Land on the Edge: The Landscape Evolution of the Lincolnshire Coastline (2023)

The Land on the Edge project was commissioned by Historic England and Lincolnshire County Council as part of the wider Inns on the Edge project (Historic England project number 8398). The long, low-lying coastline of Lincolnshire has changed dramatically and repeatedly over the centuries and millennia, and one of the key aims of the Land On The Edge strand was to produce a detailed academic report analysing the landscape history of the 75 mile-long stretch of coastline from Grimsby to Boston. Once the high ground on the westernmost edge of the now-drowned Doggerland that connected England to the Continent, the Lincolnshire coastal zone saw a dramatic inundation by the rising tide that began around 8,000 years ago and continued on and off right through to the medieval period and beyond. This has resulted in a complex and intriguing coastal landscape that still bears the traces of multiple large-scale shifts in both its character and the way that it has been used by its inhabitants. 

Lidar image of the entire study area. Land in blue is all below about 2.5m OD and so below the mean high-water of spring tides on this coastline, with land in dark blue being located close to or below sea-level; land in green lies up to about 5m OD, whilst land in yellow and brown is above 5m OD. The grey represents the 3m contour inland of the project area (contains Lidar data © Environment Agency 2021, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0, and modern mapping © OpenStreetMap contributors, used under the Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0 ).

The results of this project were presented in two reports written by me in 2023: a full, academic report of about 110,000 words entitled Land on the Edge: The Landscape Evolution of the Lincolnshire Coastline, and a shorter piece offering a summary of the results of the project for wider dissemination, entitled Land on the Edge: Headline Stories. Both of these reports have now been made available online by Lincolnshire County Council (along with the other reports from the wider Historic England/LCC project) and, as a result, they are now presented here for download too. The first link of the links below is to the Full Report and the second is to the summary Headline Stories:

Land on the Edge: The Landscape Evolution of the Lincolnshire Coastline, full report (2023): click the following links to read online or download from Academia.edu or Researchgate.  

Land on the Edge: The Landscape Evolution of the Lincolnshire Coastline (2023) — Full report, c.110,000 words, click to read online or download at Researchgate or Academia.edu.

Land on the Edge: Headline Stories — summary report for dissemination (2023): click the following links to read online or download from Academia.edu or Researchgate.

Land on the Edge: Headline Stories (2023) — summary report for dissemination, c.21,000 words, click to read online or download at Researchgate or Academia.edu. 

The text content of this post and page is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2024, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

The importance of Lincolnshire in the fifth to seventh centuries AD

The following post is largely the text of a lecture that was given at the time of the launch of the first edition of my Britons and Anglo-Saxons back in 2012, with a handful of minor additions. It offered a little light-hearted musing on the importance, or apparent lack thereof, of pre-Viking Lincolnshire; in the absence of a formal launch for the second edition of the book in 2020 due to the ongoing pandemic, I thought I would post this here in case it is of interest.

Two maps showing (a) the location of the ceremonial county of Lincolnshire and (b) a reconstruction of the coastal landscape of pre-Viking England, showing the low-lying areas and wetlands in the Lincoln region, along with the 'barrier islands' that existed off the Lincolnshire coast until the thirteenth century (images: map a—Wikimedia Commons; map b—Caitlin Green).

By and large, most people are accustomed to thinking of Lincolnshire as peripheral. Whilst it has cities, they are not large; most modern major routeways pass it by or skirt its edges; and although Lincolnshire is the second largest ceremonial and historic county in England—encompassing over a twentieth of the total land area, with the distance from Barton-upon-Humber in its north to Stamford in its south being the same as the distance from Stamford to London—it has far less than its fair share of the total population, around 1.9%. Even when we go back into the Anglo-Saxon period, this sense of Lincolnshire as peripheral to the main historical action often continues to pervade. When historians deal with the pre-Viking era in general, they generally talk about the northern kingdom of Northumbria, or the Midland kingdom of Mercia, or the kingdoms of Wessex, Kent and the East Angles. However, despite this, there are good indications that Lincolnshire was rather more important in the early medieval period than is sometimes allowed.

From an archaeological perspective, the notion that Lincolnshire was truly peripheral in the pre-Viking period is difficult to justify. For example, metal-detectorists continue to recover astonishing quantities of pre-Viking coinage from Lincolnshire. Nearly thirty years ago, Mark Blackburn observed that the quantity of coinage from Lincolnshire marked it out as one of the richest parts of seventh- and eighth-century England, and this conclusion has only been strengthened by recent finds and the work of the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS). So, a significant quantity of Merovingian gold coinage has been found in this area of Britain, testifying to significant trading with the continent from an early date, whilst one site at Garwick in southern Lincolnshire has produced the second largest group of Middle Saxon coins from any site in England, exceeded only by the major West Saxon trading-site at Southampton. Likewise, if we look at the overall ranked totals for seventh- to eighth-century coins recorded on the PAS, Lincolnshire is not only is in 'first place', but has over twice as many coins recorded as is the case for the second-place county, Suffolk, and many more times those recorded in counties like Oxfordshire, Wiltshire or even Kent (a fact that becomes even more impressive once one notes that around a third of Lincolnshire's land area, the entire Fenland district which lies below 5m OD, has produced virtually no finds of this date at all). 

Bar chart showing the number of seventh- to eighth-century coins recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme from each county through to December 2020; note, this only represents a proportion of the total coin finds known, with others recorded on the Corpus of Early Medieval Coin Finds or EMC, but it is a large enough dataset for the present purposes (image: Caitlin Green).

Two maps; click here for a larger version of both: (a) A map of the distribution of seventh- to eighth-century coin finds recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme in the Lincoln region to December 2020, showing how they are largely absent from the extensive low-lying parts of Lincolnshire, especially the Fenland district of Holland; note, a significant number of other finds from this region are also recorded on the EMC, but the broad pattern is the same even if these are added (image: Caitlin Green, based on data from the PAS and my base-map of the pre-Viking landscape from Britons and Anglo-Saxons)
(b) A map of England showing John Blair's core ‘eastern zone’ of pre-Viking English identity and building tradition (forward hashing) and Toby Martin's zone of fifth- to sixth-century Anglian immigration, burial tradition, costume and ethnogenesis (backward hashing, based on the primary area of his Phase B brooches), combined with the distribution of Anglian cremation-predominant cemeteries (image: Caitlin Green).

This apparent significance for Lincolnshire before the ninth century is confirmed by other finds and evidence types too. For example, it has been argued that the distribution of sixth-century imported amber from the Baltic, an Early Anglo-Saxon luxury good used in jewellery, clusters at several 'nodal points' from which amber may well have been redistributed to the surrounding regions, one of which is at Sleaford in southern Lincolnshire, the site of an exceptionally large inhumation cemetery that also contains notable quantities of imported rock crystal beads and ivory rings. Similarly, it can be observed that Lincolnshire and East Anglia together are where the earliest and largest fifth- to sixth-century Anglo-Saxon cemeteries are found, the great cremation urn-fields, with well over a thousand such burials at sites like Cleatham (Kirton-in-Lindsey) and Loveden Hill. Indeed, Lincolnshire lies at the heart of the core ‘eastern zone’ of pre-Viking English identity and building tradition that has recently been identified by John Blair, and at the heart of Catherine Hills, Toby Martin and John Hines’s core zone of fifth- to sixth-century Anglian immigration, burial tradition, costume and ethnogenesis too. Finally, it is worth noting that Lincolnshire and East Anglia together seem to have also been amongst the most densely populated parts of England at the time of the Domesday Survey in the eleventh century, suggesting a long-lasting economic importance for these east coast regions.

If Lincolnshire was thus significant and even, in some respects, 'central' in at least the fifth to eighth centuries when looked at from an archaeological perspective, what then of its political importance in this period? Unfortunately, Lincolnshire suffers from a lack of early documentary evidence for these centuries, which may well have led to its import being under-estimated. The narratives that historians have developed are often based on those regions that lie outside the archaeologically identified core 'eastern zone', but which have significantly better documentation, such as Kent, Northumbria and Wessex. The reason for this lack of documentation in the east is uncertain and disputed, but whatever the case may be, the effect is clear. In addition, we perhaps also suffer from the fact that the name of Lincolnshire’s own seventh-century kingdom—Lindsey or Lindissi—survives today as a district-name in Lincolnshire. Although reasonably extensive, the modern district of Lindsey isn’t really large on a national or regional basis, and its present size can lead to an assumption of a relative lack of importance for this kingdom. That this assumption is problematical is demonstrated by my own research, which indicates that the modern district of Lindsey was very much smaller than the seventh-century kingdom whose name it preserves.

