and might
reflect locally secure conditions that may have been sustained for a period
after the Romans had left. The old Roman villa of 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.
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. The first recognised structural phase at Kirkdale are some foundations
to the north 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.
The evidence
of Anglo Saxon culture in the area around Kirkdale was slow to arrive. There is
an absence of obviously culturally Anglo Saxon grave goods in the early years
of Anglo Saxon influence in eastern England. In seems likely that the
population in the area remained more indigenous, at least for a while, rather
than being immediately overwhelmed by the Anglo Saxon incomers.
Over time
however, the population was gradually assumed into a new mixed Anglo Saxon
identity.
The Hodge
Beck at Kirkdale dries up in times of hot weather, but continues to flow under
ground, to reappear downstream. The quietness, beauty and timelessness of the
site, and its disappearing water trick, might explain its likely religious
importance even before Christian times.
Inspired by
J G Frazer’s famous book, The Golden Bough, a local archaeologist felt
that the unusual characteristics of this place make it a likely location for
pre Christian ritual. It has been suggested that it might have been a Druid
site.
The unusual
flow of the stream and the tranquilness of the place was something unusual that
was likely to have promoted an ancient 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.
The location
of Kirkdale is 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.
Deira
The Kingdom
of Deira emerged from the mid fifth century
and Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England (731 CE) suggested that
there was a gradual consolidation of small controlling groups.
The absence
of hillforts and the non defensive nature of places like Hovingham is
reflective of a period of anarchy in which warlords fought for dominance in a
chaotic world.
By about 560
CE the area of eastern Yorkshire was generally subjugated by a single political
group. The name the Angles gave to the territory was Dewyr, or Deira. Early rulers of Deira extended the
territory north to the River Wear and King Aelli ruled Deira in about 569 to
599 CE.
Scene 2 - Christianity
Conversion
In Rome in
580 CE Pope Gregory saw fair haired slaves in the market and he asked about
them. The historian Procopius (500 to 565 CE) had previously described the
people of Brittia as Angiloi. Gregory was now told that these
slaves were Angles from the Kingdom of Deira, the lands between the Humber and
Tees, the Kingdom of King Aelli. Gregory was in a humorous mood that day, and
he made three famous puns:
He mused
that they were not Angles, but angels, worthy of conversion, defining a
distinct nation that would one day be called England.
He amused
himself that the Deirans were de ira, ‘of anger’, and that they were to
be saved from wrath.
And he
directed that Allelujah (a pun on the Deiran King’s name, Aelli) should be sung
in those parts.
His pun is
sometimes taken to define the origin of the English and Gregory continued to
class the Kingdoms of Britain as a single people. The story represents the
origin myth of the English nation.
Bede told
the full story in his Historia Ecclesia:
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.”
Kirkdale,
which lay at the centre of Deiran lands, found itself firmly within the ambit
of England’s origin story, and the place of a church which soon afterwards was
dedicated to Pope Gregory.
In 597 CE
Gregory followed up on his direction at the slave market when he sent Augustine
to convert the Angli.
Augustine,
Prior of a Roman monastery, initially travelled to Kent on an ambassadorial and
religious mission, and he was welcomed by King Aethelberht.
English
identity began in a religious concept. The English church would come to own a
quarter of cultivated land in England and reintroduce literacy at least amongst
the Church. Over the next few centuries, there grew a single and distinct
English church. After the Synod of Whitby in 663 CE, it adopted Roman practices
in its dogma and liturgy, but it venerated English saints and developed its own
character.
St Gregory
died on 12 March 604. He had been the bishop of Rome from 3 September 590 to
his death. The Gregorian mission was an ambitious project to convert the then
largely pagan Anglo-Saxons. Gregory was a prolific writer and 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.
By the early
seventh century CE, there was a political structure across the area of modern
Ryedale, under King Edwin of Deira’s peripatetic government, which held
gatherings on estates where food was consumed. Eoforwic (the next of the many
historic designations of modern York) was at
its centre. Edwin converted to the Christian religion, along with his nobles
and many of his subjects in 627 CE and was baptised at Eoforwic in the first
wooden church amidst the Roman ruins which was later replaced by a larger stone
church. The site of this first church was probably beside the old Roman principia
or military headquarters, to the north of the current minster, in the current
Dean’s Park.
When Edwin
died overall control of the Kingdom of Northumbria passed to the northern
Kingdom of Bernicia.
Edwin’s
successor King Oswald dominated the northern region from Bamburgh. He gave
Lindisfarne to his Bishop Aidan who built a monastery there in 635 CE in the
Iona tradition.
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.
Whitby was an important port. The first
monastery was founded in 657 CE by the Anglo-Saxon King of Northumbria, Oswiu
(Oswy).
In 659 CE, Cedd, the elder brother of Chad, brought the
Celtic Christian traditions of Iona and Lindisfarne to found a monastery at Lastingham, at the site of an old Roman
nymphaeum. So Celtic Christianity had arrived only two miles from the entrance
to Farndale’s valley.
Bede, in his
Historia Ecclesia recorded a small monastic community was founded at Lastingham (some 10km northeast of
Kirkdale) under royal patronage, to prepare an eventual burial place for
Æthelwald, Christian king of Deira, and to tame trackless moorland wilderness
haunted by wild beasts and outlaws.
Bede, wrote
of how Oidilwald, the son of King Oswald, who reigned among the Deiri,
finding Cedd to be a holy, wise, and good man, desired him to accept some land
whereon to build a monastery, to which the king himself might frequently
resort, to pray, and where he might be buried when he died. So then, complying
with the king's desires, the Bishop chose himself a place whereon to build a
monastery among steep and distant mountains, which looked more like
lurking-places for robbers and dens of wild beasts, than dwellings of men; to
the end that, according to the prophecy of Isaiah, “In the habitation of
dragons, might be grass with reeds and rushes;” that is, that the fruits of
good works should spring up, where before beasts were wont to dwell, or men to
live after the manner of beasts.
