The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

Chapter Thirteen
Landscapes of the Middle Ages
Churches, castles and monasteries
Roberta Gilchrist
BACKGROUND
Within a generation or so of the conversion to Christianity, each Anglo-Saxon kingdom had become
divided into large parishes (parochiae) administered by a minster church. These minsters (from the
Latin monasterium) were instigated by episcopal or royal initiative, and their siting was frequently
coincident with royal vills; Welsh churches, by contrast, were established in association with secular
llys (courts). These early minsters of the seventh to eighth centuries housed communities of priests
or monks, living a collegiate or monastic lifestyle, who had pastoral responsibility for the inhabitants
of the parochia. Between the tenth to twelfth centuries, large minster churches were supplemented
by the proliferation of private, or proprietary, churches, with a resident priest who served a local
community. It is now believed that there had been an immense shift in settlement patterns from the
ninth century to the mid-eleventh century. It is supposed that complex, multiple estates based on
Anglo-Saxon royal and ecclesiastical centres of the seventh to tenth centuries fragmented into
smaller, self-contained local manors. The emergence of these manors, and the social class of local
lords (thegns), created the small field churches of the late Saxon period; the evolution of the nucleated
village sometime during the ninth to twelfth centuries provided the social impetus for the local
community church. These local churches, the ancestors of parish churches, did not immediately
have full rights, such as baptism or burial, but were subject to the authority of the old minsters,
which presided as superior, or mother, churches. From the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, the
parochiae of the minsters were broken down into smaller territories of individual parishes, giving rise
to the parochial system of the Middle Ages (Blair 1988, 1–14).
Churches subsequently became the focal point for ritual and social life in a medieval community.
They were used as a place of worship and regular meeting, for religious and seasonal festivals,
baptism of infants, marriages, and burial of the dead. Chapels, known as chapels-of-ease, were
built to serve parishioners who lived some distance from the parish church, and palaces, castles
and manor houses often had private chapels that served the resident family and retainers. Some
12,000 English churches and chapels of medieval date survive today as standing buildings, in
addition to several hundred ruined churches and the countless sites of former churches that exist
only as buried archaeological deposits. The expansion of towns in the tenth to eleventh centuries
also resulted in the proliferation of parishes, some of which were carved from the territories of
earlier minsters. Towns that expanded in the late Saxon period can be ranked according to the
number of churches that they once possessed: London 100+, Norwich and Winchester 50+,