Two maps showing the difference between the likely extent of the seventh-century Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Lindissi and the modern district of Lindsey; note, the map also shows the pre-Viking landscape of the Lincoln region, with light-blue representing low-lying wetlands. Click the image for a larger version (images: Caitlin Green).

Even more interesting are those few glimpses we do get of Lincolnshire and the kingdom of Lindsey in the documentary record relating to the seventh century.  Perhaps the most arresting thing is the fact that the major players in the seventh century all seem to have wanted to rule Lincolnshire. The kingdom of Lindsey appears to have been finally conquered and dissolved by the Midland kingdom of Mercia (based around Tamworth and Repton) in the later seventh century. However, this is the very last act in a remarkable saga, whereby the kingdom of Lindsey looks to have been the major prize that the better-known and documented kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria were fighting repeatedly over. So, for example, the kingdom of Lindsey appears to have changed hands at least seven times in less than half a century, and some of the most important battles of the seventh century that were fought between Mercia and Northumbria probably actually took place within the kingdom of Lindsey itself. Indeed, Bede himself is reasonably explicit on this topic, stating that the kingdom of Lindsey was what the king of Northumbria had won from the Mercian king when he defeated him in 678 (‘the kingdom of Lindissi, which King Ecgfrith had recently won by conquering Wulfhere and putting him to flight’, Historia Ecclesiastica IV.12).

This apparent political importance of control of Lincolnshire to the two major semi-'imperial'/imperium-wielding dynasties of seventh century England is, of course, intriguing, and it is supported by other evidence too. For example, when King Edwin of Northumbria (Deira) was the overlord of Lincolnshire in the 620s and early 630s, he seems to have taken an exceptional interest in the province. He oversaw, for example, the completion of a stone church in Lincoln before even his own likely 'capital' of York had one (HE II.14, II.16). Such churches were highly symbolic, and this favouritism for a place which was a conquest over his own ecclesiastical and potentially royal city is most curious. Moreover, when he—as the most powerful ruler in England at that time—was in a position to control the process of consecrating the next Archbishop of Canterbury (named Honorius), he didn’t insist that the politically and symbolically important consecration took place in York or even his own kingdom, but rather in the stone church he had built at Lincoln, the probable chief centre of the conquered kingdom of Lindissi/Lindsey (HE II.16, II.18).

So, what on earth is going on here? Why was Edwin so concerned with Lincoln, apparently over and above even York? And why was the kingdom of Lindsey such a prize for both Northumbria and Mercia, to the extent that multiple battles appear to have been, at least in part, fought specifically over its control? Both economics and strategic position have been suggested in the past as explanations for these actions, but whilst the former may well have been a significant influence, given how wealthy eighth-century and earlier Lincolnshire seems to have been, these factors are perhaps insufficient on their own. I would tentatively suggest that it is possible that a full explanation may additionally involve recognising that Lincoln and Lincolnshire actually had a somewhat greater significance in the early stages of the evolution of 'Anglo-Saxon England' than is usually allowed for, just as some of the archaeological evidence noted above seems to hint at. What will be discussed in the remainder of this piece is just what this significance might have been that could have resulted in Lindsey and Lincoln being such a prize and focus for the two great powers of seventh-century politics, Mercia and Northumbria. In doing this I’d like to focus on focus on two potential key factors, which can be roughly summarized as the ‘political baggage’ and the ‘family baggage’ of these two seventh-century kingdoms.

The sequence of late/post-Roman churches at St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln, showing their relationship to the Roman forum— the second, fifth- to sixth-century apsidal church would have able to hold up to 100 worshippers (image: Caitlin Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, 2012, fig, 12, copyright English Heritage).

Dealing with the potential ‘political baggage’ first, it is important to remember that Lincoln was a major political centre at the end of the Roman period, being both the probable seat of one of Britannia’s four bishops and a provincial capital. So, the question is, could this political importance and and 'centrality' for Lincoln have continued beyond the end of the Roman period and thus have had an effect on the later-recorded Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, perhaps making the city and its territory a real political and symbolic prize for these kingdoms, as the fragmentary historical evidence for the seventh century implies that it was? In my view, the answer to this ought to be a tentative ‘yes’. Certainly, I have made the case both in print and elsewhere for Lincoln having been an important British political centre in the fifth and sixth centuries too, with a sizable apsidal church built in the centre of the Roman forum that can now be confidently dated to the fifth to the sixth centuries and exceptional quantities of high-status British metalwork of the fifth and sixth centuries known from across Lincolnshire. Furthermore, the seventh-century Anglo-Saxon kingdom-name Lindissi and the modern district-name Lindsey both derive from the Late British name of this territory, *Lindēs, rather than any Old English name, which is notable. Indeed, looking at all of the available evidence, it can be credibly argued that the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Lindissi was, to a large extent, the direct descendant of this fifth- to sixth-century British territory of *Lindēs, which is a point of considerable interest in the present context.

There is no need to go into depth here on the evidence for the British territory of *Lindēs and its links to the subsequent kingdom of Lindissi, but it is worth pointing out that the apparent avoidance of the former provincial capital by the major fifth- to sixth-century Anglian cremation-predominant cemeteries of this region—each containing hundreds or thousands of burials—is most interesting. As can be seen from the map below, the great cremation cemeteries form, in effect, a ring around Lincoln, with the nearest large cremation cemetery to Lincoln being that at Loveden Hill, over 27 km to the south of the city, with this avoidance appearing to continue at least partly into the sixth century. This offers a very marked contrast to the situation at and around other major Roman centres in eastern and northern Britain such as York, Leicester, and Caistor-by-Norwich, where Anglo-Saxon cremation cemeteries are found close by. Furthermore, it has been observed that the distribution of these cemeteries is very similar in pattern to that of the apparent last stage in the deployment of the late Roman army in the Lincoln region (based on recent artefactual studies), leading to the suggestion that the people who used these large cemeteries could have been initially tasked with a similar defensive role with regard to fifth-century Lincoln and *Lindēs. 

Indeed, there are even hints that a vestige of Roman provincial control from Lincoln survived at least some way into the fifth century. Although we do need to be cautious here, it has been suggested that a real distinction appears to be observable between a mainly Anglian cultural zone and a mainly Saxon one in the archaeology of the fifth century, and that the dividing line between the two accords surprisingly well with the most recent reconstruction of the Late Roman provincial boundaries, with early Anglian cremation-predominant cemeteries being nearly all located within the province controlled by Lincoln. In this context, it is likewise intriguing to note that the probable Late Roman provincial governor's residence at Lincoln, the Greetwell villa-palace, was not only maintained to a high standard right through until the end of the Roman coin sequence in the early fifth century and even potentially a little beyond, but also has notable evidence for estate continuity into the medieval period at both the local and sub-regional levels, with its wider territory in the Witham valley recently argued to have become a major royal estate of the seventh century and after. 

Two maps showing (a) the large early Anglo-Saxon cremation cemeteries of the Lincoln region, set against the late/post-Roman landscape, and (b) the distribution of both the large and small early Anglian cremation-predominant cemeteries, represented by filled squares, plotted against Saxon artefacts of the second half of the fifth century, represented by stars, and the Late Roman provincial boundaries as reconstructed by J. C. Mann in ‘The creation of four provinces in Britain by Diocletian’, Britannia, 29 (1998). Click here for a larger version of these maps (images drawn by Caitlin Green, based on Caitlin Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, figs 11 and 21a).

