ABSTRACT
The organization of later medieval urban religion was powerfully influenced by two legacies from the past. One has recently been much discussed: the multitude of 'private' churches, usually small and informally planned, founded by eleventh-century landlords and groups of neighbours. 1 The other, still relatively neglected, is my theme here: the continuing role of ancient mother churches. This chapter will argue that the forms of clerical life developed in minsters during the pre-and proto-urban Anglo-Saxon centuries conditioned, both by survival and by example, the use of space in major urban churches from the twelfth century onwards.
