ABSTRACT
At the start of Wærferth’s episcopate (between 869 and 873) the endowment of the church of Worcester was already consolidated. Landed grants began at the time of the cathedral’s foundation (c.680) and had continued throughout the following two centuries. The bulk of this original estate was located near Worcester, but in due course it extended to include many other areas in Worcestershire, substantial portions of Gloucestershire, as well as land in Warwickshire and Oxfordshire (see Figure 17). The church of Worcester also possessed urban properties in various towns, including Worcester, Droitwich, Gloucester, Bristol and London. Most of the estate, with the exclusion of the Oxfordshire and north-western Worcestershire portions, lay within the diocese of the Hwicce; thanks to the growth of the bishop’s control over his diocese, the church of Worcester managed to extend its property by gaining rights over lands which had originally belonged to independent minsters, founded and endowed by the rulers of the Hwicce and the Mercians in the course of the seventh and eighth centuries. The process through which the episcopal see gradually managed to achieve control of those minsters and their estates covered a relatively long period but was virtually complete by the second half of the ninth century.1 Between then and the end of the eleventh century events such as the Danish invasions and the Norman Conquest created a degree of disruption and caused some losses, which are described in Hemming’s Cartulary, but they did not substantially alter the overall pattern of the cathedral’s estate.2