If Lincoln was thus a former Late Roman provincial capital that was subsequently the centre of a late-surviving British Christian state of the fifth and sixth centuries, which was apparently able to 'control' Anglo-Saxon activity in its immediate region for several generations and eventually became the seventh-century kingdom of Lindissi, then this could certainly begin to provide a potential motive for why the seventh-century Anglo-Saxon dynasties of Mercia and Northumbria might have seen control of the city and the kingdom of Lindissi as an important symbolic and political prize. This is particularly the case if the distribution of almost all Anglian cremation-predominant cemeteries was indeed somehow related to the territory of the Late Roman province controlled by Lincoln, as has been tentatively suggested. In such circumstances, it would seem more than credible that the imperium-building seventh-century rulers of both Mercia and Northumbria—who, it should be noted, claimed descent from Anglian immigrant groups—would have seen Lincoln and *Lindēs/Lindissi as a prize well worth fighting over, if only for the symbolism it possessed deriving from its apparent fourth- to sixth-century importance.

The second point relates to the personal origins of the ruling lineages of both Mercia and Northumbria themselves in the seventh and eighth centuries, and is part of the ‘family baggage’ referred to earlier. To put it simply, it seems possible to trace at least key groups within Northumbria, and possibly within Mercia too, back not only to Anglian groups claiming immigrant descent within Lincoln's wider former province, but also to groups who actually had roots within the Lincoln region/*Lindēs itself. The key piece of information here has come up in the questions to virtually every lecture and talk I’ve ever given on early Anglo-Saxon Lindsey—namely, the relationship between the group-name of the people of Lindsey, the Lindisfaran ('the people who migrated to the territory of *Lindēs') and the northern island-name Lindisfarne, Old English Lindisfarena ea/Lindisfarnae, Anglo-Latin insula Lindisfarnensis. The link between the Lindisfaran and the island-name Lindisfarne has been much discussed over the years. Numerous researchers have attempted to explain why the two names look so alike, most relying on etymologies for the name Lindisfarne that deliberately don’t involve linking it to the Lincolnshire Lindisfaran and then assuming a quite remarkable coincidence to explain why the names look so similar. Unfortunately, none of the proposed etymologies stand up to scrutiny—they all have serious problems that cannot be easily avoided. In consequence, it can be argued that the only really credible explanation of the name Lindisfarne is that it is indeed intimately related to the group-name of the inhabitants of Lindissi in Lincolnshire, the Lindisfaran—the final element in 'Lindisfarne' is simply the Old English word for island, whilst the first part is the regular Old English genitive form of Lindisfaran. In other words, it quite transparently means ‘the island of the Lindisfaran’.

A map of Lincolnshire, Lindisfarne and the North, showing key sites, groups and place-names (image: Caitlin Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, fig. 46)

Now, the question has to be asked, why was it called this? The great place-name scholar, Eilert Ekwall, wrote many decades ago that if we accept the transparent Old English etymology for Lindisfarne, then the primary interpretation has to be that this island was settled by people from Lincolnshire. Recent work on the archaeology of Northumbria has arguably tended to back up this conclusion. Whilst the available archaeological evidence clearly indicates that there was a notable degree of 'Anglo-Saxon' activity in the Lindisfarne region from around the middle of the sixth century onwards (as evidenced by, for example, the settlements and cemeteries at Yeavering, Milfield, Thirlings, Ford and Bamburgh), south of this general region there is relatively little evidence for significant pre-seventh-century Anglo-Saxon activity until we reach the vicinity of Hadrian’s Wall. This raises the possibility that the area around Lindisfarne was indeed under the control of a group of people making use of 'Anglo-Saxon' material culture who had maritime links to regions significantly further south, just as might be expected if Lindisfarne and the surrounding area were somehow occupied by Lindisfaran from Lincolnshire, as the name of the island implies.

The problem with all this is that the archaeology and textual evidence is also clear that the area around Lindisfarne was the heartland of the Anglian kingdom of Bernicia (northern Northumbria). It is here that the famous palace site of Yeavering is found, and it is also here that the fortress of Bamburgh was located. Situated only a couple of miles to the south of Lindisfarne itself, this was—according to Bede—the ‘royal city’ of Northumbria, and recent excavations have discovered a massive Anglo-Saxon-era inhumation cemetery here, which dwarfs all other known cemeteries from north of the Humber. Indeed, Lindisfarne itself appears in early medieval accounts as a major sixth- and seventh-century possession and sanctuary of the kings of Bernicia. It is consequently difficult to avoid associating the mid- to late sixth-century 'Anglo-Saxon' material in the region around Lindisfarne with the documentary evidence for the mid- to late sixth-century 'arrival' of either the founders of the kingdom of Bernicia or the ancestors of the same here; certainly the rulers of Bernicia seem to have been based in this area from this period onwards. Needless to say, it is unlikely that another group would be subsequently allowed to take possession of the island of Lindisfarne after the establishment of the Anglian kingdom of Bernicia, given the apparent status of the island as a royal territory and sanctuary and the fact that the neighbouring fortress of Bamburgh was ‘the royal city’ of the Bernicians. At the same time, the archaeological and textual evidence doesn't really support the idea of a previous Anglo-Saxon 'arrival' or 'influence' in this region that occurred before the mid-sixth century. Consequently, the natural conclusion is that the migration of the Lindisfaran to Lindisfarne (recorded by the place-name Lindisfarne, ‘the island of the Lindisfaran’) must be identical with the settlement of ancestors of the historically recorded Bernician kings. That is to say, it seems quite possible that the Bernician royal family were ultimately Lindisfaran who had migrated to this region from Lincolnshire.

St. Paul's church, Jarrow; part of the Anglo-Saxon monastery of Jarrow survives today as the chancel of St Paul's Church (image: Stanley Howe/Geograph).

Such a conclusion is far less implausible than might be at first thought. After all, the Bernician royal family is usually considered to have moved to the Lindisfarne region from somewhere further south. Furthermore, there is actually a selection of other evidence that backs up the idea that Anglian groups from Lincolnshire may have played a key role in settling Northumbria in the fifth and sixth centuries. Take, for example, Jarrow and the area around the mouth of the Tyne. The available historical accounts imply that this was the second early heartland of the Bernician kings after the Lindisfarne–Bamburgh region, and it was moreover where Bede worked and wrote. What is particularly interesting about this second Bernician royal heartland, however, is that the key settlement within it, Jarrow, bears a name meaning ‘at the settlement of the Gyrwe’, a group-name that is also recorded as that of a well-attested south Lincolnshire and northern Cambridgeshire Anglian group, in whose territory Crowland once lay. Moreover, it has also been suggested by James Campbell that both Bede and the founder of Jarrow, Benedict Biscop, may have actually themselves been members of the royal lineage of the Lindisfaran, which is a point of considerable interest too.

Similarly, if we look for the largest Bernician Anglo-Saxon cemetery which lay outside of the Lindsifarne area, it can be found at Norton-on-Tees. This sixth-century cemetery is far larger than any of the other ones outside of the Lindisfarne area, suggesting some degree of local importance, but the place-name Norton is probably later in date and can’t refer to settlement that the cemetery served. However, only half a mile to the east of the cemetery is Billingham, a documented pre-Viking estate-centre that bears a name that is said to be ‘one of the earliest Old English settlement forms to survive’ in the region and which current place-name chronologies would place within the early Anglo-Saxon period. Once again, this name is most intriguing, as it means the ‘estate of the Billingas’, a group-name that likewise recurs in Anglo-Saxon Lincolnshire, where it applied to a significant sub-group within the southern part of the kingdom of Lindissi, based around Sleaford. Finally, attention can be directed the largest cemetery in the southern half of Northumbria, Sancton cremation cemetery. This is not only the location of the largest and earliest Anglo-Saxon cemetery in Deira, which seems to have its origins in the fifth century and from which the remains of 454 cremated individuals have been excavated, but it is also very close to the site of the principal heathen shrine of Deira, according to Bede. In other words, a credible case might be made for this area as a key centre of the southern Northumbrian kingdom of Deira. What is especially interesting here, however, is the fact that, first, the cemetery lies on the Roman road leading north from the bank of the Humber; second, that there are close links between the cremation urns found at Sancton and those from the Lincolnshire cremation cemeteries of Cleatham, Elsham, South Elkington, and Baston; and third, that just to the west of Sancton there is an extensive district known as Spalding Moor that includes a hamlet called Spaldington on its south side, both of which names contain the population-group name Spalde/Spaldingas, which is once again the name of a major group in southern Lincolnshire who were based on the siltlands of the Lincolnshire Fenland around Spalding and who appear in the 'Tribal Hidage'.

