Sequence
for the formation of the early church of Mercia.
1. King Wulfhere took overlordship of Mercia, c. 657-9, possibly by paying tribute to King Oswiu of Northumbria.[1] He then appointed the third and fourth bishops of Mercia who must have had a timber (?) church.[2] The church might have been close to the Anglo-Saxon settlements along the Trent washlands.
Bishop Jaruman, fourth bishop of Mercia, holding an early (too elaborate) church and pictured in a roundel in the tiled floor of the presbytery. He died in 667.[3]
Preparatory drawing of Bishop Jaruman
2. Bishop Wilfrid, acting as bishop of Mercia, and Wulfhere, between 667 and 669, selected the site beside a stream on a mudstone slope as the centre for the Mercian diocese. They called it Licitfelda, meaning the approved location. Bede 17-19 years later repeated this event in his book of ecclesiastical history.[4] See the posts Wilfrid founder of the church of Mercia and Lichfield (Licetfelda) means 'the right field'.
3. A new explication of Bede concluded ‘Chad died on March 2 in 672 and was buried in a grave by the church of St Mary.’ This was on the site of St Peter the Apostle.[5] The first church built would have been dedicated to Peter. Sometime later, presumably two or three decades after his body had decomposed, his bones were translated to a wooden ‘little house’ shrine on the grave site. See the post Two churches in 672 and a shrine. This would be under Bishops Wilfrid and Headda.
4. Archaeological investigation in 1992, 1994 and 2003 overturned longstanding ideas of where the early churches stood.[6] In 1992 and again in 1994, a small amount of Saxon foundation, walling of mortared rubble around 0.6 m wide, was revealed under the aisles flanking the choir of the current cathedral.[7]
 |
| Foundation walling found in the choir aisles, 1992 and 1994, and the nave 2003. |
This was said at the time to be the remnant of a foundation belonging to St Peter’s church-cathedral and the sections were conjectured to be part of a porticus.[8] The walling sections were c. 52 feet (15.8 metres) apart which is similar (c. 48 feet) to the width of the porticus of the standing church at Bradwell on Sea, Essex, possibly the cathedral-church for Cedd, Chad’s brother. This is a considerably wide church for the 7th-century, assuming on an east-west axis.
Church of St Peter-on-the-Wall, Bradwell-on-Sea, Essex, thought to be
Cedd’s church. It is believed to be the oldest surviving Anglo-Saxon church, c. 654. Did
Lichfield’s first cathedral resemble this church?
 |
| Church being used as a barn before its restoration. |
5. In 2003, a foundation for a second building c. 7 m wide north to south[9] and possibly the same length east to west was found under the east end of the cathedral nave (so west of the choir foundations by at least 20 m). The widths of the walls were mostly over a metre wide suggesting the building was relatively tall.[10] Inside was a sunken, possibly lined, pit, 0.8 m deep, c. 2 m wide and slightly longer; presumed to be a burial pit or hypogeum.
 |
| Only the left half of the shrine tower foundation (brown) was uncovered. Only three-quarters of the left side of the pit was excavated. The socketed stone could have held a wooden cross. |
The Lichfield Angel
The sunken burial pit was
offset to the north side of the chamber which accords with the traditional
understanding of the layout for Christ’s tomb. A similar overall layout
occurred in the Hexham and Ripon crypts.[13]
The size and shape led Rodwell to describe it as a shrine tower. It resembled
shrine towers known in Ireland and dated to the eighth to ninth-century. Such
buildings were well under twelve metres square and usually had a west-facing
door.[14]
Carver said they were narrow and tall, employed megalithic construction for the
walls, enclosed a single room rarely larger than 6 x 4 m and had a single
western door with an east window.[15]
They resembled the archaeological findings.
St Kevin's shrine tower at Glendalough, County Wicklow,
Ireland.
Every aspect of the archaeology suggests a shrine
tower built to hold a stone shrine-chest, over the original grave. [16]
A recent review of features seen in the
excavation has supported the notion this was an early grave.[17]
Bede described Chad’s relics being in a ‘wooden house’ on (ibidem) the
original grave. It is entirely plausible the wooden house was exchanged later
with a stone sepulchre-chest. The head of Gabriel is very similar to the head
of King Offa on his coins suggesting he ordered the shrine chest. Its fine painted
detail and being best stone from Ancaster, Lincolnshire, suggests wealth
typical of Offa and his archbishopric.
The style of Gabriel, especially his tunic, closely
resembles the incised Gabriel on the left end of Cuthbert’s wooden coffin
buried in Durham Cathedral.
Some of the 22 people (priests?)
found around the shrine tower in the 2003 excavation had requested burial near
St Chad. Apparently, even in medieval times there was an understanding where
Chad was buried. Amazingly, this sacred site is not marked.