So in this
place Cedd built his monastery, near to the
entrance to Farndale, ‘vel bestiae commorari vel hommines bestialiter vivere
conserverant’, ‘a land fit only for wild beasts, and men who live like wild
beasts’.
European
Union (“Brentrance”)
There was
now a problem. There were two forms of Christianity competing in the same lands
– Celtic from Ireland via Iona and Lindisfarne and Roman from the papal
tradition in Rome. In a spirit that was to define English history for the next
thousand years, petty religious differences were enough to cause turmoil.
Different views on such things as the computus (the calculation of the
date of Easter), and the cut of the tonsure (the practice of shaving hair on
the scalp as a sign of religious humility), were issues of extreme aggravation.
However on
this occasion, a compromise was reached at the Synod at Whitby in 663 CE, only 20km northeast of
Kirkdale, when the two traditions agreed to a reconciliation between the Celtic
and Roman Christian traditions, agreeing to adopt the Roman approach.
As always,
the Europeans won the negotiation. The nation had chosen to join the European
world in the first days of its conception.
This was all
firmly within the sphere of Kirkdale’s experience, and the people there likely
lived in the same world where these momentous events were unfolding. One day,
far in the distant future, Whitby would
become the home of several
significant Farndale families, including many seventeenth and eighteenth
century mariners.
Scene 3 – Ancestral Lands
Saxon
Ghosts
At this time
in about 650 CE a Saxon princess was
laid to rest at the place now called Street House near Loftus and Carlin How in Cleveland.
This was a
period of transition from paganism to Christianity in England. This location
would have been just within the northern border of Deira.
The cemetery
was superimposed on an old prehistoric monument and there lay a high ranking
woman on a bed surrounded by 109 graves. The royal princess watched over Carlin
How (“the hill of witches”) for thirteen centuries until she was excavated in
2005. In Victorian times, the Craggs
line of Farndales would make Craggs Farm at Carlin How, their home, in this
place of Saxon ghosts.
Kirkdale
In about 685
CE, a minster was first built at Kirkdale, possibly with close associations
with Lastingham and Kirkbymoorside.
It was
probably at this time that it was dedicated to St Gregory, the same Pope
Gregory who had put the land of the Angles onto the European political map, and
the dedication to the Roman pope, reaffirmed the new association with Rome and
the Pope recently agreed at the Synod of Whitby. The Deiran monarchs became
closely associated with Rome, and with Gregory in particular. As did Kirkdale
itself.
Kirkdale
became a religious and political focal point of the relatively stable and
prosperous lands in its vicinity. So the distant ancestors of modern Farndales
likely lived in this place of profound influence on the future evolution of a
nation.
There’s a
suggestion that Kirkdale may have been the place known as Cornu Vallis,
the horn of the valley. Cornu Vallis is referred to as a place where Abbot
Ceolfrith of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow visited, and this might suggests links
between Kirkdale and the Tyne valley and Jarrow, where Bede wrote his
histories.
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 the growing secular town of Kirkbymoorside.
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 special
significance to the local hierarchy of that 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 already perceived as the past. This can be seen in its use of earlier
Roman materials and as a symbol of its close associations with Christian Rome,
including through its dedication to St Gregory. The archaeologists found blown
glass (an object referred to as 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, coined in the third century,
meaning "Roman-ness" a link with things Roman, the collection of
political and cultural concepts and practices by which the Romans defined
themselves. Another artefact (ST42) of the early ninth century may have been
imported from a significant, possibly Italian centre and was perhaps a relic
fragment.
There are
significant above ground grave structures (ST 7, ST8 and OM 3), 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. The
symbolism of these finds was likely understood by an informed audience. One
design was probably reference to a chalice. There were probable theological
messages and symbolism of these finds has been linked to Bedean end of the
world millenarianism.
Cultural
and Educational powerhouse
In the 750s,
a young man called Alcuin came to the
cathedral church of York during the golden age
of Archbishop Ecgbert. Ecgbert had been a disciple of the Venerable Bede. The
York school was known by then as a centre of learning in the seven liberal
arts, literature, and science, as well as in religious matters and Alcuin revived
the school. In 781 CE, Alcuin was sent to Rome to petition the pope for
official confirmation of York's status as an archbishopric. On his way home, he
met Charlemagne in the Italian city of Parma. At the invitation of Charlemagne,
Alcuin became a leading scholar and teacher at the Carolingian court, where he
remained a figure in the 780s and 790s.
So nearby
York was a centre of learning by the eighth century, with links to the court of
the Frankish King Charlemagne, soon to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor.
At the
northwest corner of the great agricultural lands of Pickering and York,
Kirkdale, our ancestral home, was firmly on the European stage in the eighth
century.
Anglo
Saxon Farming Community
…
Go Straight to Act 5 –
Scandinavian Kirkdale
or
If your interest is in Kirkdale then I suggest you visit the
following pages of the website.
· The church in Anglo Saxon Times
· The Kirkdale
Anglo Saxon artefacts
· The church in Anglo Saxon
Scandinavian Times
· The community in Anglo Saxon
Scandinavian Times
You might also like to read more
about:
· The Deira, Bernicia and
Northumberland
· Alcuin and the birth of modern
education
· Carlin How and Saxon witches
You will
also find a chronology, together with source material at the Kirkdale Page.