In sum, whilst each of the above instances of population-group names occurring both in Northumbria and in southern Lincolnshire might be individually dismissed as coincidences, the combined weight of these coincidences is difficult to explain away. Furthermore, in each case the group-name is found at or next to some of the most important sites in Northumbria, as identifiable both from the archaeological and textual evidence, and there is archaeological evidence of links to Lincolnshire in at least one of these locations. All told, the simplest and most credible solution would seem to be that Anglo-Saxon population groups from Lincolnshire did indeed play a major role in both the settlement of Northumbria and the foundation of the kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira, just as the place-name Lindisfarne implies.

A sixth-century gold sword pommel from Rippingale ('the halh of the Hrepingas'), Lincolnshire, mentioned below (image: PAS/British Museum)

With regards to Mercia, the evidence is less clear-cut, but we may well have a partially analogous situation. In particular, attention might be drawn to the place-name Repton, where the pre-Viking kings of Mercia were buried, which means ‘the hill of the tribe called Hreope/Hrype’. It is usually agreed that the group- and territory-name Hrepingas that occurs in early Mercian charters represents an alternate form of this group-name (compare Spalde/Spaldingas above), and that the Hreope/Hrepingas were moreover one of three major sub-groups within the seventh-century Mercian kingdom. Needless to say, in this light it is intriguing to note that the Hrepingas also occur as an early Anglo-Saxon group within Lincolnshire, with Rippingale in southern Lincolnshire being ‘the valley of the Hrepingas’. This population-group seems to have been located just to the south of the Billingas and there is, moreover, archaeological evidence for elite activity in the late fifth and sixth centuries from the Rippingale area, including a recent find of a high-status gold sword pommel, pictured above.

We also have the interesting case of the Hwicce, whose kingdom in the West Midlands to the south-west of Mercia is multiply-attested, but who also appear in a significant number of place-names in and around Rutland, immediately to the west and north of Stamford, Lincolnshire. So, not only is their name apparently preserved in that of the eleventh-century Whitchley Hundred that met at Wicheley Heath, 'the woodland of the Hwicce' (Hwicceslea), a district that encompassed around a third of modern shire of Rutland, but there are also other Hwicce names within Rutland, with yet another potential 'Witchley' name in the north-west of this small county—Wichley Leys—and a probable *Hwiccena-denu, 'valley of the Hwicce', there too. Quite what this means is open to debate, but both A. H. Smith and Barrie Cox suggest that these names could reflect a situation whereby the Hwicce originally controlled a territory in this area prior to the establishment of their documented seventh- to eighth-century (sub-)kingdom in the West Midlands, which is notable given what has been discussed already. 

Map of Rutland, showing the Rutland Hwicce names; the names in italics are those of the Witchley East Hundred and Witchley West Hundred, as recorded in the Northamptonshire Geld Roll of 1072–8, and the approximate position and extent of 'Wicheley Heath' is based on the maps of 1603–11 and 1756, along with the location of the surviving Witchley Warren Farm in Edith Weston parish. The grey lines reflect the late eleventh-century hundred boundaries, with the dotted line representing the division between the later East and Wrangdike hundreds, which is thought to perpetuate that between Witchley East Hundred and Witchley West Hundred (image: Caitlin Green).

In conclusion, it can be suggested that the apparent seventh-century Mercian and Northumbrian interest in Lincoln and Lindissi/Lindsey is perhaps explicable not simply in terms of the exceptional wealth of seventh-/eighth-century Lincolnshire, but also the political history of that region and the family 'baggage' of the two major imperium-building Anglian dynasties. Put simply, it seems possible that the seventh-century Anglian rulers of Northumbria and Mercia may have additionally wanted to enhance their own position, status and rule by controlling a city that had probably been one of the last centres of Romanitas in the east, perhaps able to control Anglian activity in not only the Lincoln area but also the wider region during parts of the fifth and sixth centuries, and a part of eastern Britain with which they may well have had personal, family ties. If so, then it is perhaps not quite so surprising that the control of Lindissi was so contested through the course of the seventh century between these two dynasties, nor that Edwin of Northumbria, who was apparently concerned with portraying himself as a Roman-style ruler (HE II.16), seems to have favoured Lincoln over his own likely 'capital' of York, building a new stone church there first and then having the consecration of Archbishop Honorius held in this structure.

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2020, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

What lies beneath? A buried medieval chapel under Porthminster Beach, St Ives, Cornwall

The long, sandy beach of Porthminster, with its calm, blue waters, is located just below the railway station at St Ives, Cornwall, and has found favour since the late nineteenth century as a resort, especially after the retirement of its seine fishing fleet. However, its history stretches back much further than this, with its present-day sands and landscaped green areas said to conceal the buried remains of a medieval chapel and village that once stood below the cliffs here through until the fifteenth century.

Porthminster Beach, St Ives; click here for a larger version of this image (image: Robin Stevens, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

The magnificent beaches and dunes of St Ives and its bay, down at the far south-western tip of Britain, have long been known for their ability to swallow buildings and structures whole. For example, Holinshed's Chronicles, written in the later sixteenth century, noted that the 'whole coast from St Ives' was 'sore choked with sand', and John Leland in c. 1538 observed of St Ives that the

most part of the houses in the peninsula be sore oppressed or over-covered with sands that the stormy winds and rages cast up there. This calamity has continued there little above 20 years... The best part of the town now stands in the south part of the peninsula, toward another hill for defence from the sands.(1)

This situation was confirmed in the early eighteenth century by John Hicks, a former mayor of the town writing in a now-lost manuscript history of St Ives in 1722. He reported that the original buildings of St Ives lay buried beneath the sands that were blown across from Porthmeor Beach, and C. S. Gilbert, who saw Hicks's history before its loss, noted in 1817–20 that

Mr Hicks says that the ruins of more than forty houses were to be seen in his time, in the north-west part of the town, and that whole streets had been discovered under the sands, at a place called the Floud, near the quay, by men who were digging out stones for building.(2)

An aerial view of St Ives and its beaches; the north-western beach is Porthmeor and the southern beach is Porthminster, with the town and the harbour between the two, shown here at low tide when it is dry. Click here for a larger version of this image or here for a zoomable version (Imagery © 2018 Google, TerraMetrics, Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO, Map data © 2018 Google, used in accordance with their attribution guidelines).

This inundation of St Ives by the sands of its northern beach, Porthmeor, continued right up until the later eighteenth century and the completion (by 1782) of the high retaining sea-wall at Porthmeor, which John Smeaton had proposed in 1766 in order to stop this repeated burial of the town's houses and the related clogging of its harbour.(3) Of course, St Ives was not alone in having such problems: similar issues were encountered at Lelant, Phillack (Hayle) and Gwithian too, further around St Ives Bay. In 1662, for example, Lelant church was described as 'almost quite covered with sand blown up by the wind', whilst other writers back into the late sixteenth century indicate that Lelant had lost at least some houses to the drifting sands, and this situation continued here too into the eighteenth century, when the churchwardens’ accounts record payments for removing sand from the church. Indeed, the problem was only finally resolved when the dunes were planted with marram grass by the early nineteenth century.(4) Likewise, from Upton Barton in Gwithian parish there are accounts of a farmhouse having been overwhelmed with sand in the course of a single night sometime just after 1650, with the occupants having to escape through the upper windows—the remains of Upton were subsequently briefly visible in the winter of 1808–09 following a temporary shift of sand, but have not been seen again since and are now thought to lie around twenty feet deep within a very large sand-dune.(5)

Bearing all of the above in mind, it is perhaps unsurprising that Porthminster beach at St Ives might similarly seem to conceal evidence of earlier buildings and activity. The primary evidence for such buried structures comes from the late nineteenth century, when the foundations of a chapel/oratory and some graves were reportedly exposed here by the shifting sands. The main account of this is found in John Matthews' 1892 volume entitled A History of the Parishes of Saint Ives, Lelant, Towednack and Zennor, who associates the exposed structure with the medieval church that was presumably responsible for the present-day name of the beach and cove, Porthminster, first recorded in the fourteenth century (Cornish porth, 'cove, harbour', plus *mynster, 'endowed church', the latter element borrowed from English minster):

III. The chapel or oratory which formerly stood on the rocks under Penmester Hill, and which gives its name to the cover and neighbourhood of Porthminster ('the sandy cove of the church')... Some years ago the sand was washed down from the top of the beach, close to the Tregenna stream, leaving uncovered a portion of the foundations of this oratory, near which were found two stone coffins with leaden chalices, marking the interment of priests. It is said that these remains were deposited in the museum at Penzance, but I have never seen them. The find was made in about the year 1870...(6)

Porthminster beach, St Ives, in 1845; click here for an uncropped version of this image (image: PD, via the BSJW Trust).