Chad was buried in a field cemetery,
now positioned at the east end of the cathedral nave. It was near the church of
St Mary and on the cathedral site of St Peters. The exact whereabouts of the
church and first cathedral are unknown, but presumably cannot be far from the
grave site. Early on his bones were recovered (translated) and first held in a
wooden ‘house,’ constructa, and later housed within a shrine chest most
likely constructed in King Offa’s time. This chest was within a small, tall,
shrine tower. The whole complex, cathedral, church, shrine tower, oratory and
dwellings for priests would have been a religious community and known as a monasterium,
which is later translated to be a mynster and became a minster with
modern spelling.
 |
| Simple reconstruction of the early monasterium |
Rodwell associated radiocarbon dates of burials close
to the south choir porticus foundation with a possible date of its opposite
number in the north choir aisle and both ‘first phase and second phase’ levels
of archaeology in the nave. However, he thought the distance between the choir
foundations and the nave foundations, c. 20m, was considerable and
belonged to two separate buildings in an east-west alignment.[18]
Sargent has repeated the notion of one long church with the sepulchral of Chad
at the west end and the altar of St Peter at the east end.[19]
There is a difficulty with the alignment and the length of this church. Also implausible
is the housing of a saint’s shrine at the west end of a church in the
7th-century; elsewhere the saint was buried in a porticus on the side of the
nave and near the altar.
NB. There
is a problem with naming the people Saxon or Anglo-Saxon (the preferred title
in academic publications). Based on surviving texts, early inhabitants of the
region were commonly called englisc and angelcynn. From
410 A.D. when the Romans left to shortly after 1066, the term only
appears three times in legal charters in the entire corpus of Old English
literature and all in the tenth century. It is used here because Anglo-Saxon is
understood.
[1]
No battle or skirmish is known. Three ealdormen proclaimed Wulfhere king of the
Mercians. See F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, (Oxford: 1989), 84.
Perhaps, Christian King Oswiu had an arrangement with Christian King Wulfhere.
[2]
The cathedral seems fond of stating a church on the site since the year 700,
but in fact there must have been a church on or close by in 659 and certainly
one by 669. That is, over 1350 years ago.
[3]
Many narratives, including Wikipedia, have Jaruman dying in 669; this is
untrue.
[4]
Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. The ecclesiastical history of the
English People, 731.
[5]
The author has attempted to have this established in published history and has
failed on the most spurious of reasons. It needs rescuing; the anomaly stands
out as exceptional.
[6]
A 1990 account (M. W. Greenslade, A History of the
County of Staffordshire, XIV, Lichfield: The place and street names, population
and boundaries, 37–42. Lichfield: The Cathedral (London 1990), 37) on
the locations of the early church/cathedral (St Peter?) at Lichfield stated it
may be on the north side of the cathedral presbytery. This site was also
believed in the 18th century to be the burial place of two Mercian kings[6]
(Wulfhere 674 and Coelred 716). A funerary church (St Mary?) may have been on
the south side of the cathedral. How these locations were conjectured is a
mystery, but probably go back to medieval writings based on stonework found in
the ground.
[7]
W. Rodwell, ‘An interim report on archaeological excavations in the south quire
aisle of Lichfield Cathedral’, (unpub. report held in Lichfield Cathedral
library, 1992) 1–8; W. Rodwell, ‘Revealing the history of the Cathedral. 2’.
(unpub. report held in Lichfield Cathedral library, 1994), 20–31.
[8]
W. Rodwell, ‘Lichfield Cathedral. Archaeology of the
Sanctuary’, Church Archaeology 7–9 (2006), 13.
[9]
Drawing shows a width of c .6.7 metres (22 feet or 1.5 short perches),
see W. Rodwell, ‘Archaeological excavation in the nave
of Lichfield Cathedral’. (unpub. report held in Lichfield Cathedral
Library, 2003), 15.
[10]
A modern term for such a building is a shrine chapel. However, a shrine in
Medieval Latin was called a cappella, which translated to chapele
and by the 13th-century became a chapel. The word is therefore relatively
recent. It is not known what the shrine tower might have been called.
[11]
W. Rodwell ‘Lichfield Cathedral. Archaeology of the
Sanctuary’ and W. Rodwell ‘Lichfield Cathedral. Archaeology of the
Sanctuary’ and W. Rodwell, J. Hawkes, E. Howe and R. Cramp, ‘The Lichfield
Angel: A spectacular Anglo-Saxon painted sculpture, The Ant. J. (2008),
88, 48–108.
[12]
Ibid. Rodwell et. al. ‘The Lichfield Angel: A spectacular Anglo-Saxon painted
sculpture’, 81
[13]
R. N. Bailey, ‘St Wilfrid – a European Anglo-Saxon’ Wilfrid
Abbot, Bishop, Saint. Papers from the 1300th Anniversary Conferences, ed.
N. J. Higham (Donington, 2013), 122.
[14]
T. Ó Carragáin, ‘The architectural setting of the cult
of relics in early medieval Ireland’ The J. of the Royal Soc. of
Antiquaries of Ireland, 133 (2003) 66.
[15]
M. Carver, Formative Britain. An archaeology of
Britain, fifth to eleventh century A.D. (London and New York, 2019),
569. Carver cites Iona (beneath St Columba’s House), Tighlagheany (Co. Galway),
Teach Molaise (on Inishmurray) and St Columb’s (Co Meath) as examples, p. 570.
[16]
Rodwell, ‘Lichfield Cathedral. Archaeology of the Sanctuary’, 4.
[17]
A. Sargent, Lichfield and the Lands of St Chad:
creating community in Early Medieval Mercia (Hatfield, 2020), 117.
[18]
Rodwell, see endnote 2, page 6 and endnote 6, page 54.
[19]
Sargent, Lichfield and the Lands of St Chad: creating community in Early
Medieval Mercia, 117–8.