Porthminster beach, St Ives, c. 1890–1900; click here for a larger version of this image and here for the uncropped version. The Tregenna stream can be seen as a darker line in the sand on the left of the image, coming down from the higher ground before apparently disappearing into the beach (image: Wikimedia Commons/Library of Congress).

With regard to the exact location of this buried chapel and its associated graves, Matthews' description quoted above is not entirely helpful, identifying the remains simply as being found at the 'top of the beach, close to the Tregenna stream'. The Tregenna stream nowadays flows out across the south-eastern part of the beach, but as can be seen on early images and the 1877 OS map reproduced below, it originally flowed across what is now the start of the putting green—laid out in 1930—and down the centre of the beach, immediately to the left of the present-day beach shop and chalets when looking out to sea from the beach-front promenade, a course it occasionally partially resumes when it breaks its culvert. As to 'the top of the beach', this is more difficult. The images of Porthminster beach from 1845 and c. 1890–1900 included above show that the relatively steep area now occupied by green landscaping and a putting green were originally used to moor seine fishing boats and could potentially be considered part of the beach, appearing sandy in these early pictures, something apparently confirmed by the depiction of the area on the 1877 OS map. So, was the chapel at the top of this steeper area, or further down the Tregenna stream towards or actually under the beach as it exists today? Two further brief descriptions of the exposed remains by Matthews may be helpful in addressing this question, from earlier in his 1892 history and from his 1884 Guide to St. Ives and its Surroundings:

The Tregenna stream rises on the hill of that name, flows through the grounds of Tregenna Castle, and loses itself in the sands of Porthminster, near the foundations of an ancient chapel... (7)

Porthminster is at present the neighbourhood of the big sands to the south-east of the town. Literally, it is only the name of the beach itself, and signifies “the beach of the church”... After high tides, when the sand has been washed down by big waves, the foundations of the church are uncovered for a time.(8)

Porthminster beach, St Ives, on am OS map surveyed in 1877 and printed in 1887; click here for a larger version of this image (image: National Library of Scotland, 2017).

Porthminster beach in 2018 and 1877, with the outline of the modern features transposed onto the 1877 map; click here for a larger version of this image (Left: Imagery © 2018 Google, Map data © 2018 Google, used in accordance with their attribution guidelines; Right: National Library of Scotland, 2017).

Taken together, these two accounts suggest that the remains were exposed on the upper part of the current beach or the immediately adjacent areas to its rear, rather than on the higher parts closer to the railway viaduct. First, it is said that the Tregenna stream 'loses itself in the sands of Porthminster, near the foundations of an ancient chapel'. This description can perhaps be equated with the depiction of the stream on the photograph of c. 1890–1900, where the Tregenna stream can be seen emerging from the area of seine boats and then disappearing on the beach, with other early photographs showing a similar situation. It is also arguably supported by the OS map surveyed in 1877, above, which shows a straight course for the stream through until just after the current promenade in front of the putting green, when it adopts a more sinuous course. Whatever the case may be, the description would seem to imply a findspot at or close to the top of the current beach for the chapel remains.

Second, Matthews' 1884 comment that 'after high tides, when the sand has been washed down by big waves, the foundations of the church are uncovered for a time', obviously indicates a location that was both normally covered by sand and in an area that the highest tides could reach and temporarily expose before it became covered up by sand once more, rather than it being located well beyond the high tide line in the area of the putting green/former seine boat mooring area towards the railway viaduct. As to where the highest tides reached in the later nineteenth century, this clearly varied just as it does today—the 1877 OS map, for example, places the median high tide line some distance from the current promenade, around halfway down the beach, but 1930s OS maps and the photograph of c. 1890–1900 show it much closer to the promenade, a little way short of where the present-day beach shop and chalets now are sited. Once again, whatever the case may be, the description would nonetheless seem to imply a location for the remains as being both under sand and in the area at or close to the top end of the present beach.

The Porthminster beach shop and chalets (right, with multi-coloured doors) and the Porthminster Beach Café (on the left); the beach-front promenade runs between the putting green and the beach and behind the beach shop/chalets. Note, the Treganna stream is also present in the foreground, where it has re-emerged in the centre of the beach on its former alignment after apparently breaking its culvert in the winter of 2017–18; click here for a larger version of this photograph (image: C. R. Green).

All told, then, the available evidence suggests that the buried chapel and coffins observed in the late nineteenth century lay underneath sand somewhere in or close to the top area of the main beach, rather than much further up the slope towards the viaduct, probably in the approximate vicinity of the current beach shop or a little to its north-west based on the nineteenth-century course of the Tregenna stream. Turning to the question of just what this chapel represents and its likely date, Matthews associates it with the former medieval settlement of Porthminster. John Hicks, in his now-lost 1722 manuscript history of St Ives mentioned above, seems to have had access to town records that are no longer extant and noted the following for the reign of Henry VI (1422–61), according to the extracts of Hicks' MS published by C. S. Gilbert in 1817–20:

four French ships hovered round the coast of Cornwall, burnt the town of Marazion, and afterwards sailed round the Land's End, and landed at Porthminster, about a mile from St. Ives, which they burnt to the ground, and it has never since been re-built. They also killed twenty men, and carried much plunder on board their ships, with which, and other booty, they sailed for France.(9)

If this account is reliable, then it would offer us a potential terminus ante quem for the buried structure of the mid-fifteenth century, although one might wonder whether the reign of Henry VIII was not actually meant, rather than Henry VI, given that the town of Marazion is indeed recorded as having been burnt by the French in 1514 during his reign.(10) In any case, a terminus ante quem in either the mid-fifteenth or early sixteenth century would accord well with Susan Pearce's observation that the 'two stone coffins with leaden chalices' that Matthews records exposed near to the remains of the chapel/oratory are 'clearly full medieval'.(11)

Whether the chapel itself was purely 'full medieval' or had earlier origins/phases is, of course, uncertain, in the absence of solid archaeological or documentary evidence. On the one hand, whilst the chapel was presumably in existence before 1301, when the name 'Porthminster' is apparently first recorded, if 'Porthminster' does indeed refer to it then the somewhat curious presence of the English loanword mynster, 'endowed church' (< Latin monasterium), in the name might suggest a late foundation for the site and a possibly monastic character.(12) On the other hand, Imogen Tompsett has considered the Porthminster find to be a potential early medieval chapel/oratory site in her recent survey of the evidence from the South-West.(13) Certainly, it wouldn't be the only example of a buried early medieval chapel along the coast of Cornwall. For example, the so-called St Gothian’s Oratory ('the chapel in the sands') at Gwithian, St Ives Bay, was uncovered in 1827 and visible as a ruin until the early twentieth century before it was re-engulfed, and this seems to have been a small tenth-century church that was abandoned to the blowing sand after c. 1200, with a sequence of finds that could extend back as far as c. AD 700. Likewise, the well-known site of St Piran's Oratory near Perranporth—a probably tenth- to twelfth-century building with a likely unexcavated eighth-/ninth-century stage given the radiocarbon dates obtained from burials recently found there—was largely swallowed by shifting sand dunes sometime during the medieval period before being occasionally re-exposed and then partially excavated in 1835 and 1843 (it was reburied to protect it in 1980), and a potentially early chapel was uncovered underneath the sands of Lelant Towans in 1875 during the building of the railway link to St Ives.(14) However, given the sparseness of the documentation and the apparently late place-name and burials at Porthminster, such a possibility cannot be pushed too far at present.

Plan and drawing of the tenth-century St Gothian's Oratory, Gwithian, from J. T. Blight, Churches of West Cornwall (London, 1885), pp. 138–39; see C. Thomas, Gwithian: Notes on the Church, Parish and St Gothian’s Chapel (Gwithian, 1964), for a slightly more accurate plan of the oratory and a conjectural section based on earlier accounts (image: Internet Archive).

Notes

1.     John Leland, Itinerary, iii.21, quoted in J. H. Matthews, A History of the Parishes of Saint Ives, Lelant, Towednack and Zennor (London, 1892), p. 48, and K. Newell, Cornwall and Scilly Urban Survey. Historic Characterisation for Regeneration: St Ives, HES Report no. 2005R069 (Truro, 2005), p. 19; note, I have modernised the spelling here.
2.     C. S. Gilbert, An Historical Survey of the County of Cornwall (Plymouth, 1817–20), vol 2, part 2, p. 710.
3.     See J. Smeaton, Reports of the Late John Smeaton, F.R.S., 2nd edn. (London, 1837), pp. 199–204 at pp. 201–02 and plate 17. The retaining sea-wall at Porthmeor was apparently completed by 1782, see Cornwall & Scilly Historic Environment Record no. MCO56020.
4.     C. Noall, 'Nineteenth-Century discoveries at Lelant', Cornish Archaeology, 3 (1964), 34–6, who gives details of the inundation of Lelant and mentions that of Phillack; D. Gilbert, The Parochial History of Cornwall (London, 1838), vol 3, pp. 5–6 (Lelant) and pp. 339–40 (Phillack).
5.     C. Thomas, 'Minor sites in the Gwithian area (Iron Age to recent times)', Cornish Archaeology, 3 (1964), 37–62 at pp. 52–3; D. Gilbert, The Parochial History of Cornwall (London, 1838), vol 2, pp. 149–50.
6.     J. H. Matthews, A History of the Parishes of Saint Ives, Lelant, Towednack and Zennor (London, 1892), p. 36; O. J. Padel, Cornish Place-Name Elements (Nottingham, 1985), pp. 167, 300; O. J. Padel, A Popular Dictionary of Cornish Place-Names (Penzance, 1988), pp. 194, 200; Cornwall & Scilly Historic Environment Record nos. 29909 & 29909.01. Note, the South West Coast Path's St Ives Station–Carbis Bay walk guide, online at https://www.southwestcoastpath.org.uk/print-walk/471/, claims that 'Around 1875, the construction work on the railway line unearthed a number of shallow graves in the sand at Porthminster, followed by the discovery of several stone-built cists, buried more deeply. Nearby was a primitive building, thought to be an oratory or chapel.' This appears to be a mistaken application of the Lelant Towans finds of Spring 1875 to Porthminster beach, however, as it fits the description of the former exactly both in terms of finds and date (see C. Noall, 'Nineteenth-Century discoveries at Lelant', Cornish Archaeology, 3 (1964), 34–6), whilst differing significantly from all other accounts of the Porthminster finds.
7.     J. H. Matthews, A History of the Parishes of Saint Ives, Lelant, Towednack and Zennor (London, 1892), p. 2.
8.     J. H. Matthews, A Guide to St. Ives and its Surroundings (St Ives, 1884).
9.     Transcribed in C. S. Gilbert, An Historical Survey of the County of Cornwall (Plymouth, 1817–20), vol 2, part 2, pp. 710–11; J. H. Matthews, A History of the Parishes of Saint Ives, Lelant, Towednack and Zennor (London, 1892), pp. 36, 47. See footnote 12, below, for some fourteenth- and fifteenth-century references to the settlement of Porthmenstre (Porthminster).
10.     W. Page (ed.), Victoria History of the County of Cornwall (London, 1906), p. 484. Of course, an unrecorded mid-fifteenth-century event is by no means impossible: Fowey was certainly burnt in 1457 (see Page, Victoria History of Cornwall, p. 483), and a fortification was moreover built at St Ives in 1490, just to the east of the medieval pier and quay—known as the 'Castle', elements of it may survive in Quay House on the harbour front, see K. Newell, Cornwall and Scilly Urban Survey. Historic Characterisation for Regeneration: St Ives, HES Report no. 2005R069 (Truro, 2005), p. 18).
11.     S. M. Pearce, South-western Britain in the Early Middle Ages (London, 2004), pp. 102–03.
12.     As noted in K. Newell, Cornwall and Scilly Urban Survey. Historic Characterisation for Regeneration: St Ives, HES Report no. 2005R069 (Truro, 2005), p. 15, and Pastscape Monument no. 424926. Cornwall & Scilly Historic Environment Record no. 29909 notes that the name Porthminster is first recorded in 1301 and it furthermore occurs in the name Walto Porthmaystre, Walter of Porthminster, in 1327 (J. H. Matthews, A History of the Parishes of Saint Ives, Lelant, Towednack and Zennor (London, 1892), p. 49). In 1362–3 it is found as Porthmenstre in the context of a writ of April of that year directing the Sheriff of Cornwall to restore property in a number of settlements, including Porthmenstre, to Henry son of Richard Trewennard and Richard Tyrel and Rose his wife (H. C. Maxwell Lyte (ed.), A Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Deeds: Volume 4 (London, 1902), deed A. 10422 at p. 555), and it is mentioned again as Porthmenster in 1375 (H. C. Maxwell Lyte (ed.), A Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Deeds: Volume 5 (London, 1906), deed A. 12086 at p. 240, cross-referenced to deed A. 10422). Other instances include a William Porthmynster who appears in the Penwith Hundred Court Roll for 1486–7 for assaulting William Bolenov 'with force of arms, namely with sword and stones, beat, wounded and maltreated him, in breach of the king's peace' (CRO AR/2/101/1); a Vivian Aunger of Porthmynster, 'fyssher', who appears alongside a Henry Aunger of Porthia [St Ives], 'fyssher', in 1433 (Calendar of Close Rolls, Henry VI: Volume 2, 1429-1435 (London, 1933), p. 287); and a reference to 'lands, &c. in the Gewe of Porthmynster' in 1483 (Lyte (ed.), Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Deeds: Volume 4, deed A. 10054 at p. 500). For the meanings of minster/mynster in Middle English, see S. M. Kuhn (ed.), Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor, 1977), pp. 508–09.
13.     I. Tompsett, Social Dynamics in South-West England AD 350–1150: An Exploration of Maritime Oriented Identity in the Atlantic Approaches and Western Channel Region (University of Nottingham PhD Thesis, 2012), pp. 126 (fig. 40), 128 (fig. 42), 379. On the name 'Porthminster', see Cornwall & Scilly Historic Environment Record no. 29909; O. J. Padel, Cornish Place-Name Elements (Nottingham, 1985), pp. 167, 300; O. J. Padel, A Popular Dictionary of Cornish Place-Names (Penzance, 1988), pp. 194, 200.
14.     St Gothian's Oratory: J. A. Nowakowski et al, 'Return to Gwithian: shifting the sands of time', Cornish Archaeology, 46 (2007), 13–76 at p. 58; A. Preston-Jones & N. Thomas, St Gothian's Oratory, Gwithian, Cornwall: Survey and Fencing, CAU report no. 2001022 (Truro, 2002); C. Thomas, Gwithian: Notes on the Church, Parish and St Gothian’s Chapel (Gwithian, 1964). St Piran's Oratory: I. Tompsett, Social Dynamics in South-West England AD 350–1150: An Exploration of Maritime Oriented Identity in the Atlantic Approaches and Western Channel Region (University of Nottingham PhD Thesis, 2012), pp. 126 (fig. 40), 133, 334; S. Turner, Making a Christian Landscape: How Christianity Shaped the Countryside in Early-Medieval Cornwall, Devon and Wessex (Exeter, 2006), pp. 38, 49; D. Cole & J. Gossip, St Piran's Oratory, Perranzabuloe, Cornwall: Results of Evaluation, CAU report no. 2010R140 (Truro, 2010); J. Gossip, 'Dark Age skeletons found at Cornish chapel were early Christian children and women who could have been from same family', Culture24, 20 August 2015, online article. Lelant Towans: I. Tompsett, Social Dynamics in South-West England AD 350–1150: An Exploration of Maritime Oriented Identity in the Atlantic Approaches and Western Channel Region (University of Nottingham PhD Thesis, 2012), pp. 134 (fig. 45), 375 (fig. 201), and 379–81; C. Noall, 'Nineteenth-Century discoveries at Lelant', Cornish Archaeology, 3 (1964), 34–6; Cornwall & Sicily Historic Environment Record no. 31061; C. Thomas, And Shall These Mute Stones Speak? Post-Roman Inscriptions in Western Britain (Cardiff 1994), p. 198, fig. 12.1.

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2018, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

The fifth- to sixth-century British church in the forum at Lincoln: a brief discussion

The aim of the following brief note is simply to bring wider attention to the post-Roman British apsidal church in the centre of the Roman forum of the former Late Roman provincial capital of Lincoln. A variety of dates have been proposed over the years, but a recent reconsideration of all the available evidence, including a Bayesian modelling of the radiocarbon data from the cemetery, indicates that the timber apsidal church almost certainly dates from the fifth to sixth centuries and had been demolished to make way for a cemetery by c. AD 600. The following discussion is based primarily on the analyses of the evidence found in my Britons and Anglo-Saxons and an earlier article, with additions and expansion as required.(1)

The sequence of buildings at St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln, showing their relationship to the Roman forum. Image: Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, 2012, fig, 12, copyright English Heritage.

Although the former Romano-British provincial capital of Lincoln (Lindum Colonia, British Lindon,*Lindocolonia) has produced little to no evidence for a pre-seventh-century 'Anglo-Saxon' cultural presence, there are nonetheless strong indications of activity in the city from the post-Roman period. In particular, a complex sequence of east–west orientated burials and two timber buildings were excavated from the St Paul-in-the-Bail site here—at the centre of Lincoln's former Roman forum—in the 1970s. One of these buildings is now generally agreed to have been an apsidal timber church and it cuts the foundations of an earlier structure which belonged to the same building tradition, had the same orientation, and potentially had the same function too.(2) The apsidal church is in turn overlain by complex sequence of inhumation burials, some of which cut the wall-line of the church or cut post-church layers from within its walls.(3)

The question of the date of this timber apsidal church—capable of holding around 100 worshippers—has been the subject of considerable discussion ever since its discovery, with initial reports suggesting that it could be the documented seventh-century church constructed in Lincoln by Paulinus sometime around AD 630.(4) However, there are significant issues with this idea, even before we look at the radiocarbon dating of the post-church cemetery and its implications, not least that the seventh-century church of Paulinus at Lincoln mentioned by Bede in c. 731 was still standing in his day and is clearly stated by him to have been made of stone, not wood. Likewise, the fact that the apsidal church in the forum appears to be the second in a sequence of two buildings is a further significant potential impediment to accepting it as Paulinus's church.(5) An alternative proposition is that we have here a sequence of very late and post-Roman British churches, located in the centre of the forum courtyard and orientated with reasonable precision to follow the alignment of the forum itself, with the proximity of the unexcavated west ends of the churches to the western portico of the forum implying that they were designed to be entered from between its columns. Certainly, this positioning and alignment of the buildings and their apparent relationship with the forum's western portico has been seen as highly suggestive of a late/post-Roman British origin, and it has been moreover argued that such an origin might well be supported by, for example, the building style/plan of the churches and the recovery of a coin of Arcadius (388–402) from beneath a metalled surface within the walls of the structures.(6)

Reconstruction of the fifth- to sixth-century apsidal church at St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln, located in the centre of the Roman forum and entered from the western portico. Image: Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, 2012, fig. 13, by David Vale/SLHA.

Perhaps the most telling evidence for a pre-seventh-century date for the apsidal church, however, comes from the radiocarbon dates of the graves excavated at the St Paul-in-the-Bail site. One of the most important of these appears to be a foundation deposit for the apsidal timber church, and this has a medial date of cal AD 441 within a likely date range from the very late fourth to the mid–late sixth century, which is certainly suggestive.(7) Even more important are the burials from the graveyard stage of the site, which Brian Gilmour has argued almost certainly only began after the demolition of the apsidal church had taken place, with three of the earliest of these moreover either cutting the wall-line of the apsidal church or cutting stratigraphically post-church layers from its interior.(8) Although the radiocarbon results from these graves have often been used individually (and occasionally rather dubiously) in arguments about the dating of the church, recent Bayesian modelling of the radiocarbon dates of these burials has now put things on a much sounder footing. The three burials that cut the walls and interior post-church levels together indicate that there is a very high probability (>85%) that the apsidal church was demolished before AD 600, given their relationship with this structure, and if the graveyard stage as a whole postdates this church, as it is indeed believed to, then an end to the church sequence before c. 600 becomes even more likely on the basis of the Bayesian modelling (c. 95%), although the available evidence would still just allow for a demolition as late as the early seventh century.(9)

All told, then, by far the most credible scenario—strongly supported by the radiocarbon dating and Bayesian modelling—is that we do indeed have here a sequence of two British churches set up in a significant area of the city (in the centre of the Roman forum and probably entered from its western portico), with the earlier structure rebuilt at some point perhaps around the mid–late fifth century into a larger apsidal church capable of holding around 100 worshippers, which then continued in use into the sixth century before being demolished by c. AD 600.(10) Such a sequence of very late and post-Roman churches not only makes best sense of all of the available evidence from the St Paul-in-the-Bail site, including the recent reassessment of the dating evidence, but it would also have a plausible context within late and post-Roman Britain. After all, just about the only sin that Gildas does not accuse his fellow sixth-century Britons of is paganism, indicating that he considered them to be Christians, albeit sinful ones, and Roman Lincoln moreover is known to have had its own bishop from the early fourth century, when Adelphius, Bishop of Lincoln, was sent to the Council of Arles in 314.(11) In this context, it is also worth noting that other evidence does exist for a partial survival of Romano-British Christianity in at least some areas of early medieval lowland Britain, including the numerous eccles place-names that occur right the way across to East Anglia and Kent, the apparent British cult of an unknown St Sixtus encountered by St Augustine in south-eastern England in c. 600, and Steven Bassett's case for there having been post-Roman British bishops in places such as Gloucester and Lichfield before there were Anglo-Saxon ones installed.(12)

A sequence of fifth- to sixth-century British churches in the centre of the Roman forum at Lincoln would likewise seem to have a very good local and regional context too. First, Lincoln itself seems to have remained economically vital into the very late Roman era, with not only good evidence for continuing specialist industry, cohesive central organization, considerable population and a thriving market at Lincoln right into the very late fourth century, but also indications of both continued urban activity into the early fifth century and the operation of the Romano-British pottery industry here at least partway through the fifth century, as was discussed in a previous post.(13) Second, and most importantly, there is now a reasonably substantial body of evidence to suggest that the former Roman provincial capital at Lincoln actually retained its centrality into the post-Roman period, becoming the focus of a British polity known as *Lindēs (from British-Latin Lindenses), as has been discussed at length elsewhere. This polity would eventually become the seventh-century Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Lindissi/Lindsey (a name which derives from Late British *Lindēs), but as a British political territory it is now thought likely to have survived right through the fifth century and at least some way into the sixth.(14) Needless to say, this is a point of considerable significance in the present context.

The Roman Mint Wall, Lincoln. This is the surviving portion of the basilica wall immediately to the north of the St Paul-in-the-Bail site; it originally stood nine metres high. It has been argued that the forum area must have remained open and maintained, with graves from the post-church inhumation cemetery marked, right through into the tenth century, when a small stone church was then built around what would seem to be one of the most important of the inhumation graves here (a late sixth- or seventh-century cist grave containing the only grave gift recovered from the whole cemetery, a Late Celtic hanging-bowl). In this light, one credible interpretation is that after the apsidal church was demolished, significant activity—be it ecclesiastical or secular—continued in this part of Lincoln, focused on the former large basilica that formed the north of the forum: certainly, this would explain not only the significant surviving elements of the basilica here, but also the presence of the graveyard in the forum (image © copyright Richard Croft, via Geograph, CC BY-SA 2.0).

The Roman well in Lincoln's forum, located immediately to the east of the fifth- to sixth-century apsidal church and possibly used as its baptistery; the well remained in use until the seventeenth century (image © copyright Tiger, via Geograph, CC BY-SA 2.0).

Notes

1.     Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons: Lincolnshire AD 400–650 (Lincoln, 2012), pp. 65–9, 82–3 (based on my PhD thesis), and Green, 'The British kingdom of Lindsey', Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 56 (2008), 1–43 at pp. 18–23, supported recently by J. Hines & A. Bayliss (eds.), Anglo-Saxon Graves and Grave Goods of the 6th and 7th Centuries AD: A Chronological Framework, Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 33 (London, 2013), pp. 549, 550.
2.     See, for example, K. Steane, The Archaeology of the Upper City and Adjacent Suburbs (Oxford, 2006), especially p. 192; M. J. Jones, 'St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln: Britain in Europe?', in K. Painter (ed.), Churches Built in Ancient Times: Recent Studies in Early Christian Archaeology (London, 1994), pp. 325–47 at pp. 328–30 and fig. 5; M. J. Jones, 'The Colonia era: archaeological account', in D. Stocker (ed.), City  by the Pool (Oxford, 2003), at pp. 127–9, 137; M. J. Jones, Roman Lincoln: Conquest, Colony and Capital (Stroud, 2002), p. 127; Green, 'British kingdom of Lindsey', pp. 18–23; Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, pp. 65–9, 82–3; pace B. Gilmour, 'Sub-Roman or Saxon, pagan or Christian: who was buried in the early cemetery at St-Paul-in-the Bail, Lincoln?', in L. Gilmour (ed.), Pagans and Christians – from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2007), pp. 229–56.
3.     Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, p. 65; Steane, The Archaeology of the Upper City and Adjacent Suburbs, especially pp. 160–1; Gilmour, 'Sub-Roman or Saxon', pp. 249, 252.
4.     See especially Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1998), pp. 226–30, for a championing of this theory, but beware his use of the radiocarbon data, which stretches it to the very utmost limits and beyond; this dating is also supported, far more tentatively, in A. G. Vince, 'Lincoln in the early medieval era, between the 5th and 9th centuries: the archaeological account', in D. Stocker (ed.), The City by the Pool. Assessing the Archaeology of the City of Lincoln (Oxford, 2003), pp. 147-151.
5.     For criticisms of Sawyer's theory, see further Green, 'British kingdom of Lindsey', especially pp. 19–20 at fn. 85; Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, pp. 65–9, 82. It should be noted that Alan Vince acknowledges that the theory of a seventh-century origin for the apsidal church requires both a degree of special pleading and doesn't account for the first building on the site, which Vince would (somewhat bizarrely given that the alternative interpretation of the whole site) have as a late Roman or post-Roman British church: Vince, 'Lincoln in the early medieval era', pp. 149, 150–1, and see further below.
6.     Green, 'British kingdom of Lindsey', pp. 19–20; Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, p. 65; M. J. Jones, 'St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln: Britain in Europe?', in K. Painter (ed.), Churches Built in Ancient Times: Recent Studies in Early Christian Archaeology (London, 1994), pp. 325–47; K. Steane, 'St Paul-in-the-Bail – a dated sequence?', Lincoln Archaeology, 3 (1990–1), 28–31; M. J. Jones, 'The Colonia era: archaeological account', in D. Stocker (ed.), City  by the Pool (Oxford, 2003), pp. 127–9, 137; M. J. Jones, Roman Lincoln: Conquest, Colony and Capital (Stroud, 2002), pp. 127–9; B. Eagles, 'Lindsey', in S. Bassett (ed.), The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (London, 1989), p. 207.
7.     Sample number 34, see B. Gilmour, 'Sub-Roman or Saxon', in L. Gilmour (ed.), Pagans and Christians (Oxford, 2007), pp. 229–56 at pp. 247–9, 252; Steane, Archaeology of the Upper City, pp. 157, 210; Jones, 'St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln: Britain in Europe?', pp. 332–3, 344; Jones, 'The Colonia era: archaeological account', p. 129.
8.     Sample numbers 30, 29 and 26, see Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, pp. 65–6; Steane, Archaeology of the Upper City, especially pp. 160–1, 210; Gilmour, 'Sub-Roman or Saxon', pp. 248–50, 252–3. See also Jones, 'St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln', pp. 332, 344; Steane, ‘St Paul-in-the-Bail – a Dated Sequence?’, pp. 30–1.
9.     On the results of the Bayesian modelling, see Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons: Lincolnshire AD 400–650 (Lincoln, 2012), pp. 65–7, 83 (fn. 37), supported recently by J. Hines & A. Bayliss (eds.), Anglo-Saxon Graves and Grave Goods of the 6th and 7th Centuries AD: A Chronological Framework, Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 33 (London, 2013), pp. 549, 550; as I note in Britons and Anglo-Saxons, my thanks are due here to Alex Bayliss, the Head of Scientific Dating at English Heritage, both for constructing a Bayesian model and for her analysis and advice with regard to the radiocarbon dates and chronology of this site.
10.     Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons: Lincolnshire AD 400–650 (Lincoln, 2012), pp. 65–9, 82–3; J. Hines & A. Bayliss (eds.), Anglo-Saxon Graves and Grave Goods of the 6th and 7th Centuries AD: A Chronological Framework, Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 33 (London, 2013), pp. 549, 550. Incidentally, it should be noted here that Gilmour's variant theory on St Paul-in-the-Bail (outlined in his 2007 paper 'Sub-Roman or Saxon'), which posits a mid-sixth-century de novo start for the church-stage of the site, is not discussed in the present post, as it both does not seem to have been widely adopted and—as was noted in Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, p. 82, and Green, 'British kingdom of Lindsey', p. 20, fn. 86—can be considered significantly less plausible than the scenario outlined here, lacking an obvious context and, moreover, seeming to be largely contradicted by the Bayesian modelling of the site.
11.     Green, 'British kingdom of Lindsey', p. 21; Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, pp. 25, 67; and see further Jones, 'St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln: Britain in Europe?'; Jones, 'Colonia era: archaeological account', pp. 127–9, 137; A. C. Thomas, Christianity in Roman Britain to AD 500 (London, 1981), p. 197; K. Leahy, The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Lindsey (Stroud, 2007), p. 117.
12.     For eccles names, see for example K. Cameron, 'Eccles in English place-names', in K. Cameron (ed.), Place-Name Evidence for the Anglo-Saxon Invasion and Scandinavian Settlements (Nottingham, 1987), pp. 1–7; P. Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature in Western England, 600–800 (Cambridge, 1990), p. 80; C. Hough, 'Eccles in English and Scottish place-names', in E. Quinton (ed.), The Church in English Place-Names (Nottingham, 2009), pp. 109–24. For St Augustine and the British St Sixtus, see N. P. Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury (London, 1984), p. 20; P. Schaff (ed.), Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Second Series, Volume XIII Gregory the Great, Ephraim Syrus, Aphrahat (Edinburgh, 1898), p. 77. On British bishops, see for example S. Bassett, 'Church and diocese in the West Midlands', in J. Blair and R. Sharpe (eds.), Pastoral Care Before the Parish (London, 1992), pp. 13–40; S. Bassett, 'Medieval ecclesiastical organisation in the vicinity of Wroxeter and its British antecedents', Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 145 (1992), 1–28; B. Yorke, 'Lindsey: the lost kingdom found?', in A. Vince (ed.), Pre-Viking Lindsey (Lincoln 1993), pp. 141–50 at p. 145; Jones, ‘Colonia era: archaeological account’, p. 137. See also S. Bangert, 'Menas ampullae: a case study of long-distance contacts', in A. Harris (ed.), Incipient Globalization? Long-Distance Contacts in the Sixth Century (Oxford, 2007), pp. 27–33.
13.     On late fourth- and fifth-century Lincoln, see, for example, K. Dobney et al, Of Butchers and Breeds: Report on vertebrate remains from various sites in the City of Lincoln (Lincoln, 1996), pp. 2–4, 57–61; K. Dobney et al, ‘Down, but not out: biological evidence for complex economic organization in Lincoln in the late 4th century’, Antiquity, 72 (1998), 417–24; Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, pp. 25–7. On the evidence for a degree of continuity in the pottery industry here into the fifth-century and possibly even slightly beyond, see Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, pp. 111–12, and Green, 'British kingdom of Lindsey', pp. 23–4, and the expanded discussion in Green, 'Romano-British pottery in the fifth- to sixth-century Lincoln region', blog post, 12 June 2016, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2016/06/romano-british-pottery-fifth-century-lincoln.html.
14.     The case is fully developed in Green, 'The British kingdom of Lindsey', Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 56 (2008), 1–43, and Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons: Lincolnshire AD 400–650 (Lincoln, 2012).

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